Kenya is set to start an early oil project at the beginning of June six years after crude oil was discovered in country’s northern county of Turkana by Tullow Oil Plc. According to Kenya’s Principal Secretary of Petroleum, the government has been negotiating with potential investors in a pipeline set to link the oil fields to a Lamu port on the Indian Ocean.
The conduit will be built to ship crude finds estimated at 1 billion barrels that the East African nation plans to start producing commercially in 2021and the project is expected to cost $1.1 billion. The initial plan is to introduce oil buyers to the Kenyan oil by selling it $2 below the current market price to be adjusted accordingly in due time.
As from the beginning of June Kenya has projected a ramp up in the number of barrels produced daily from a current 500 to 2000 barrels per day. About 80,000 barrels of oil has been stored at Lokichar in Turkana, where tanks with the capacity to hold 36,000 barrels of crude are situated.
Kenya’s exportation of oil is set to boost the country’s economy as well as bolster infrastructure and development in the northern corridor.
