Untapped Potential In Kenya's Oil and Gas Basin

The Kenyan government has uncovered that it has only explored about 12 percent – 10,000 square kilometers – of its 85,000 square kilometers of oil and gas basin found in the country.

This leaves a great potential for growth specifically if the reserves are tapped to drive economic activities.

Plans to drill 200 wells over the next two years are underway, says the Ministry of Petroleum and Mining.

The Ministry notes that it wants to exploit the opportunities lying in the oil and gas sector as Kenya looks to commercialize production of petroleum in 2021 with export plans scheduled for the year 2023.

According to Andrew Kamau, the Petroleum Principal Secretary, Kenya is looking to develop the South Lokichar basin in an approach geared toward major production.

“We are in the first phase where we have done the economic benefit by looking at the recoverable reserves. The next steps would be to build the pipeline and facilities that will take the oil down to Lamu for export,” Kamau noted in a statement.

Drilling and production of the commercial reserves discovered in 2012 by Tullow Oil and Africa Oil have already taken place.

More than 70,000 barrels of the resource has already been transported to Mombasa following President Uhuru Kenyatta’s flagging off its transfer in June 2018.

Tullow oil recently stated that it has started marketing the country’s low Sulphur oil ahead of the first lifting which is scheduled for mid-2019. The company says that the initial reception in the markets is positive.

Currently, almost 750 million barrels of the resource viable for commercialization has been explored and the ongoing exploitation of reserves reveals that the capacity could potentially hit one billion barrels.

Meanwhile, the plans for the construction of a 1.1 billion US dollar (approximately 111.1 billion shillings) 856-kilometer pipeline to be used for the transport of oil from Turkana basin to Lamu depot for export are underway.