Tullow Oil Plc has reportedly presented “the programme – the roadmap for implementing project oil Kenya” to the Kenyan government after the government threatened to revoke its license if the programme was not submitted by October 31st 2020.
The government threat was due to frustrations over delays with Tullow failing to present a comprehensive plan for its activities in the East African country. This comes just two months after the Kenyan government renewed the British firm’s license for 15 months.
The company is said to have submitted the programme to the Petroleum Cabinet Secretary for review and probable approval, two weeks ago.
The programme was one of the conditions of the license renewal as the government wants to be clear on the financial status of Tullow and know if it still can execute the project. The government also asked for a clear budgetary breakdown on how the operator of the project, Tullow, and its joint partners – African Oil and Total, plans to mobilise financing for the project.
The “Project Oil Kenya” is to require about $3 billion to finance the development of its Turkana petroleum deposits with $1.8 billion required for upstream projects and $1.2 billion for the Lokichar-Lamu crude oil pipeline (LLCOP).
If the programme is approved, the second condition for the licence renewal is that the company submits a comprehensive Field Development Plan (FDP) by the first quarter of 2022 and the Final Investment Decision (FID) by the end of 2022, as Kenya intends to start commercial production of crude in 2024.
