Post date: Mar 26, 2012 4:54:51 PM
TURKANA, KENYA (REUTERS) -Kenya said on Monday (March 26) that it had made an oil discovery in the country's north, where British Tullow Oil Plc has been conducting exploratory drilling.
"This weekend, Tullow oil which has been prospecting for oil in block 10BB in Turkana County discovered oil in Ngamia-1 well at depths of between 846 and 1,041 meters," the country's President Mwai Kibaki said in a statement read live on television.
Kenya announces its first oil discovery, saying it was found in the northern part of the country where British Tullow Oil Plc has been conducting exploratory drilling.
Kenya and its neighbours in east Africa have become an international hot spot for oil and gas exploration after commercial oil deposits were found in Uganda and natural gas in Tanzania and Mozambique.
Tullow has confirmed 1.1 billion barrels of oil in Uganda and believes there are 1.4 billion left to find.
Tullow discovered oil in Uganda to the west of the country, along the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, in 2006.
Tullow said in a statement issued in London it had been drilling the Ngamia-1 well on block 10BB, in the Lokichar basin which is part of the East African Rift System in Turkana County.
Shares in the company were up 2.5 percent after it said it had found oil in Kenya.
Tullow's Vice President for Africa Business, Tim O'hanlon told journalists at a news conference in the capital Nairobi that the company was waiting for more details on the oil find.
"The well we are drilling is not finished yet, please God we will find more oil at deeper levels, we have some idea of the prospect structure laterally, so we are waiting for our first estimation reserves for this particular pool within the next few months," he said.
Kenya plans to include a tax break for companies exploring for oil and gas in a new law, a move that is expected to provide relief to explorers in the region's biggest economy, Ministry of Energy officials said.
But Minister for Energy, Kiraitu Murungi said policies will be implemented to ensure that the people who live in Turkana --one of Kenya's poorest regions will benefit from any oil wealth and that the find would not come as a source of conflict as seen in other parts of the continent.
"We are revising our petroleum exploration act to bring it to line with the new constitution and emphasis on the new constitution is really sharing of the new resource so that the host community is not marginalized," said Murungi.
Some of the firms operating in Kenya include France's Total, Canada's National Oil Company of Kenya, British-based firm Tullow Oil Plc and Texas-based Anadarko.
The Turkana are traditionally pastoralists whose most prized possession is their livestock, but successive droughts have left many heavily dependant on food aid.
Cattle rustling and clashes over grazing land and water are relatively common among pastoralist communities in the region.
News of the oil find was the number one trending topic on the social media network, Twitter, with some posting comments about how oil wealth would impact the country, while others joked that they would be moving to the area to take advantage of potential business opportunities.