Tullow Oil is close to revealing the award to the long-awaited winner of the bid battle to provide a leased FPSO for the operator’s TEN (Tweneboa-Enyenra-Ntomme) development offshore Ghana.

The final two in the running are Modec and SBM Offshore, with Modec having been tipped as the favourite for the contract for some time, having previously supplied the operator with the FPSO for the Jubilee field. The award will be confirmed once the operator’s Plan for Development and Operations (PoD) is approved by the government. It submitted the plan to Ghana’s Ministry of Energy in November.

Tullow also revealed that it is still evaluating the tenders for the project’s subsea system, with an award also expected shortly. The two companies understood to have fought it out for the subsea package (trees, manifolds and controls, umbilicals, risers and flowlines) are Technip and FMC (which both supplied equipment for the Jubilee and Jubilee Phase 1A developments).

The TEN FPSO’s production capacity has also been optimised at around 80,000 b/d of oil, added Tullow in its latest results briefing, with “a flexible design allowing for potential future expansion to allow near field resource potential to be tied in”. The original design capacity had been around 100,000 b/d. First production from the project is anticipated to be between 32-36 months after the PoD is approved.

The current estimated Capex cost for the base development plan, which includes around 23 injection and production wells, and excludes the FPSO lease costs, is around US $4.5 Bn. Tullow’s net capex will be circa $1.5 Bn pre-first oil, it said.

The company added that it has also transferred 112 MMboe from contingent resources to commercial reserves in respect of the TEN development. The company expects the initial field development to recover around 300 MMboe (80% of that being oil).

The operator drilled three appraisal wells during 2012. The Owo-1RA well was drilled and successfully tested in January last year at combined rates in excess of 20,000 b/d of oil, while Enyenra-4A was drilled in March, intersecting 32 m (105 ft) of oil pay. Water injection tests on this down-dip well were carried out in April, with results proving that the Enyenra channel sands were suitable for water injection to support oil production. The Ntomme-2A well was drilled in January last year and also hit oil (the Ntomme discovery well) down dip of the Tweneboa-3ST non-associated gas discovery. The well was production tested in May at combined flow rates in excess of 20,000 b/d of oil.

The top-hole of the final appraisal well, Enyenra-6A, has been drilled and will be completed in this quarter after the drilling of the Sapele-1 exploration well (see page 4).

Tullow said that, apart from finalising its decisions on the FPSO and subsea awards, it had also extended the West Leo rig’s contact to five years.

Tullow (49.95%) operates the Deepwater Tano licence and is partnered by Kosmos Energy (18.00%), Anadarko Petroleum (18.00%), Sabre (4.05%) and the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) (10% carried interest).