Tullow Oil, the UK oil and gas exploration company with the biggest stakes in Africa, yesterday reported record earnings for the first half of the year and said it was close to finding enough oil at Lake Albert in Uganda to develop its Ugandan fields for export.

Angus McCoss, the exploration director, said: "We are much more confident now that we're very close to achieving basin commerciality . . . the 400m barrel economic threshold for development at $80 a barrel."