The Jubilee Field is a deepwater development located approximately 60 kmoffshore Ghana that was executed over 3.5 years between discovery and first oilproduction. Meeting this aggressive schedule required the fast-track executionof the turret-moored FPSO, named Kwame Nkrumah, as the FPSO was consistently onthe project's critical path schedule. A key to successful delivery of the FPSOon the fast-track schedule was establishing a strategy and adhering to thestrategy even under multiple challenges. The details of the fast-trackstrategy, the challenges imposed, and the actual performance of the FPSOexecution team in delivering the FPSO safely to location will be covered inthis paper. This work also highlights the importance of building amulti-discipline team driven by clear, well-understood goals, creating astructure suited for execution, and of selecting the right Contractors for theproject and building strong relationships with them.
Although fast tracking major O&G development projects is often a statedobjective for many projects, few achieve the performance achieved on Jubilee. This work illustrates the establishment of a solid strategy and successfulexecution of that strategy to deliver an FPSO to the site in 22 months fromaward of contract. Despite the effort put in place to meet an aggressiveschedule, the project team still encountered some significant challenges duringthe execution of the FPSO design, engineering, and construction. The key tosuccessfully resolving these challenges was the team's ability to stay true tothe execution strategy as well as develop a response plan to meet thechallenges and implement it successfully and safely.
The Jubilee Field was discovered in June 2007 in the Gulf of Guinea, approximately 60 km offshore Western Ghana. It is a very large, light, sweetoil accumulation in 1200–1500m of water. The Jubilee Partners, along with GhanaNational Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) decided in January 2008 to develop thefield using a phased approach, after just one appraisal well. Kosmos Energy wasappointed Technical Operator to lead an Integrated Project Team (IPT) inexecuting the development project and Tullow Oil (Ghana) was appointed UnitOperator to execute in-country activities, deliver wells, and operate andmanage the field in the future. A third major partner, Anadarko, providednumerous key project personnel to the IPT. The IPT developed a plan to targetjust under 300 million barrels in Phase 1 with a 17-well subsea well system and120,000 bopd FPSO. Phase 1 was approved by Partners in August 2008, and FirstOil was achieved in November 2010, within the aggressive goal set by GNPC andthe Jubilee Partners.
