ExxonMobil has agreed to acquire a large stake in Ghana’s Jubilee oil field from its private equity owners, paying about $4 billion for one of Africa’s most potentially lucrative oil discoveries in recent years.
The deal was first mooted at the end of last year and attracted interest from many of the world’s big oil groups, but became bogged down by horse-trading with Ghana’s government.
It would generate about a four-times return for Blackstone and Warburg Pincus, which together invested $800 million in Kosmos Energy, owner of the Jubilee stake. Read the rest of this entry »
Tullow Oil Plc said Ghana will become one of the world’s top 50 oil producers, after the government approved a plan to pump crude from the Jubilee field in the second half of 2010. The deposit, to be developed with a floating production, storage and offloading vessel (FPSO) will reach a plateau rate of 120,000 barrels of oil a day, London-based Tullow Oil said today in a statement. Ghana also approved an agreement between the project partners to rearrange their holdings.
Kosmos Energy, LLC, a closely held U.S. explorer in West Africa, raised $750 million in loans to fund a project in Ghana. The financing will fully fund Kosmos’s share of Ghana’s Jubilee field phase-one development, Chief Financial Officer Greg Dunlevy said today in a statement. Kosmos Energy, a Dallas-based company, used oil-field assets as collateral to secure the loans, $550 million of which mature in December 2015, Kosmos said. 
