Oil and gas company Tullow Oil said on Friday that, following an issue with the turret bearing on the Jubilee field, offshore Ghana, an investigation has confirmed that the turret has been damaged.

Namely, Tullow identified the potential issue with the turret bearing in February which was followed by a change to operating procedures at the Jubilee field FPSO.

According to the oil company’s statement on Friday, technical investigation of the condition of the turret bearing on the FPSO Kwame Nkrumah has confirmed that the bearing has been damaged and is no longer able to rotate as originally designed. Oil production and gas export can continue but under revised operating and off-take procedures.

The company said that a root cause analysis was ongoing and a project team was assessing which long-term remediation option was most appropriate. Initial feasibility studies by the team have confirmed that the bearing issue can be fully resolved, Tullow stated.

Tullow explained that the FPSO Kwame Nkrumah has now been placed on “heading control” through the use of tugs which minimise vessel movement around the bearing. New operating procedures, including the use of a dynamically-positioned shuttle tanker (capacity of 250,000 barrels of oil) and a storage tanker (capacity of 1 million barrels of oil), are being implemented to assure safe production and off-take operations, the company said…

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