Jubilee
The flagship, produced through FPSO Kwame Nkrumah. In 2016 a fault in the vessel's turret mooring forced a long shutdown and a costly fix. Output peaked in the late 2010s, then fell for six years before new wells turned it round in 2026.
Ghana-Net.com · Western Region · Offshore Cape Three Points · 2007 to today
In June 2007, the year Ghana turned fifty, oil was found in deep water off Cape Three Points. They named the field Jubilee. The president of the day promised that oil would make Ghana fly. Sixteen years of production and around twelve billion dollars later, Ghana had gone through two IMF bailouts and a debt default. This is the story of Ghana's oil: what it paid for, what it did not, and who along the Western coast is still waiting for their share.
Ghana did not stumble on oil in 2007. Oil seeps were known in the far west, around the Tano basin near the border with Côte d'Ivoire, and the first exploration wells in the Gold Coast were drilled there in the 1890s. They found traces, not a trade.
In June 2007 two relatively small companies, the American Kosmos Energy and the Anglo-Irish Tullow Oil, announced a major discovery in the West Cape Three Points and Deep Water Tano blocks, some 60 kilometres off the coast of the Western Region, in water more than a kilometre deep. Because 2007 was the fiftieth year of independence, the field was named Jubilee.
President John Kufuor greeted it as the beginning of a new age: Ghana, he said, was doing well without oil, and with oil it would fly. The phrase followed Ghana for years, usually quoted back with irony.
First oil flowed in late November 2010, onto a converted tanker moored over the field: the floating production, storage and offloading vessel FPSO Kwame Nkrumah. On 15 December 2010 President John Atta Mills formally opened the valve. Our own archive of Mills is on the Atta Mills audio and video page.
Speed: three and a half years from discovery to first oil was fast for a deepwater field. The laws to manage the money were still being written when the oil began to flow.
The flagship, produced through FPSO Kwame Nkrumah. In 2016 a fault in the vessel's turret mooring forced a long shutdown and a costly fix. Output peaked in the late 2010s, then fell for six years before new wells turned it round in 2026.
West of Jubilee, first oil in August 2016 through FPSO Prof. John Evans Atta Mills. It was nearly stopped by a border dispute with Côte d'Ivoire (see below). It has produced less than hoped.
Operated by Italy's Eni, oil from 2017 and gas from 2018 through FPSO John Agyekum Kufuor. Its gas is piped ashore and matters as much for Ghana's power stations as its oil does for the budget.
The Ivorian border case: Côte d'Ivoire claimed that part of the sea where TEN lies was theirs. In 2015 the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea froze new drilling in the disputed zone; on 23 September 2017 its Special Chamber drew the maritime border broadly along Ghana's line and rejected Côte d'Ivoire's claims. It is one of the few times an African boundary dispute over oil has been settled in court rather than by force. See also Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire.
Every Ghanaian knew the story next door: decades of oil in the Niger Delta, and pollution, militias and poverty to show for it. Ghana's answer was the Petroleum Revenue Management Act of 2011 (Act 815), one of the most carefully designed oil laws in Africa on paper.
The watchdog weakened: PIAC's reports have been blunt for fourteen years, exposing revenue paid into the wrong accounts and money that never reached the funds. In 2025 an amendment to the law ended PIAC's guaranteed funding from oil revenue. The body that watches the government now depends on the government to pay for it.
By PIAC's count, Ghana's petroleum revenue from 2011 to 2025 came to about US$12 billion. Spread over fifteen years and a population of over thirty million, that is real money but not transforming money: well under the value of Ghana's gold exports and cocoa over the same period.
Oil did not stop Ghana from borrowing too much. Governments of both parties borrowed against expected oil income as well as spending it. Ghana went back to the IMF in 2015. In December 2022, with inflation above 50 per cent and the cedi collapsing, it stopped paying most of its external debt and in 2023 entered another IMF programme, its seventeenth since independence.
Oil also did not create many jobs. A deepwater field is run from a ship by a small crew of specialists, many of them foreign, with supplies flown and shipped from Takoradi. Local-content rules have pushed more contracts to Ghanaian firms, but the thousands of jobs people expected in 2007 never came.
The honest comparison: Ghana avoided the worst of the "resource curse": no oil war, no delta insurgency, and more transparency than most oil states. But it also did not do what Norway or Botswana did with their resources. The Heritage Fund for future generations remains small, and most of the money was spent as it arrived.
Sekondi-Takoradi became the oil capital overnight. Rents rose, new hotels went up, and for a few years the twin cities called themselves "Oil City". For many longtime residents it mostly meant higher prices.
Along the coast from Shama to Half Assini, fishing communities complain of safety zones around the production vessels they may not enter, lights at night that they say draw fish away, and seasons of seaweed they blame on the industry (a link scientists have not proven). Western Region chiefs and groups have long demanded a fixed share of oil revenue for the region the oil comes from, as some other oil countries grant. They have not got it.
The harbour, the supply bases and the oil money, good and bad.
Including Cape Three Points, the headland that gave the oil block its name.
The Brandenburg fort on the same coast, from Europe's first rush for this shore.
The coast the oil workers fly over, from Busua to Nzulezo.
By 2025 Jubilee was an ageing field. Production had fallen year after year, falling to about 59,000 barrels a day at the end of 2025, and in the first half of 2025 Ghana's oil revenue dropped by more than half on lower output and prices. No new petroleum agreements had been signed for years.
What it means: the extension buys Ghana another decade and a half of oil income and a bigger state share later. It does not answer the old question: will the next twelve billion be spent any better than the first?
No. The fields lie around 60 kilometres offshore, well beyond the horizon, and the production vessels are closed industrial sites with safety zones around them. What you can see is the oil economy on land.
Ghana handled oil better than most countries that find it. There was no war over it, a court settled the border, the money is counted in public, and a citizens' committee has spent fourteen years asking awkward questions. That deserves credit.
But oil did not make Ghana fly. It became one more source of income for governments that spent faster than they earned, and it did not stop the debt crisis of 2022. The communities of the Western coast see the ships and not the money. The savings fund for future generations is modest. With the licences now running to 2040, Ghana has a second chance. Whether it uses it better depends less on the oil than on the people spending it.
Verified: 29 September 2026. The 2007 discovery, first oil in late 2010 and the fields' start dates follow operator and press records; the ITLOS judgment of 23 September 2017 follows the tribunal's record. Cumulative revenue of about US$12 billion (2011–2025) and the Big Push allocation follow PIAC's 2025 annual report; the 2025 revenue fall follows PIAC's 2025 semi-annual report. The licence extensions to 2040 and the 2026 production figures follow Kosmos Energy and Ghanaian press reports of February and July 2026. The fishing communities' complaints are their own accounts and are presented as such. Corrections welcome and will be published in full.