Big Oil Shares Failed Exploration Data to Unlock Fresh Drinking Water for Millions of Africans

February 13, 2025 journo

Ruden AS workers in front of the Kimbiji aquifer site – credit Ruden AS

Firms that conduct exploratory surveys for oil drilling have been sitting on mountains of geologic data that are now used to locate hidden aquifers of water for African communities.

Two-thirds of the African population is affected by water scarcity, but while this basic human necessity costs so little, the costs of finding underground sources are prohibitive for all but large development agencies or governments.

However, a drilling company founded by former petroleum industry men realized that in many regions of Africa where oil is believed to be present, extensive seismic surveys have pinpointed dozens of hidden water wells that the exploration companies weren’t interested in, and that water projects couldn’t afford to search for.

That company, Ruden AS, has spent years collecting this industry data in order to unlock freshwater sources for millions of Africans.

One in particular, now known as the Kimbiji aquifer, will provide 2 million Tanzanians with water for a century.

“Everyone got excited because this was the discovery of an aquifer that no one knew existed,” Elizabeth Quiroga Jordan, a petroleum engineer at Ruden AS, told Euro News.

Fritjov Ruden, from Norway, founded Ruden AS alongside his daughter Helene Ree in 2009. Having worked as an oil explorer turned water driller in Tanzania, Ruden learned that if an oil company fails to find oil after a certain number of feet, they will declare it dry even if it’s filled with water.

Working for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ruden and his daughter were able to convince it to launch a charm offensive on the Petroleum Ministry, where decades of seismic survey data were held by the nationalized oil company. They hoped to use the data to find aquifers, something scientists recently determined were more numerous across Africa than previously thought.

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After 3 years, they received it, and sure enough, it revealed to Ruden that he and his team weren’t drilling deep enough in Tanzania’s Kimbiji Ward, and that a massive aquifer lay 1,800 feet down.

In 2005 they reached it, and water gushed forth. The Kimbiji contains around 5,000 cubic meters of water, and its annual recharge rate is 2,000 cubic meters per year. This holds the power to furnish millions with clean drinking water for generations.

In Somalia, different oil and gas exploration campaigns have to date drilled for 80 oil and gas wells and more than 30,000 miles of seismic lines have been mapped. Ruden AS is currently exploring this massive dataset to hopefully provide Somalia with what has been provided already to Tanzania.

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