Tullow suspends oil search at Ngamia 1

The second stage of oil search at the Ngamia-1 well in Turkana will remain suspended for an unknown period of time, as Tullow oil waits for its equipment to arrive. Tullow Oil Kenya operations manager Hans Meijers said he is not sure when the appraisal works at the site may start. “I do not know when we will start the appraisal, but we are moving on with exploration in other drilling sites which might give us a better idea on what to expect in the block we have already found high prospects of presence of oil,” said  Meijers.

A Kenya Revenue Authority official said they have been fast tracking processes involved for clearance of Tullow's appraisal stage equipment which have been offloading at the port for the last three months. The appraisal works were expected to start a couple of months ago. Meijar said Tullow oil will start drilling exploratory oil well at its Twiga-1 site before the end of this year based on the 500 kilometres of 2D seismic data map showing 3 prospects and 3 leads in Block 13T. “There is no transport infrastructure in this area which makes it very difficult to operate, and we have to make roads for the 150 lorry loads of equipment haul,” Said Meijars.

Initially Tullow was scheduled to drill its second well at Paipai site in block 10A before a change of mind midstream to move to Twiga-1 in block 13T adjacent to block 10BB where Ngamia-1 well is located. The Ngamia-1 exploration yielded 140 meters of net oil pay in multiple reservoir zones, before drilling was stopped at just over 2000 metres of the planned 2700 after encountering barren hard rocks.

The oil has similar properties to the light waxy crude discovered in Uganda by Tullow Oil. Meijers said aerial exploration in block 12B in the Lake Victoria Basin will begin in August. Tullow oil jointly holds the operating license for the block with Swala Energy, a company registered in British Virgin Islands one and a half year ago.