Overview:

• Offshore Cape Three Points (OCTP) integrated oil and gas facility
• OCTP is an offshore oil and gas exploration and production project being built roughly 60km from Ghana's west coast.
• Five fields in the the OCTP block in the Tano Basin are being developed under the project - three gas (Sankofa Main, Sankofa East, and Gye Nyame) and two oil (Sankofa East Cenomanian and Sankofa East Campanian).
• In combination the fields hold an estimated 1.5 trillion cubic feet of gas and 500 million barrels of oil.
• The project is owned by three sponsors: Eni Ghana Exploration and Production (47.22%), Vitol Upstream Ghana (37.78%), and Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (15%).
• A multi-sourced $1.65 billion finance package for OCTP, which includes facilities provided by International Finance Corporation, United Kingdom Export Finance (UKEF), HSBC, Société Générale, ING, Standard Chartered Bank, Bank of China, Natixis, Mizuho and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, was signed on December 14, 2016 and closed on March 9, 2017.
• UKEF's $400 million loan to the project is the first it has provided directly towards a development in Africa. 
• The World Bank (through the IBRD and the IDA) provided $700 million in backstop guarantees to the project, the largest assurance the lender has given in its history.
• The project is Ghana's first large gas development and, once operational, is expected to provide enough gas to power the country's thermal power stations until 2036.
• OCTP is scheduled to begin producing oil in 2017 and gas in 2018. 

Ben Naylor - Regional editor