Tullow reports finding more oil in Lokichar, Turkana

Lokichar trading centre in Turkana. PHOTO | JARED NYATAYA | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • On Wednesday, Tullow Oil announced it had found oil in the Emekuya-1 well in the basin after a similar discovery early in the year in two other wells drilled last year.
  • The company said it had drilled through 75 vertical metres of rock that holds oil.

More oil has been discovered in South Lokichar basin in Turkana, boosting efforts to spread exploration of the commodity.

Tullow Oil on Wednesday announced that it had found oil in the Emekuya-1 well in the basin after a similar discovery early in the year in two other wells drilled last year.

The firm said it had drilled through 75 vertical metres of rock that holds oil.

“Downhole pressure measurements and fluid samples suggest that the main oil reservoir is on the same static pressure gradient as the Etom-2 well which demonstrates that a major part of the Greater Etom structure is oil-filled,” said the company.

MORE WELLS

Tullow’s Country Manager Martin Mbogo said the discovery had boosted their efforts to explore for more oil in the basin.

“This is a good result. The well was drilled close to the Etom-2 well which was a very successful well drilled in late 2016.

"Finding more oil here in the northern part of South Lokichar basin is good news and will add more oil to the overall resources that we have in the basin.

"We found oil at Etom-2 and at Erut (in early 2017) and we are now trying to find out if there’s more oil in between these two oil discoveries,” he said, adding that they would drill more wells in the area in order to ascertain the amount of oil that could be harvested from the basin.

PRODUCTION AGREEMENT

“This is a very good start to this process. It shows us that the Greater Etom area (the part of the basin that goes beyond just the Etom discovery itself) does indeed have oil. We’ll have to drill more appraisal wells in the area to find out how much oil there is,” he added.

Exploration Director Angus McCoss said company is now looking forward to the remainder of the Kenya exploration and “appraisal campaign in support of the ongoing work to prepare this important asset for full field development.”

The new discovery comes two months after Tullow signed a production agreement with the government which paved the way for the transportation of the first consignment of crude oil from Turkana fields to Mombasa for export.