Tullow discovers more oil in first Kenyan well

Tullow Oil has discovered further oil in the first exploration well at one of its Kenyan projects, increasing its potential 'significantly', the group said on Tuesday.

The Ngamia-1 well, located in the Turkana Country of Kenya Block 10BB, is the oil company's first prospect to be tested as part of the project in Kenya and Ehtiopia.

Following an announcement on March 26th that said that the well had encountered in excess of 20m of net oil pay, the well was then deepened from 1,041m to 1,515m and a total pay count greater than 100m has now been discovered.

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Oil samples have shown an API (an inverse measure of the density of oil compared with water) greater than 30 degrees.

"This ongoing wildcat is an excellent start to our exploration campaign. The net pay encountered so far in Ngamia-1 is more than double that encountered in any of our East African exploration wells to date. We now look forward to the drilling and evaluation of the deeper potential of this well and the acceleration of our seismic and drilling campaigns in the region," said Exploration Director Angus McCoss.

The well will continue to be drilled to a total depth of 2,700m to explore for deeper potential.

"Many leads and prospects similar to Ngamia have been identified and following this discovery the outlook for further success has significantly improved," the statement said.

Tullow owns a 50% interest in licences in the Kenya and Ethiopia Rift Basins covering an area bigger than 100,000 square kilometres. Africa Oil owns the other half of the project.

BC