Technip SA (TEC), which won a $730 million contract in Ghana, will double the size of its office in the West African nation within two years to capture more business as the oil exporter seeks to boost production.
Europe’s largest oilfield-services provider employs 33 people in Ghana, Stephane Sole, country managing director, said in an interview in the capital, Accra, yesterday. The Paris-based company opened an office in Ghana in 2009 and operates in Angola, Nigeria and Egypt. Sole declined to say how much Technip has invested in Ghana or estimate what potential revenue is.
“Ghana is the fastest-growing country in Africa for us in terms of local presence,” Sole said. “We have invested a lot and we want to develop a lot more. We are here for the long term.”
Ghana began exporting oil in 2010 from its Jubilee field and plans to more than double production to 250,000 barrels a day by 2021 from 102,000 barrels as the $4.5 billion offshore TEN project comes online in 2016. London-based Tullow Oil Plc (TLW), which operates Jubilee, plans to sell part of its stake in TEN later this month.
Technip won last month a $730 million contract to install subsea equipment at TEN, which will produce about 80,000 barrels a day in 2016. The company started building a fabrication yard in 2009 in the western port town of Sekondi, 240 kilometers (149 miles) from the capital. It created a joint venture with the Ghana National Petroleum Corp. in November last year before completing a jumper, or flowline pipe, constructed with a majority of Ghanaian engineers, Sole said.
Technip has agreements with contractors to manage the effect of the cedi’s decline, the third-worst performing African currency this year against the dollar, he said. The currency dropped 0.7 percent to 2.28 per dollar at 2:16 p.m. in Accra yesterday, extending the year’s decline to 16 percent.
Technip is working with two Ghanaian universities to train engineers to help it meet a local content law Parliament approved this week, Sole said. The regulation requires companies in the oil industry to have 90 percent of its staff to be citizens of Ghana within 10 years.
“We are already far above some requirements,” Sole said. “Our staff is already 85 percent Ghanaian. For us, it will be easy.”
Technip shares dropped 1.8 percent to 74.06 euros in Paris yesterday.
To contact the reporter on this story: Pauline Bax in Accra at pbax@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Nasreen Seria at nseria@bloomberg.net