Tullow Oil's TEN development project offshore Ghana is about 75% complete and on schedule and on budget to deliver first oil in mid-2016, the firm said this morning.
The floating production, storage and offloading vessel for the project is now mechanically complete and commissioning work is under way. The vessel is on track to sail away from Singapore in early January to arrive in Ghana in Q1 2016.
The subsea fabrication work has completed and the subsea installation of this equipment is now approximately 60% complete. The completion of the start-up wells is progressing with the fourth of 10-well completions currently being installed.
The TEN project, named after the Tweneboa, Enyenra and Ntomme fields it will develop, is a floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel development in the Deepwater Tano contract area. Consent for the project was granted by Ghana's government in June 2013, based on plateau production via 24 wells in 1500m water depth.
TEN will sit just 30km (18.75mi) from Tullow Oil’s Jubilee, another project produced via FPSO, which came onstream in 2010, and became Ghana’s first deepwater development.
Japan’s MODEC won a contract to supply a leased FPSO for the TEN development in August 2013. The contract with MODEC covers engineering, procurement construction, mobilization and operations of the unit, and topsides processing equipment, hull and marine systems. Subsidiary Sofec will design and supply the unit’s external turret mooring system.
Tullow’s new TEN vessel will be a conversion of the very large crude carrier (VLCC) Centennial J, which is being equipped to provide plateau production of 80,000 b/d of oil, 70 MMcf/d of gas processing, and storage for 1.7 MMbbl of fluids. MODEC is due to deliver the unit early 2016, following its previous award for the Jubilee field FPSO, named after Ghana’s founder, Kwame Nkrumah MV21.
Sembcorp Marine’s Jurong Shipyard confirmed a contract from MODEC Offshore in Singapore last October (2014) to carry out a conversion and life extension to a VLCC for the TEN project – the 22nd conversion by Jurong on behalf of MODEC. In addition to the crude processing, Sembcorp says the TEN FPSO will also have handling for 65,000 b/d of produced water and will provide 132,000 b/d of filtered and de-aerated sea water.
In October 2013, Tullow awarded contracts for subsea construction and installation for TEN to a Technip-Subsea 7 consortium worth US$1.23 billion. Technip took $723 million of the value, for provision of nine flexible risers, three flexible flowlines, and 12 flexible pipeline spools, with a total length of 48km (30mi), as well as installation of 63km (39mi) of static and dynamic umbilicals, plus installation of ten rigid well jumpers and delivery of a further six prefabricated jumpers.
Subsea 7’s scope of work, worth $500 million, is for supply of flowline terminations, structural foundation piles, as well as installation of subsea manifolds, riser bases and flying leads. Much of Subsea 7’s equipment will be fabricated in Ghana, where a “substantial” level of fabrication will take place. Offshore installation for the project is due to commence this year using the deepwater pipelay and heavy lift vessel Seven Borealis, which is equipped for both rigid S-lay and J-lay installation, and which previously debuted on Total’s CLOV project offshore Angola.
FMC Technologies will supply a subsea system under a $340 million contract covering subsea trees, manifolds, tooling, subsea controls and systems integration.
Phase one of the TEN development with a capex of US$4.09 billion involves 17 wells, for Enyenra, Ntomme, water injection, and Tweneboa and non-associated gas in first phase. A second phase involves infill wells on Enyenra and Ntomme, costing a further $900 million, with first oil from this phase due mid-2018.
Aidan Heavey, CEO, Tullow Oil, said: "Whilst 2015 has been a difficult year across the industry, we have taken appropriate steps within our business to meet the challenges presented by lower oil prices. We have focused our resources on our West African oil assets which, by 2017 with TEN onstream, will be producing around 100,000 b/d net to Tullow. We expect to begin deleveraging our balance sheet with production from TEN and this project remains on time and on budget for mid-2016."
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