13-10-09 The China National Offshore Oil Corporation, CNOOC, is to begin drilling for oil in Block 9 near Isiolo in northern Kenya by the end of this month, Energy Minister Kiraitu Murungi has said. Plans to search to a depth of 5 km at the Bogal 1-1 exploration well in the Anza basin would make it Kenya's deepest drilling programme ever, Murungi told a UN conference in Nairobi.
"With discoveries in Sudan, Uganda and Tanzania, we believe Kenya is now standing at the door," said Murungi. "It's only a matter of time."

Of the 31 exploration wells drilled in Kenya, 19 have shown traces of hydrocarbons, though none are in commercial production. The minister said the country had signed 17 production-sharing agreements over the past 18 months, and there were 14 blocks available for oil and gas exploration.
Mwendia Nyaga, the managing director of the state-run National Oil Corporation of Kenya, said that CNOOC would probably spend up to $ 20 mm (R 149 mm) to drill at the onshore Bogal 1-1 well, beginningabout October 28 and running for six months. Over the past three years, the company had invested about $ 15 mm to gather data and analyse it, he said.

CNOOC had found the right structures for hydrocarbons in its seismic data and other existing data. The Chinese company also had a second exploration licence for the L2 Block in the Lamu basin, an inland area in the country's east, Nyaga said.
In another planned investment in the industry, Origin Energy, an Australian company, aimed to start gathering 3D seismic data for an exploratory study over the in November at the offshore L8 Block in the Indian Ocean near Malindi, Nyaga said.