NAIROBI: Australia's Pancontinental Oil and Gas company in Kenya has reported that they discovered large natural gas reserves off the coast of Kenya in the Lamu Basin. The government said that this is the first discovery of gas in Kenya was found at a depth of 2,553 meters and the company plans to continue drilling up to a depth of 3,275 meters. With the new find, Kenya joins Tanzania and Mozambique as the latest African countries to discover the natural resource off the eastern coast of the continent. The Mbawa-1 well situated in the Indian Ocean off Lamu is operated by Apache, an independent oil and gas exploration and production company based in Houston, Texas. The announcement said 52 net meters of gas was found in the primary Cretaceous sandstone target. Pancontinental Oil & Gas and its strategic partners Apache, Origin Energy and Tullow Oil will drill the well to a planned depth of 3,275 meters. Apache is the operator of the offshore Block L8 Licence with 50 percent stake along with Origin Energy which owns 20 percent, Pancontinental 15 per cent and Tullow 15 percent. Apache has been operating the well with drillship Deepsea Metro 1 in a water depth of 860 meters. “The prospect of finding gas in the area had been high after large natural gas discoveries since late 2011 off the coasts of Mozambique and Tanzania, which have transformed East Africa into one of the world's most promising energy provinces with oil presence already found in Uganda and Turkana in Kenya,” the government said in a statement. Another statement from the Tullow Oil Exploration director Angus McCoss said: “A gas discovery on prognosis in the shallowest objective at Mbawa-1 is an encouraging start to our East African Transform Margin exploration campaign. “This is the first hydrocarbon discovery offshore Kenya. The ongoing drilling remains on course to test for any deeper oil potential within this gas prone region.”
