Ghana in talks with Shell over oil exploration

Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) is in talks with Royal Dutch Shell over an exploration and production deal in the offshore East Keta basin, GNPC’s chief executive said at the Reuters Africa summit.

Alex Mould gave no details of the deal’s scope in the basin, which lies in the Gulf of Guinea between the port city of Tema and the Togolese border to the east.

But he said a Shell deal could open the door to other major producers.

“We are in discussions right now with Shell in the East Keta basin. We are also in discussions with Chevron. They are looking at where they want to come in the data room and we should hear from them in a couple of months,” Mould told Reuters.

“We still have to make contacts with ExxonMobil and we believe that with the advent of Shell, who are in discussions with us right now for a petroleum agreement, will encourage the rest of them to come in,” he said.

Ghana began pumping oil in December 2010 at its offshore Jubilee field to the west, where Tullow Oil has the largest stake and production is expected to hit 110,000 barrels per day in 2014. [ID:nL6N0N01ZJ]

Jubilee, the only oil field in Ghana currently producing, lies southwest of the port city of Takoradi and close to the border with Ivory Coast.

GNPC is also in talks with UB Petroleum, A-Z Petroleum and Heritage Oil over the award of licences on new oil blocks, Mould said, though he declined to give details of the block locations or the value of any deals.

“There is absolutely a huge demand in the Ghanaian upstream sector. The last four blocks we gave we had over 25 applications and on the average we have about six applications for every block,” Mould said.