Kenya does not have sufficient crude oil deposits to warrant a refinery.
Tullow’s oil production has been estimated to be about 100,000 barrels a day, a figure below the 400,000 barrels a day refinery capacity needed for the project to be viable.
Tullow’s Lokichar basin is estimated to contain 560 million barrels of oil.
The crude oil in Mombasa is no longer in operation as it proved to be costly to maintain.
Tullow Oil plans to start small scale oil exports from Kenya before end of the first half of 2019. At the moment, the company transports 600 oil barrels daily to Mombasa by road.
Tullow expects that figure to triple to 2,000 oil barrels per day by April 2019. More than 60,000 oil barrels are stored in the Mombasa oil refinery waiting the inaugural shipping in early 2019.
Full scale commercial production of oil is expected to start in 2022. The much awaited commercial production is expected to provide a boost to Kenya’s national income and lead to further diversification of the Kenyan economy.
RELATED;
