Africa Oil and its partners in Kenya will drill up to eight exploration and appraisal wells, beginning in December 2016, to boost proven resources and improve financing prospects for field development and an export pipeline, an executive said.

The group, which includes Tullow Oil and Maersk, initially planned to build a single pipeline to connect Ugandan oil fields and the Kenyan project to Kenya's coast, but Uganda opted to build its own pipeline going through Tanzania. Tullow has a 50% stake in the Kenya project, while Africa Oil and Maersk each own 25% of the two blocks where discoveries were made in 2012.

Africa Oil CEO Keith Hill told Reuters that building a standalone pipeline for Kenya "makes us much more dependent on our own resources for justifying and financing that pipeline," encouraging further drilling to firm up oil discoveries.

The South Lokichar Basin in northern Kenya is now estimated to have 766 million barrels (MMbbl) of recoverable contingent oil resources.

These are classed as 2C resources, covering proven and probable resources, while 1C covers proven resources.

"If we could get to a billion barrels of 2C and say 300-350 million of 1C those would give us a pipeline tariff and lending base which would work very well for us," he said, without giving current estimates for 1C resources.

The latest drilling program will begin with two exploration wells, the first to be spudded in early December, followed by two appraisal wells to make further assessments of existing finds. Depending on results, four more exploration wells will follow. About one well will be drilled per month.

Hill, speaking from the U.S., said he would have "really high confidence that both those thresholds" for 2C and 1C resources would be achieved if all eight wells were drilled.

The partners aim to secure a final investment decision for the Kenyan project by late 2018, with full production expected to start about three years later, he said.

Kenya plans to start small-scale production in 2017, involving trucking about 2 Mbbl/d to the coast.

Full-scale projection requires a 890-kilometer (560-mile) pipeline, costing about $2.1 billion. The government said in October it aimed to sign a joint development deal for the pipeline soon.