By Andrew Wasike

NAIROBI, Kenya

Kenya will start exporting oil from June 2017, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta announced Wednesday after a meeting with Tullow Oil’s - British oil exploration company - Chief Operating Officer Paul McDade.

The State House in Nairobi – the president official residence -- released a statement saying that McDade had confirmed to President Kenyatta that the oil would be transported by road from Northern Kenya to the Mombasa port city on the Kenyan coast.

“We have started and we are not moving back. We want to be at the top of the pile. So, we have set a path and by 2019, Kenya is going to be a major oil producer and exporter,” Kenyatta told the company COO according to the statement.

For his part, McDade said that his company will be producing over 2,000 barrels a day and also planned on digging eight more oil wells in the north region of Lokichar.

“Tullow remains confident that the South Lokichar basin has the potential to see resources grow from the current 750 million barrels to around 1 billion of oil,” he said.

Kenya struck oil for the first time in the semi-arid county of Turkana, in the northern part of the country, in 2012.

Turkana is home to nomadic pastoralists ravaged by poverty and unemployment. Illiteracy rates in the region are high.