NAIROBI
By Magdalene Mukami
The third annual East Africa oil and gas summit opened in Kenyan capital Nairobi on Thursday with government officials and industry experts from various countries attending.
"We had over 400 visitors today from over 300 companies," Sumayya Hassan Athmani, CEO of Kenya's National Oil Corporation, told Anadolu Agency.
"The annual summit is growing every year, especially after Kenya discovered oil," she said. "This is proof that Kenya is on its way to becoming a major oil and gas exporter."
Recent oil discoveries have been made in some of the country's least developed regions.
Some 31 dry wells have been discoveries in Isiolo, a town in the former Eastern Province.
Discoveries have also been made in Turukana, the largest and also the north-western most county in Kenya.
Turukana and Lokichar in the Rift Valley Province have the largest number of oil wells in Kenya.
Most of the communities who hail from these regions face chronic water shortages and still live in mud and twig huts on less than one dollar a day.
The three-day event will focus on exploring investment opportunities in East Africa's oil and gas market.
"Kenya has so many opportunities in the oil and gas field," said Athmani.
Attending the meetings are South Sudanese Petroleum and Mining Minister Stephen Dieu Dau; Ugandan Energy and Mineral Development Minister Irene Muloni and Tanzanian Deputy Minister for Energy Charles Kitwanga.
Challenges
Athmani said Kenya was facing numerous challenges that could not be tackled without help from states with long experience in the energy industry.
"We need to have a clear strategy; we need to move from being a country that didn't have oil before to being an oil exporter," she told AA.
"So capacity building and training is one of the areas that we are looking at," the official added.
"The other area is infrastructure," she went on. "You need to have infrastructure that can extract these resources and evacuate them to the point where they can be used or exported."
Athmani also stressed the need for "robust policies and regulations to provide a conducive environment for everybody."
She pointed out that, before drilling, local and international companies always took local communities into consideration.
"One of the ways of involving the community is through building their capacity to provide services and looking at where you can train community members in different fields," she added.
Athmani said they were also training management trainees from across the country.
"We have taken them out for post-graduate studies so that when they come back they can also add value to the community," she asserted.
The official said they had also provided communities with health facilities and other immediate needs.
"We are working with the community on social projects that they identified. We are going there, together with the community, to help alleviate these challenges," she added.
www.aa.com.tr
