Kenya To Export Its First Ever Batch Of Crude

Kenya has just completed a deal to export 200,000 barrels of crude oil, in its first-ever export of the commodity, the African country’s President Uhuru Kenyatta said.

“We are now an oil exporter. Our first deal was concluded this afternoon with 200,000 barrels at a decent price of US$12 million,” President Uhuru Kenyatta said on Thursday.

“So I think we have begun our journey and it is up to us to ensure that those resources are also put to the best use to develop our country to make it both prosperous and to ensure we eliminate poverty in Kenya,” Kenyatta added.

Commercial quantities of crude oil in Kenya were discovered in 2012 in the South Lokichar Basin. Africa-focused Tullow Oil, which discovered the resources, has continued its exploration and appraisal drilling campaigns in Kenya.

A deal between Tullow Oil and local Kenyan authorities that would allow the oil company to pump water for the wells and that would be crucial to the FID for Kenya’s first and currently only oil project could be pushed back to the third quarter, Martin Mbogo, Managing Director at Tullow Oil Kenya, said in February this year.

In June this year, Kenya’s government signed a heads of agreement with France’s major Total, Tullow Oil, and Africa Oil to develop an oil processing facility with capacity of 60,000 bpd-80,000 bpd, as part of the East African country’s plan to begin commercial oil production within a few years.

In the release of its first-half results last week, Tullow Oil had said that it expected the first export cargo of oil of the Early Oil Pilot Scheme (EOPS) to be sold and lifted in the third quarter of 2019.

Regarding the full field development, Tullow Oil said that Kenya’s government has gazetted the land required for the upstream development in Turkana, and pipeline land surveys by the National Lands Commission began in the first week of July.

“An Upstream Water Framework agreement has been drafted by Tullow and submitted to the Government of Kenya for their review. Given this significant progress, the FID of the Development is now targeted for the second half of 2020,” the oil company said last week.  

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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