A dedicated oil and gas portal has been launched in Kenya, offering explorers, investors and stakeholders in the industry in the country and the rest of the region with information.
According to the founder of oilnewskenya.com Kamau Mbote, the website is a result of the increased interest from investors in the oil and gas sectors following a number of discoveries in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Mozambique that has seen the East African region named the new oil and gas frontier.
Mbote said despite the potential and the interest in the region it still lacks a platform from where interested parties can obtain credible news.
“When we started the website it was more of the desire to specialise in a new area of news that did not have a single journalist focusing on. Two weeks into the writing there was a discovery by Tullow Oil that saw the audience increase ten-fold as interested Kenyans and players in this field sought a credible news source,” he said.
Within weeks of establishing the website he said it received numerous partnership deals with conference and exhibition organisers, most recently being the three-day Eastern Africa Oil, Gas, LNG and energy conference in Nairobi, where the startup was the only media partner from the region.
The company has also seen increased interest on its social media platforms as investors seek to take advantage of news in the region.
“Most importantly is that Kenya now has a platform from where anyone interested in what is happening in the region can access current news and relevant data,” Mbote said.
The website owners say they hope the portal can also help train a new crop of journalists who will be tasked with writing industry-related stories both accurately and professionally.
