Ghana To Get Free Gas

Ghana is to receive more than 200 billion cubic feet of natural gas free of charge from the Jubilee partners under phase one of the Jubilee project.

The value of the as at the current market price is about $900 million and it will be received on behalf of the country by the Ghana National petroleum Corporation (GNPC) for its onshore plant.

The gas will be processed and sold to independent power producers to feed petrochemical industries that have expressed strong interest in the Western Region.

It will be an extra income to the state, aside from its share in the Jubilee operations, as well as revenue and other forms of tax that will accrue from the offshore operations.

The Officer in charge of the Jubilee Gas Project at the GNPC, Mr. Victor Sunu-Atta, who disclosed this to the Daily Graphic, said work on the gas processing plant in the Jomoro District was progressing steadily.

He said a new appraisal had confirmed thick gas reserves offshore, giving signals to investors that it was worth investing in the Western Region with a continuous supply of gas for the production of fertilizer, ammonia, urea, methanol and other products.

Mr. Sunu-Atta said the country’s hope of exploiting its natural gas potential had been boosted with the announcement that the Tweneboa-3 appraisal well in the Deepwater Tano licence offshore had successfully encountered gas condensate in excellent quality sandstone reservoirs.

That, he said, was heart-warming news for the many companies from the Caribbean and other parts of the world which had expressed interest in investing in the country’s natural gas, according to members of the Gas Commercialization Task Force set up by the government.

Announcing the additional gas discovery, the Exploration Director of Tullow Ghana, Mr. Augus McCoss, said Tweneboa-3, which was a bold appraisal step-out in a vast stratigraphic trap, confirmed produceable gas condensate in excellent quality reservoirs.

“We can now move forward confidently to assess the development options for the Tweneboa and Enyenra (Owo) fields in the Greater Tweneboa Area,” he said.

In a related development, work has commenced on the laying of the gas flow lines form the Jubilee Field to the processing plant in the Jomoro District of the Western Region