Tullow Oil budgets $4bn for Ghana oil fields

Tullow Oil, the London-based explorer with the most licences in Africa, and its partners will invest at least $4 billion (£2.4 billion) to develop new oil fields off Ghana's Atlantic coast.

Chief operating officer Paul McDade said Tullow and its partners planned to start front-end engineering and design work on the Enyenra and Tweneboa fields development in the Deep Water Tano block in September. The company operates Ghana's largest field, Jubilee, which is expected to pump 105,000 barrels a day in October, up from about 85,000 barrels a day now.

The Enyenra and Tweneboa fields "are of similar scale to Jubilee, a little bit more complex," McDade said. "We are kind of thinking of $4 billion plus - that's our territory, but it's quite uncertain at the moment."

Its partners, including Anadarko Petroleum and Kosmos Energy, will examine a plant to produce 75,000 barrels to 125,000 barrels a day of oil from Enyenra-Tweneboa. The first oil should be pumped in early 2015.

Tullow first-half profit more than tripled to $311.3 million on revenue of $1.1 billion. The company doubled the interim dividend to 4p a share.