TechnipFMC’s Ghana team marks first subsea tree assembly in five years

TechnipFMC’s Takoradi base in Ghana has completed the assembly of its first subsea tree in five years, destined for Tullow Oil’s Jubilee South East development.

The tree is the first of ten being manufactured in Dunfermline, the UK, then assembled and tested in-country for Tullow’s full field development (FFD) project.

Besides tree assembly, a number of subsea structures, including production and water injection manifolds, will be fabricated in-country for the project.

“It’s been five years since we completed our previous tree assembly. We’ve had a lot of changes since then, with new personnel coming onboard and people who have been here longer being promoted or working in specialist roles,” said Philip Ofori, quality manager at TechnipFMC.

“The COVID-19 pandemic was a big driver for a lot of internal movement in our Ghana team as expats were recalled home, opening up slots for our experienced people. Now we’re moving towards a fully Ghanaian team. By investing in our people here, training them on site and abroad, we’ve got a stream of talent available,” Blake Skaggs, the company’s onshore operations manager, added.

To remind, TechnipFMC secured the integrated engineering, procurement, construction and installation (iEPCI) contract with Tullow Oil for the Jubilee South East development in July.

The project is an extension to the Jubilee field where the UK-based oil and gas company started a multi-year, multi-well drilling campaign in April this year.

The field was discovered in 2007 by the Mahogany-1 (M-1) and Hyedua-1 (H-1) exploration wells. It straddles the West Cape Three Points and Deepwater Tano licenses.

In July 2009, the Minister of Energy approved the Phase 1 Plan of Development which included the use of an FPSO with a facility capacity of 120,000 bopd. The field came on-stream in December 2010.