British oil company Tullow Oil on Friday announced a fifth consecutive major oil discovery in northern Kenya, as global explorers intensify the hunt for commercial oil in the East African nation.

Tullow said it discovered and sampled moveable oil with an estimated 100 meters of net oil pay in good quality sandstone reservoirs in an exploration well, onshore in Northern Kenya.

The firm's Exploration Director, Angus McCoss, said the latest discovery de-risks several follow-on prospections in the north and adds to the significant resource base already discovered.X

After the completion of logging operations, the well will be suspended for future flow testing to confirm the net pay count.

Kenya has a huge mineral potential, but its exploration efforts have only picked up in the last five years with the granting of commercial licences to prospect for oil, gold, coal, geothermal and rare earths.

While decades of oil exploration failed to yield results, in most cases ending up with nothing more than a bottle of crude oil, experts said there were high hopes of Kenya striking commercial oil with the advent of new exploration technologies.

Kenya has drilled over 30 dry wells, but its large investments were to no avail. The East African country has never made any substantive commercial oil discoveries, although its oil exploration started in the early 1930s.