Regional Overview: Ghana
Ghana’s potential
Licences
| Ghana | Working Interest | Local Partner | Work Programme |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keta Block |
68% | GNPC |
Exploration |
Afren in Ghana
In June 2008 we acquired the Keta Block (located offshore Eastern Ghana, in the Volta River Basin) from Devon Energy Corporation. It covers an area of 5,500 km2, in water depths ranging from 1,000 metres to 2,800 metres.
Previous exploration activity in the area was focused on the shallow water and onshore area. This mainly targeted Tertiary plays and was unsuccessful. The most attractive potential on the Keta Block lies within the sandstones of the Upper Cretaceous section. This play type is very similar to that successfully proven by recent drilling at the Jubilee and Odum discoveries.
The Keta Block is covered by 1,600 km2 of good-quality 3D seismic. This has recently been reprocessed with a marked improvement in data quality. Further technical evaluation of the reprocessed seismic data is ongoing, prior to drilling.
Material resource base in Ghana
Net unrisked prospective resources in Ghana are estimated at 411 mmbbls.
Ghana has recently experienced considerable exploration and appraisal success, with discoveries in the deep water Cretaceous fairways opening up a world-class hydrocarbon exploration province. The Jubilee field was the largest discovery to be made in Sub-Saharan Africa during 2007, and is estimated to hold in excess of 1.2 billion barrels of oil.
Although its upstream oil industry is in a formative stage, Ghana is one of four West African countries with an oil refining industry. The Tema refinery has an operating capacity of 43,000 bopd, and currently runs on crude imported from Nigeria.
