Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), has announced that the country’s daily oil production is expected to hit 240,000 barrels by 2020.

According to Michael Aryeetey (photo), GNPC’s Chief Operating Officer of Exploration and Production Company Limited (Explorco), this would be attained, when the three oil fields reach their peak production.

“This is good news for all stakeholders including the people of Ghana. However, this trend will not last if investment into the industry stalls, pace of exploration reduces, we do not find more oil and gas, and we do not commercialize our finds,” he said.

Aryeetey added that Ghana’s oil reserves currently stand at 1.27 billion oil equivalent. This is relatively small compared to Nigeria’s 40 billion barrels of oil equivalent. With almost 200 million barrels already produced, work must be done to improve the country’s replacement ratio by exploring and developing more resources.

He noted that at present, about 50% of the sedimentary offshore basin was opened with very little activity, adding that the Voltaian basin has a size of about 103,000 km² and is currently experiencing some level of exploration, controlled by GNPC. The basin would also be available for licencing to investors in the next two years.

“Offshore Ghana still host a number of stranded or captured resources which cannot be commercialized on their own. It is important that going forward, all stakeholders come together and find ways through which these resources can be commercialized either together or in clusters,” the official told Hellenic Shipping news.

Even though oil prices continue to fall in response to oversupply against lower demand, Ghana would continue to attract serious and well established oil companies who would work with GNPC and Explorco to make sure that an aggressive exploration and development activities in the basins were continued, he explained.

Anita Fatunji