Ghana has told Italy’s Eni to merge its Sankofa offshore discovery with another field, discovered by a locally based company, Bloomberg reports, citing a letter by Ghanaian Energy Minister John-Peter Amewu.
The letter follows the failure of Eni and the local company, Springfield Exploration and Production, to reach an agreement on how to develop the fields jointly.
Eni, which operates the Sankofa discovery together with commodity trading giant Vitol, is against the move, according to the report, arguing that Springfield has not made sufficient tests at its discovery, Afina, to prove it shares a reservoir with adjacent Sankofa.
“The Minister of Energy now imposes terms and conditions for the unitization of the Afina and Sankofa fields to ensure optimum exploitation and recovery of Ghana’s petroleum resources,” the minister wrote in the letter, dated October 14.
The Sankofa field is part of the Offshore Cape Three Points (OCTP) license, which also includes Sankofa Main and East natural gas fields, the Cenomanian oil field, and the Gye Nyame gas field, according to Eni’s website. The Sankofa fields contain some 40 billion cu m of gas and 500 million barrels of crude oil.
Ghana is a relative newcomer to the international oil and gas scene, with the first discoveries made in 2007. Gas production at the Sankofa fields began in 2018, with estimates putting the average daily output at up to 5.1 million cu m of gas, according to a report by Oxford Business Group.
Springfield Exploration and Production, for its part, announced an oil discovery in the West Cape Three Points Block 2 at the end of 2019, with estimates putting the undiscovered potential of the site at over 3 billion barrels of oil and gas.
“Eni is in contact with all the pertinent stakeholders, including the relevant Ministry in Ghana, in order to define a way forward and evaluate any case for potential unitization in accordance with applicable law and international good oilfield practice,” the Italian supermajor said in a statement, as quoted by Bloomberg.
