East Africa’s Great Rift includes four rift systems that promise to hold significant deposits of oil. Africa Oil Corporation has been exploring and drilling here, and prepared a report that includes a number of excellent maps and graphics of seismic data. I’ve selected a few to show you here, but you can see them in greater clarity and detail in the PDF report Hunting Elephants In East Africa’s Rift Basins = January 2012 PDF.
The four rift systems from different geologic time are illustrated above and below. You can click the maps to enlarge enough to read.
Tertiary Rift: runs through Uganda Kenya Ethiopia
Cretaceous Rift: runs through Sudan Kenya Mali
Jurassic Rift: crosses to include Yemen and the Puntland region of Somalia
Permian Triassic Rift: crosses the sea from Ethiopia through southern Somalia to Madagascar
The Tertiary Rift
The Cretaceous Rift
The Jurassic Rift
The Permian Triassic Rift
Here is some detail of the Dharoor block in Puntland Somalia.
Here is some detail on Block 10A in Kenya where they are beginning to drill.
A seismic cross section of the Pai Pai prospect, site of drilling in Block 10A.
A map of East Africa suggesting the underlying petroleum system.
These are the local totals for potential barrels of oil that Africa Oil Corporation expects to be able to recover from Kenya, Ethiopia, and Puntland in Somalia.
This is the total size of the potential oil prize in both barrels of oil and dollars.
Do note the caveat:
There is no certainty that any portion of the resources will be discovered. If discovered there is no certainty the the discovery will be commercially viable to produce any portion of the resources.
All of these countries and locations mapped are of interest to the United States and its Africa Command, AFRICOM. Many aspects of that interest have been covered here in this blog.
These earlier posts, along with their comments, are particularly relevant to East African oil.
Uganda – Stepping On the Mission Creep Accelerator
If Uganda Has Oil It Must Need The Pentagon’s Democracy
Uganda – Oil Reserves To Rival Saudi Arabia?
August 26, 2012 at 6:58 pm
why are kenyan lootting somali oil from sea near the kismayo it need to be answer
October 24, 2012 at 2:19 pm
Ali thanks for your reaction ,,,they can not loot any oil in Somalia both onshore and offshore they are only dreaming,,,
February 22, 2013 at 12:25 am
i believe east africa oil cooperation is doing a good thing in educating the east africa region on the oil resources in our region.