West African country Ghana, a relative newcomer to the oil industry, plans to award as many as nine offshore blocks off its west coast in 2018 and 2019, Ghana’s energy ministry said on Thursday. Ghana—where commercial crude oil production started in 2010—plans to award six of those new offshore blocks in 2018 and the other three next year, in a mix of competitive tenders and direct negotiations, the energy ministry said in a statement, as carried by Reuters. Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, the state-run company, will obtain one of the blocks that it will explore with a strategic partner, according to the ministry. The government has picked a committee that will oversee the awarding of the oil blocks to domestic and international oil companies. Ghana’s current crude oil production is around 180,000 bpd, mostly pumped from three offshore fields, including the world-class Jubilee oil field operated by UK-listed Tullow […]