Ghana has given Tullow Oil permission to increase the amount of gas it flares from the offshore Jubilee field, a spokesman said on Monday, a decision that will help the company meet its 2014 production target.
The British company can increase flaring to 500-million standard cubic feet (mmscf) per month until October. This will enable Tullow to achieve its 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) gross production target, said Tullow spokesman George Cazenove.
Tullow currently flares a limited amount of gas for safety and management reasons, he said.
"We need to flare some gas in the short term because we do have a great deal of gas coming from the field, some of which we can re-inject. It allows us to protect our production target for the year," Mr Cazenove said.
He said that flaring would start pending further talks with government.
Ghana discovered oil at the Jubilee field in 2007 and began producing in 2010. A delay in completing a gas pipeline to bring gas onshore is one reason why production has held steady at a lower level than the government initially expected.
The country set a target of 120,000 bpd in 2014 against an average of 102,503 bpd for the first nine months of 2013, Finance Minister Seth Terkper said in November’s annual budget.
Tullow holds a 35.5% stake in Jubilee. Other partners include Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, Sabre/PetroSA, Anadarko Petroleum Corp and Kosmos Energy.
