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An offshore oil drilling rig. Zarara Oil & Gas will explore for gas in blocks L4 and L13 in Lamu County. PHOTO | FILE
By BRIAN NGUGI
Oil explorer Zarara Oil & Gas has signalled it
will finally kick off drilling of an exploratory well at its offshore
oil block in Lamu after securing an extension of its licence.
On Friday the National Environment Management Authority
(Nema) invited the public to submit views for an environmental impact
assessment report of the proposed gas exploratory drilling at blocks L4
and L13 in Lamu County.
“Nema invites members of the public to submit oral
or written comments within thirty days from the date of publication of
this notice to the Director- General, Nema, to assist the Authority in
the decision-making process for this project,” said director-general
Prof Geoffrey Wahungu.
Zarara, a fully-owned subsidiary of Midway
Resources International (MRI), had said in disclosures filed with the
London Stock Exchange early last year that it had been given an 18-month
licence extension that will run to June 2017 for blocks L4 and L13.
It had earlier said it will be prospecting for
natural gas in Lamu and, if successful, seek to use the resource in
power generation.
“The extensions will enable Zarara to complete its
preparation and drilling of Pate-2 well on the natural gas discovery in
Lamu County,” the company said in January 2016.
“Zarara’s drilling strategy is to fully appraise
the Pate natural gas discovery and then, in partnership with leading
electrical power generation partners, undertake a phased development of
up to 1,000MW of electricity generation capacity nearby at Port Lamu,
the proposed southern terminal of the Lamu Port South Sudan Ethiopia
Transport (Lappset) project.”
Exploration
Nema said in the notice that in the event that
potentially commercial volumes of hydrocarbons are discovered,
additional exploration wells or appraisal wells are likely to be drilled
in the future to provide greater information on the likely nature and
scale of hydrocarbon resources.
Zarara is the main operator on the two blocks with a
75 per cent stake, while Swiss Oil Holdings controls 15 per cent with
the remaining 10 per cent being the carried interest by the Kenya
government.
Zarara is among licensed oil and gas explorers that
had been on the radar of the Energy ministry for apparently delaying
their contractual agreements.
There has been a global industry slowdown over low oil prices
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