Need handbrakes pulled on the oil news flows. Need more discount windows.

#greed

Kenya should use this oil to generate power at the cheapest rates in africa if not the world.

Yaani you mean hii ndio asante? Eh?

Somalia lays claim to Kenya’s oil blocks

http://www.thepeople.co....m-to-kenyas-oil-blocks/

By Gitahi Ngunyi

The future of Kenya’s oil exploration activities at the Coast, in what is technically referred to as the Lamu Basin, hangs in the balance following Somalia’s move to put a claim on the area where exploration blocks fall. On Thursday, the Somalia cabinet passed a resolution to extend its sea boundaries by 200 nautical miles in a right angle line to its boundary with Kenya.

This means that Somalia will increase its sea border by 26,000 square nautical miles or 38,000 square kilometres while Kenya will lose a similar area of its sea territory. If Somalia implements its Cabinet resolution, it will take an area where six downstream oil and gas exploration blocks which Kenya says belong to her territory are located.
The 38,000 square kilometres in question covers exploration block L23 and L24, awarded last year to ENI Spa. It also covers significant portion of L5 operated by American exploration firm Anadarko, and L13 operated by Zarara, a subsidiary of Midway Resources, a company registered in Cayman Islands and which also has operations in Comoros, Mauritius and Nigeria.

The bulk of block of L21 also operated by ENI Spa, L22 operated Total, L25 which is under negotiation and L26 operated by Lamu Exploration also fall in the territory now claimed by Somalia. The move is likely to scare off oil and gas exploration companies that have signed production sharing contracts (PSC) with the Kenya government for the six blocks.

Five of the six blocks have been awarded to various exploration companies while one is still under negotiation. Total was awarded L22 which lies off the Lamu Coast while ENI Spa was awarded L21, L23 and L24. American oil firm Anadarko operates L5 block. The Lamu Basin block has attracted the attention of the multinational oil companies following discoveries of huge natural gas deposits in the Indian Oceans coasts of Mozambique and Tanzania.

And the prospects for both oil and gas in the same coast line in Kenya have also been high. The company behind the discoveries in the two countries Anadarko last December reported that which encountered non-commercial oil shows in block L7. Before Anadarko, in September last year, Apache another American firm encountered 53metre net gas pay, in block L8 in what became the first hydrocarbon discovery at the Kenyan coastline.

The Somalia government move is likely to heighten border tensions between the two countries that kicked off in 2009 following the renewed interests in East African Coast by multinational oil companies. The dispute between the two countries has been ongoing since 2009 but has been exacerbated by discovery of oil in Northern Kenya by British owned firm Tullow Oil.

In 2009, Kenya and Somalia officials signed an agreement that allowed either of the countries to have activities in the disputed area as they awaited the demarcation of the boundaries. The agreement was hastily negotiated following Somalia’s objection to Kenya’s plan to auction the exploration rights of the blocks in question. But the agreement sparked an outrage in Somalia with civil society and Somali in diaspora accusing Kenya of attempting to take over area belonging to Somalia.

In the face of public anger over the agreement, signed by then Kenya foreign affairs minister Moses Wetangula and Somali Transitional Federal Government minister for national planning and international cooperation Abdirahman Warsame, the Somali parliament voted overwhelmingly to reject the agreement a few months after it had been signed.
At the heart of the dispute between the two countries is the assertion by Kenya that the border line between the two countries at sea is demarcated by a line that moves east from where the two countries meet on land. On the other hand, Somalia argues that the borderline is demarcated diagonally at the right angle to its land borderline with Kenya at the coast.