Tullow Oil Strikes Gold with ‘Better Than Expected’ Results in Ghana Offshore Campaign
UK-headquartered Tullow Oil has successfully brought online its first production well of 2025 at the Jubilee field offshore Ghana, delivering results that exceeded company expectations. The J72-P well, part of Tullow’s renewed drilling campaign, came onstream at the end of July with significantly better net pay than anticipated during drilling operations.
Richard Miller, Chief Financial Officer and Interim Chief Executive Officer of Tullow Oil, confirmed that the company has taken decisive action to address recent underperformance at Jubilee while identifying further optimization potential. The successful completion of J72-P marks the first of two planned production wells for 2025, with the J73-P well scheduled to follow by year-end.
The drilling campaign utilizes the Noble Venturer drillship, hired for a six-well program offshore Ghana in December 2024. The 2014-built vessel, constructed at Samsung Heavy Industries in Korea, can operate in water depths up to 12,000 feet and reach maximum drilling depths of 40,000 feet.
Following completion of the initial two wells, expected to take 120 days, the Noble Venturer will undergo planned maintenance including thruster replacement before resuming operations with four additional firm wells planned for 2026. The company is simultaneously processing 4D seismic data shot in Q1 to validate locations for later wells in the campaign, with an Ocean Bottom Node seismic survey planned for Q4 2025.
A significant milestone for Tullow was achieving a memorandum of understanding to extend WCTP and DWT licenses holding Ghana’s Jubilee and TEN fields to 2040. This extension is expected to unlock significant value and includes commitments to increase gas supply to approximately 130 mmscf/d, along with rights to drill up to 20 additional wells representing potential investment of up to $2 billion over the license life.
The Jubilee field, discovered in 2007 with first production in 2010, operates in deepwater 60 kilometers offshore western Ghana. Tullow serves as operator with 38.98% ownership, alongside partners Kosmos Energy (28.61%), Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (16.69%), and PetroSA (2.72%). Meanwhile, Tullow has concluded its 21-year presence in Gabon through asset sales to Gabon Oil Company, signaling strategic refocus on its core Ghana operations.
Source: offshore-energy.biz
