Multinational oil and gas exploration company, Tullow Oil, has projected a total capital expenditure (capex) of $265 million for the 2021 fiscal year.
The capex amount Tullow Oil indicated, would largely be directed at maximising value from the Group’s producing assets.
Some $140 million of the capex according to Tullow Oil’s 2020 Financial Statement will be spent on its assets in Ghana which primarily will be associated with the reinstatement of its multi‐year, multi‐well drilling programme for 2021.
Aside the $140 million capex for Ghana, capex for Kenya for the year under review stands at $65 million with non-operated capex for West Africa being $60 million.
In 2020, Tullow Oil’s capital expenditure amounted to $288 million – a decrease from $490 million in 2019 – with $206 million invested in development activities and $82 million invested in exploration and appraisal activities. This includes $7 million of capital expenditure associated with Uganda which was reimbursed by Total on completion of the Uganda Transaction.
According to the oil giant, its West Africa oil assets performed in line with expectations delivering an average working interest oil production of 74,900 bopd – although that was a 12 percentage points decrease from the 84,880 bopd recorded for 2019.
“The decrease resulted from field decline and water cut in Ghana, partially offset by higher uptime on Jubilee. There have also been OPEC+ enforced production cuts impacting certain Gabon fields,” stated Tullow.
Adding its 2021 oil production is expected to average between 60,000 and 66,000 bopd.
Tullow Oil Ghana operations
Tullow said the effects of the COVID‐19 pandemic on its operations have been managed safely across the business with no impact on Ghana production.
This it pointed out has been achieved in close cooperation with the Government of Ghana that have enabled effective testing and quarantine measures to be put in place.
However, this increased the net cost of operations by $10 million in 2020.
Both fields in Ghana it noted performed in line with expectations in 2020, with the Jubilee field averaging 83,600 barrels of oil per day and the TEN field averaging 48,700 barrels of oil per day.
“This production erformance was supported by increased and sustained gas offtake nominations from the government of Ghana, approval from the Ministry of Energy to increase flaring, higher than forecast facility up from 95% at both FPSOs and improved well optimization and water injection facility performance on the Jubilee FPSO,” Tullow emphasized.
