Tullow strikes more oil in northern Kenya

PHOTO | FILE Tullow Oil engineers work at the oil rig at Ngamia One Well in Turkana County in 2012. Tullow Oil has announced new oil discoveries at Amosing-1 and Ewoi-1 wells in Turkana, increasing the estimate of discovered resources in the basin to more than 600 million barrels.  NATION MEDIA GROUP

In Summary

• Tullow said the overall potential for the basin, which would be fully assessed over the next two years, is in excess of one billion barrels of oil.

By OTIATO GUGUYU
More by this Author

Tullow Oil has announced new oil discoveries at Amosing-1 and Ewoi-1 wells in Turkana, increasing the estimate of discovered resources in the basin to more than 600 million barrels.
Tullow said the overall potential for the basin, which would be fully assessed over the next two years, is in excess of one billion barrels of oil.

The two discoveries in northern Kenya were made public Thursday in a press statement by the company.

In November last year, Ekales-1 and Agete-1 discoveries were made in the same area where sampled moveable oil with an estimated 100 metres of net oil pay in good quality sandstone reservoirs were confirmed.

(Read: Tullow announces fifth oil find in Kenya)

DEVELOPMENT AND PIPELINE OPTIONS
Tullow said it had agreed with the Kenyan government to commence development studies and export pipeline options. The government and partners ambitiously hope to reach project sanction in the period 2015/16.

"Given the significant volumes discovered and the extensive exploration and appraisal programme planned to fully assess the upside potential of the basin, Tullow and partners have agreed with the government of Kenya to commence development studies," the company said.

There have been a number of positive announcements from the governments of Uganda and Kenya regarding joint initiatives for a crude oil pipeline to the Indian Ocean.

Kenya also intends to build a pipeline linking Lamu port to Juba in South Sudan through the ambitious Lamu Port South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport (Lapsset) corridor project, which may be affected if the ongoing strife in South Sudan persists.

“We continue to advance a pipeline of high quality development projects in West and East Africa. We made good progress across the business over the past year despite facing challenges within the oil and gas sector,” Aidan Heavey, the chief executive officer, said.

The company intends to intensify exploration, appraisal and testing activities in three of the ten frontier basins with some 20 exploration and appraisal wells and multiple flow tests planned over the coming 18 months in Kenya and Ethiopia.

“2014 is full of opportunities for our business and the Board is confident that Tullow will have another strong and successful year.” Mr Heavey said.

The multinational company which is now operating a cash flow of up to USD 1.9 billion seeks to expand its global exploration portfolio and will drill over 40 wells in the next 18 months in a wide-ranging campaign. It expects to deliver an excess of 200 million barrels of oil to surpass its 2014 resource addition targets.