Africa-focused oil explorer and producer Tullow Oil expects its Ten Field development in Ghana to start producing oil next year and deliver significant cash flow, the company's vice president for Africa said.
Tim O'Hanlon, speaking at the Africa Oil Week conference organised by Global Pacific & Partners, also said the company was trimming capital spending in the face of depressed prices, to $1.2 to $1.4 billion next year from $1.9 billion in 2015.
He also said the company hoped to get a production license this year in Uganda, the East African country where Tullow discovered oil in 2006.
Chief executive Aidan Heavey told Reuters the company hopes to make a final investment decision on the Ugandan project in 2017 with the first oil flowing in 2020. "You need a pipeline route firmed down and then you need to get FID (final investment decision). So FID probably in early 2017 and then three years later, you would have first oil," he said. The pipeline route to move oil from landlocked Uganda to the Indian Ocean has not yet been determined.
A proposed northern Kenyan route has raised security concerns as it lies near Somalia, from where Islamist militants have launched attacks on Kenya. France's Total, also an investor in Ugandan oilfields, has said it is considering a pipeline through Tanzania as a possible way to export Ugandan oil.
