The World Bank Group has provided another $517 million to Ghana in debt and guarantees to support the $7.7 billion Sankofa oil and gas project.
This brings to a total of $1.217 billion provided by the group after it initially injected $700 million in the project which is being developed by Italian Firm ENI SpA and upstream trader Vitol Ghana.
Already, the World Bank’s commercial lending arm, which is the International Finance Corporation (IFC), has committed a loan of $235 million to Vitol Ghana, and is arranging another $65 million in debt.
Guarantees by the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, another bank institution, will support Vitol Ghana’s commercial borrowing needs for the project and will be issued for up to 15 years. The new pledges bring the World Bank Group’s financing share of the Sankofa project to about 16 percent.
According to a financial projection by the IFC, the Sankofa field is expected to generate about $2.3 billion in revenues for Ghana’s government per year .
It is also projected to provide a stable and long-term source of domestic gas that will solve country’s chronic gas supply constraints.
Per the agreement, ENI holds a 44.4 percent stake , Vitol holds 35.6 percent while the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation holds a combined carried and participating interest of 20 percent.
Sankofa is expected to generate about 1,000 megawatts of power for Ghana and, combined with gas from two other new fields, could eliminate the need for Ghana to import gas from Nigeria through the West African Gas Pipeline Company.
Another major oil field that commenced production this year was the Tweneboa, Enyenra and Ntomme (TEN) Oil field which produces 23,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd) on average.
According to lead managers of the project, Tullow Oil Ghana Limited, the figure is expected to ramp up as more wells are brought on board the production in the coming weeks.
At full capacity, the field is expected to produce 80,000 barrels of oil per day.
The TEN project is developed in the offshore deep water, 60 kilometers off the coast of the Western region.
At start-up, ten wells will be required and these have already been drilled.
The Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel, Prof. John Evans Atta Mills has been anchored over the field with a significant amount of subsea production equipment installed in the sea bed.
Ghana first began pumping oil in 2010 at the offshore Jubilee field operated by Tullow Oil Plc.
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(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)
