The much anticipated Floating Production Storage Offloading, (FPSO) Kwame Nkrumah, a key facility in the entire crude oil production, arrived at the Jubilee Field in Takoradi in the Western Region Monday morning.

The vessel would be used to collect and process crude oil in commercial quantity from the Jubilee field when actual production begins later this year. It was named after Ghana’s founding President Kwame Nkrumah at a ceremony in Singapore by the First Lady, Ernestina Naadu Mills. After its commission, the vessel set off on May 21 from the Jurong Shipyard in Singapore where it was built.

Gayheart Edem Mensah of Tullow Oil’s communications directorate described the spectacle of the vessel the size of about three football fields put together, as awesome.

“The FPSO is an awesome facility, awesome in terms of its size, awesome in terms of various models that you have on the FPSO, it also has the capacity to generate energy for its work,” he explained to Joy News’ Bernard Saibu.

He said the arrival of the vessel to be stationed at the Jubilee Field is an indication that “the Jubilee partners are on course to produce oil by Quarter four of this year.”

Construction of the FPSO began in 2008 and involved the conversion of an existing tanker by MODEC, a leading international company in the FPSO industry. The vessel is estimated to cost 875 million dollars. It is measuring 330 metres long and 65 metres wide, and can process 120,000 barrels of oil a day with a storage capacity of 1.6 million barrels.

It has 17 modules weighing more than 12,500 tons installed on the vessel, including a water treatment plant, crude separation plant, chemical injection plant, gas processing and injection plant, the turret, electricity generation plant, as well as a 120-room accommodation among others.