African Energy Chamber: Ghana ranks fifth in terms of offshore oil rig demand

According to the African Energy Chamber’s 2024 State of African Energy, Ghana is placed fifth in Africa with the biggest offshore oil rig demand.

The country surpassed Libya, which is now ranked eighth on the continent.

Oil reserves, contingent resources, and exploration drive offshore rig demand. It is a massive building on or in the sea that contains facilities for drilling wells, extracting and processing oil and natural gas.

Ghana’s offshore rig demand has surpassed that of 2022, according to the African Energy Chamber. This demonstrates that the country has large oil and natural gas reserves.

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Ghana, Namibia, South Africa, Equatorial Guinea, and Mozambique round out the top five countries with the greatest percentage of contingent resources rig demand, according to the research. This means that rig demand in this sector is subject to anticipated investment choices.

“Most other producing countries show very little dependence on upcoming project sanctions to drive their rig demand” , according to the report.

Ghana now has around 660 million barrels of proven oil reserves. It generates around 177,000 barrels of oil per day.

When cumulative offshore rig demand from 2020 to 2030 is broken down per country, Egypt is the most active, with around 123 rig years, followed by Angola and Nigeria.

“The breakdown of the top 20 countries by rig demand with associated split on what resource class is supporting the rig demand suggests majority of the rig demand is robust with only about 32% related to contingent resources and exploration” , said the report’s authors.

Meanwhile, the number of wells drilled on the African continent is expected to climb by 6% year on year to 967 in 2023.

An estimated 810 wells were drilled in 2020, of which 159 (or 20%) were drilled offshore and around 651 (or 80%) onshore. Since then, in the post-pandemic era, the annual number of wells drilled has grown.

In 2021, there were more than 820 wells drilled overall, with 80% of those wells located onshore and 20% offshore. Drilling levels reached a total of 910 wells in 2022, up 11% from the previous year.

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