Kenya expects to launch an oil and gas exploration round for 10 blocks in September, Opiyo Wandayi, the Energy and Petroleum Cabinet Secretary of the East African country, has said.
“This presents a unique opportunity for investors to explore Kenya’s hydrocarbon potential through a transparent and merit-based process,” Wandayi was quoted as saying by local outlet The Star.
The Kenyan government has renewed its efforts to launch an oil and gas industry and is offering tax incentives, among other incentives, the cabinet secretary said at the East African Petroleum Conference and Exhibition 2025 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Kenya is also investing in infrastructure to support oil and gas exploration and development, the official noted.
The East African country has oil and gas resources, but development has stalled after UK-listed Tullow Oil failed to secure investor partners for a major oil project that has been years in the making.
Tullow Oil and its minority partners sought to develop the South Lokichar project for years. However, French supermajor TotalEnergies and London-listed Africa Oil decided two years ago to withdraw from the project in Kenya, leaving Tullow Oil the sole owner of the blocks and further complicating Kenya’s oil dream.
Plans have been made for the development of the oil fields discovered in the South–Lokichar Basin in Kenya’s north. The partners had sought to secure financing for a pipeline to ship the crude out of the landlocked northern region.
However, Tullow Oil has failed to secure investors to back the Lokichar Basin development and the commercialization of the crude, further delaying Kenya’s dream to become a petroleum-exporting nation.
The government earlier this month restructured its petroleum exploration blocks to align with global best practices and its legal frameworks, which enabled Kenya to identify ten highly prospective blocks, selected based on geological and scientific data.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
