South Lokichar Basin

The basin is filled by a sequence of Oligocene (possibly as old as Eocene) to Miocene sedimentary rocks. There is one major interval of volcanic rocks near the top of the sequence called the Auwerwer basalts, dated using K–Ar dating as middle to late Miocene in age (12.5–10.7 Ma).^[2]

Exploration in the basin began with the Loperot-1 well drilled by Royal Dutch Shell in 1992. This found some oil in thin sands, but proved the presence of a good quality and mature source rock and good quality reservoir sands. This phase of exploration ended as the company assessed the results as non-commercial. In 2008 Africa Oil Corp acquired a PSA for license 10BB over the basin.^[4] In 2010 they farmed out part of their interest to Tullow, who became the operator. In 2012 drilling began with Ngamia-1, which was a major discovery. Subsequently, another eight discoveries have been made, all, like Ngamia, close to the basin bounding fault. There are now sufficient discovered resources for a commercial development.^[1] The proposed export route for the oil is the Kenya Crude Oil Pipeline.^[5]