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BB - Afren makes audacious move


Afren makes audacious move for oil licence in Ghana
19 March, 2008 01:00:00 Godwin NNANNA
http://www.businessdayonline.com/energy/6563.html


The company which projects an overall production portfolio of up to 20,000 barrels per day before the end of 2008 is currently operating in Nigeria, São Tomé and Príncipe, Gabon, Congo and Angola.
Sources at the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) told Business Day that the agency has completed deliberations with Afren’s management but the contract is yet to be awarded as company’s offer needs to go through the due process system.
Afren is an independent oil and gas exploration and production company that was founded in 2004 by a management team including Rilwanu Lukman, former secretary general and president of Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
Afren recently entered into an agreement with Devon Energy Corporation, a U.S company, to acquire its interests in Côte d’Ivoire, comprising a 47.96 percent working interest and operatorship of the producing Bloc CI-11, a direct 65 percent interest and operatorship with rights over an additional 15 percent interest in the undeveloped Bloc CI-01 as well as a 100 percent interest in the onshore Lion Gas Plant.
According to Osman Shahenshah, chief executive of Afren, the transaction which follows from the company’s acquisition of Devon’s assets in Ghana and Angola, “represents a step change addition to Afren’s existing portfolio. The portfolio of businesses acquired from Devon offers immediate production for Afren, ahead of production start-up from the Okoro Setu project in Nigeria.”
Also seeking prospecting licence for the same operation is Celtique Energie, an British company. The company has operations in Switzerland, France, Poland and Germany.
The prospecting agreement will be for a period of seven years and if further discovery is made, it could be extended to a 23-year period.
A report by Ghana’s leading state-owned newspaper states that the agreement is currently before the legislature. The paper notes that the parliament is committed to ensuring that the country obtains the best possible terms from all agreements with oil companies.
Analysts say the recent oil field would transform Ghana’s economy if successfully developed. The country’s main money earner is cocoa and the country has been banking on growth in tourism to drive its GDP.
Moses Boateng of GNPC announced that his outfit had targeted about $10 billion in upstream foreign direct investment by 2012. This, he said, could be achieved through aggressive promotion of the hydrocarbon potentials and the opportunities that would be generated from the oil discovery. According to him, the full field development cost could cost between $3 and $5 billion.
“GNPC hopes to become a world class corporation capable of making Ghana the fastest growing destination for investments in West Africa, to ensure aggressive development of human resource to meet the challenges in the oil and gas industry and also ensure that best development practices are undertaken for maximum output from the exploration fields,” he declared.