Kevin Okyere, the founder and chief executive officer of the Springfield Group says he is confident that Eni and Springfield will find an amicable solution to the stalemate in the unitisation process.
Okyere said, “I think that Eni and Springfield will find an amicable solution so that it just benefits all stakeholders…”
Ghana ordered Eni and Springfield Exploration and Production to merge the Afina and Sankofa fields after the two companies failed to make progress on their own.
The Ministry of Energy declared the fields unitised in a letter seen by Energy Voice. The letter was dated 14 October and was addressed to the managing director of Eni Ghana Exploration and Production and the CEO of Springfield.
Under this order, the licence led by Springfield will have a 54.5% stake in the area and Eni’s licence 45.5%. The Ministry of Energy has ordered that this unitised area would be in effect from when production started.
Assuming the unitisation moves forward, Springfield will have notched up another achievement. It will have added significant deepwater production following the drilling of the discovery well last year, a feat few indigenous companies can aspire to.
Speaking in an interview with Nana Yaa Mensah on Sunday Night, Okyere said the unitisation process started in 2018, saying, “This just didn’t start now. This started in 2018.
“In 2017, we shot the seismic of the block; a new 3D broadband seismic of the whole acreage… we saw clearly that the Eni Sankofa field was coming to our block.
Watch the full interview below:
Back and forth
“So in March 2018, is when we wrote to the government that the law says when you straddle, you unitise; this is our evidence that it straddles so let’s start the unitization process. The government asked GNPC to do its own report…they did their report and confirmed our position that indeed, it straddles. The Ghana government and the Petroleum Commission did their own technical evaluation and confirmed that it straddles. The Ghana government wrote to Eni. Eni said we should go and drill to further prove.”
He added, “So the government insisted that we should go and drill to further prove that it’s the same hydrocarbon bearing fields and we did just that…right now we’ve proved that the field straddles, how do you unitise? We have to do a full fletched audit of all the cost Eni has incurred from day one”
Financial muscle
The CEO of Springfield said the company has the financial muscle to drill the Afina field adding “Yes, I mean we drilled Afina when no one believed we could drill.”
Okyere added, “So I think that we have actually proven beyond the requirements of unitization… a significant portion in terms of ownership and as the government did its work they came up with 54.5% for Springfield. So naturally, this makes for the first time a privately-owned African company a majority shareholder in a unitization field.”
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