Tullow Oil, the British exploration company, has discovered another well in Turkana County. The new well has been promptly named Erut-1. The company has not yet disclosed the amount of barrels struck. With this new discovery, Tullow Oil maintains that there is a possibility of over one billion barrels of recoverable reserves in Turkana County.

Before this latest discovery, the Turkana oil reserves stood at 750 million barrels. This is considered commercially viable at the current market price of $52 per barrel. According to Tullow Oil, the overall oil column for the Erut-1 field is considered to be roughly 100 metres to 125 metres.

“This discovery is very significant and shows us that oil has migrated to the very northern part of the South Lokichar basin “the Northern Triangle” which has been underexplored thus far.”

-statement from Tullow Oil

Tullow Oil first discovered oil in Kenya back in 2012 through the Ngamia-1 well. This was followed by discovery of more of these well reserves over the years. It was not until barely last month that Tullow Oil in partnership with Africa Oil, a Canadian exploration company, restarted drilling in the northern County of Kenya in a quest to find more of this black gold.

It is expected that Tullow Oil will begin production of crude oil thus setting Kenya among the exporters of this sought after jewel by June this year. Tullow Oil will initially produce 2,000 barrels per day which will be transported by road from Turkana to Eldoret. From here, the commodity will be ferried by train to its destination at the port of Mombasa.

Tullow operates oil block 13T, in which Erut-1 well is located, and block 10BB with a 50 percent shareholding together with partners Africa Oil and Maersk Oil who each hold 25 percent. The next agenda for the firm is to drill a pair of appraisal wells, namely Amosing-6 and Ngamia-10.