Kenya Gas Explorer Starts Drilling
Zarara Oil and Gas, a Mauritius-registered, Africa-focused exploration company has started drilling for natural gas in Kenya, six months after it secured government approvals for the work.
Drilling was scheduled to have begun December 2017 after the Kenyan government, keen to realise its gas potential and to diversify its available feedstock for power generation. In October 2017, Zarara was set a strict end-2017 deadline to have its first well spudded on Pate Island, offshore Lamu on the northern stretch of Kenya's coast, by year-end.
The target was missed as civil engineering works in preparation for the drilling campaign were only completed in December 2017, said Zarara in a statement April 26.
Mark Bristow, chairman of Midway Resources International (MRI) which owns Zarara, sa
id of the start-up of drilling: "We believe this brings us a step closer in being able to partner with Kenya through the ministry of petroleum and mining in delivering a natural gas fired-electricity generation facility initiative to support Kenya's ongoing development as a leading African economy."
Shell together with BP discovered gas on the island in 1970 but the well, Pate-1, was sealed and abandoned due to technical challenges, and a lack of market for the resource at that time. Lamu is situated at the end of a strategic corridor through which Kenya hopes to develop transport, crude oil export, and oil import links with its neighbours Ethiopia and South Sudan, as well as possibly airports.
But the area since 2010 is also known for sporadic incursions by the Islamist militant group al Shabaab from neighbouring Somalia. Pate Island is some 60km south of Kenya's border with lawless Somalia.
Zarara, according to the statement, has already contracted two rigs for the drilling of two wells Pate-2 and Pate-3 to reach depths of 4,500 metres in about 120 days. It said the ongoing drilling comes after
a four-year evaluation programme that involved acquisition, processing and interpretation of extensive block-wide gravity-magnetics data, plus some 400 line-kms of 2D seismic over the original Pate-1 find.
Pate-3 is to be drilled directionally from the same wellsite as the original discovery to see if there are enough resources for a phase one power generation and/or a small-scale LNG investment, said Zarara.
MRI chief executive, Peter Worthington said: "Notwithstanding difficult industry and capital market conditions, and five years of extreme dedication by our team, we are all proud of where we find ourselves today. The months ahead will be both exciting and testing and we plan to keep our Kenyan stakeholders and supporters fully engaged on this journey. Success will deliver to Kenya a material enhancement of its energy and electricity solutions as well as adding emphasis to local economic development in a strategic development node of Kenya."
