The Genesis Story

The initial “seed” around the need for operational infrastructure to support Ghana’s oil industry, which at the time did not yet exist but for which the prospect of a major resource discovery had quickly created such palpable excitement for the nation and its people, was sown over twenty years ago when Yvon Asafu-Adjaye, one of the co-founders of Genesis, accompanied a seasoned exploration geophysicist on a trip to inspect an inventory of drilling materials for a US wildcatter. The equipment was stored in a decrepit aircraft hangar at the Takoradi Air Force Base, and the urgent requirement for fit-for-purpose warehousing facilities became immediately apparent.

Kosmos opened a new hydrocarbon province offshore Ghana in deepwater in 2007 with the discovery of the Jubilee Field, and the first phase of development was executed to bring first production online in late 2010, three and a half years from initial discovery, a record timeframe for deepwater FPSO developments.

Every great legacy is born from a bold vision

As Ghana moved with excitement towards its new energy future as an oil producer, the vision of establishing a full service operations base to support the burgeoning upstream oil & gas industry took shape. Sketches and animations of the facility emerged from the pencil of an architect who was a close friend of the Genesis founders.

Genesis Oil and Gas Services is formed and the search begins to identify the site on which the Oilfield Services Base, our principal infrastructure asset, will be built.

A 43-acre land parcel in Takoradi, in Ghana’s Western Region, is acquired and registered, and local authority planning permission is obtained for the development of the OFS Base.

The development of the OFS Base begins with major earthworks, construction of the facility’s storm water drainage system, and the provision of fully concreted double-width transit routes and forklift work areas within the facility. Safety and environmental considerations were paramount in the design phase, in keeping with our mindset, with features such as waste water separation filters specified, together with a policy to avoid the clearing of certain old trees, to minimize the environmental impact of future operations.

In June 2015, two years after construction had first begun, the OFS Base opened its gates and the first delivery of drilling equipment arrived from our first client, Tullow Oil. This first day marked the beginning, the “genesis”, of many days to come of flawless operations without injuries or fatalities despite the risks to which our people and partners are often exposed in the oilfield.

By late 2016, Genesis began to resemble the force that it is today, with our people and infrastructure serving as the cornerstone for innovative solutions to solve our clients’ challenges. HESS, a US independent oil company that had made and appraised a number of oil & gas discoveries offshore Ghana, was in the process of taking an extended operational break and was looking to outsource the storage and maintenance of its drilling materials to a third party. As various companies entered a race to the bottom, increasingly undercutting each other in proposals to provide a storage service, we initiated detailed discussions to fully understand the customer’s objectives. And with this understanding, we put forward a solution that eliminated storage and maintenance costs completely during their drilling holiday — Genesis would execute a forward purchase of the drilling equipment at a pre-agreed price to be paid for via a credit note for storage and maintenance plus a relatively modest cash consideration, with HESS maintaining a call option on the equipment subject to its future availability. This innovative solution, which combined creative commercial structuring with a rigorous campaign to assess and maintain the integrity of the equipment, delighted the customer and established the capacity of our Tubular Services division as a trader of drilling tubulars and wellhead systems. This was a turning point in the history of oilfield services and drilling equipment management in Ghana, and remains a testament to Genesis as a pioneer in this market.

In 2017, Genesis began a new area of service delivery for its clients, providing two OSVs (Offshore Support Vessels) to support the Subsea URF installation campaign for the Eni-operated Sankofa field. Since then, GH Offshore, our marine services business, has operated numerous OSVs transporting materials and personnel and supporting oil offtake operations from Ghana’s oil fields.

Also in 2017, Genesis’ operational footprint expanded beyond Ghana and our project execution capability was successfully tested on a deepwater drilling campaign offshore Guinea. In addition to supplying OCTG for the project, we provided integrated logistics support, covering materials coordination for equipment and chemicals as well as marine logistics and vessel management, from operational bases in Takoradi (Ghana), Abidjan (Cote d’Ivoire) and Conakry (Guinea).

In the half decade leading up to 2020, Genesis strengthened its core offerings. We were deliberate about sustaining our investment in our infrastructure and our people, training several technicians, operational managers and business leaders. We established a Production Services business line focused on the supply and servicing of control and choke valves critical to the performance of production facilities such as FPSOs. We expanded our service delivery footprint for Tubular Services and Integrated Logistics into new markets across West Africa, including Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire and Equatorial Guinea, often as the only provider of drilling equipment to meet the client’s ultra tight project schedule. We became licensed as a FREE ZONE ENTERPRISE, further expanding our commercial and operational toolkit and enhancing our ability to meet our clients at their point of need.

2021 marked another important turning point in Genesis’ journey as the company was selected to supply OCTG and provide associated tubular management services for a multi-year multi-well drilling campaign on Ghana’s flagship Jubilee field. In this important mandate, Genesis delivered on its promise of partnering with the customer to achieve its goals, sourcing products from the most cost competitive production routes across our global network of manufacturers in Europe, South America and South-East Asia, and executing a mill-to-well consignment supply solution with full stock management and well coordination provided from our Tubular Services Centre in Ghana. We offered an innovative commercial solution drawing on our Free Trade Zone status to generate savings worth millions of dollars, and we improved the efficiency of our service delivery with the deployment of cloud-based digital tools under our 5G Digital platform to enhance pipe traceability throughout the product life cycle. Above all, we inspired our client, our colleagues and even our competition!