tullow discovers major oil field off ghana

tap need to drill, drill, drill

Ghana is becoming an exiting area of the world to be

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-26/tullow-partners-discover-a-major-new-oil-field-off-the-coast-of-ghana.html

Tullow Oil Plc, the U.K. explorer with the most licenses in Africa, discovered a major new oil field off the coast of Ghana.

The Owo-1 exploration well encountered a gross vertical reservoir interval of 154 meters (505 feet) in the Deepwater Tano license, the London-based company said in a statement. Samples show it is a light oil of 33 to 36 degrees gravity on the American Petroleum Institute (API) scale, Tullow said.

This is a big well and a big result for Tullow, weve got here a very substantial light oil discovery, Angus McCoss, the exploration director at the company, said today in a phone interview. Its really looking to be another transformational oil field for Ghana.

Tullow, which plans to start oil production from the Jubilee field off Ghana this year, also discovered the Tweneboa offshore field in the African nation. Tullow is the operator of Deepwater Tano while its partners include Anadarko Petroleum Corp., Kosmos Energy LLC and Ghana National Petroleum Corp.

Tullow rose as much as 5.9 percent to 1,249 pence, its biggest intraday gain since July 2, and was 4.9 percent higher at 1,237 pence at 9:05 a.m. London time.

McCoss declined to give any guidance on Owos possible oil resources pending further appraisal of the discovery.

Exploration Potential

Tullow had been targeting a 1.4 billion-barrel find of oil equivalent in the Owo-Tweneboa-Ntomme area off Ghana, according to a July 1 company presentation.

We are going to be partitioning the greater Tweneboa area into a very substantial highly pressured oil field at Owo and the neighboring major oil and gas condensate field at Tweneboa, McCoss said.

Tullow and Anadarko are exploring African fields off Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

We expect to resume the westward expansion of our exploration activity in the Cretaceous Fan play, where weve identified more than 30 prospects and leads with size and geologic characteristics similar to the Jubilee field, Bob Daniels, Anadarkos senior vice president for worldwide exploration, said in a separate statement.

To contact the reporter on this story: Eduard Gismatullin in London at [email protected]