Following the latest oil find offshore Guyana, this time by Tullow Oil Plc, interest in employment opportunities has been sparked in Ghana, where the London-headquartered oil firm also has operations.
Kweku Awotwi, the Executive Vice President/Managing Director at Tullow Ghana Ltd, has said that the latest oil discovery in Guyana will be beneficial to Ghanaians, according to a report on news site, GhanaWeb.
According to him, the discovery broadens the employment horizon of citizens as most of the people on the Stena Forth drillship in Guyana are Ghanaians.
“We already have some of our own Ghanaian geo-scientists that were in London last week who are going to be part of that exercise, doing the exploration, doing the engineering… The company moved the rig of Ghana to Guyana but kept the workforce from Ghana,” Awotwi was quoted as saying.
Tullow, on Monday, announced the discovery of oil in commercial quantities in its Orinduik Block offshore Guyana. Its first exploration well, Jethro-1, is expected to hold more than 100 million recoverable barrels of oil, in excess of expectations. Tullow Oil Plc is the operator of the block via its wholly-owned subsidiary Tullow Guyana B.V. and has as its partners French oil major Total, Canadian company Eco Atlantic (Guyana) Inc and Qatar Petroleum.
The Ministry of the Presidency, in a statement, had said that the Jethro-1 well was drilled by the Stena Forth drillship to a total depth of 4,400 metres in approximately 1,350 metres of water.
According to the GhanaWeb report, Awotwi revealed that the initial discovery from the Jethro-1 well, shows commercial quantities.
“We’ve seen a minimum of a hundred million barrels… we have to drill more wells to really see what’s there but the initial discovery suggests that it’s commercial so that means that we’ll be doing more work,” he was quoted as saying. Awotwi was speaking at a media capacity training organised for the media by Tullow Oil Plc and Rigworld, the report said.
Ghana’s interest underlines again the job opportunities that should be available for Guyanese but which opportunities will go abegging without a local content policy and training opportunities.