In March 2012, the announcement of the discovery of crude oil in Kenya suddenly placed Turkana County under the national and international spotlight. The Kenyan government celebrated the breakthrough by the Anglo-Irish exploration and extraction company, Tullow Oil PLC, as a major milestone in the economic growth of Turkana and of Kenya as a whole. After eight years of activity in Turkana, a number of challenges led to the suspension of operations and a re-evaluation of the viability of the project by the operating company in January 2020. Consequently, activities in Turkana were reduced to a minimum, leaving behind unfinished roads, dry water pipes, and pending CSR projects; all vestiges of imagined futures that did not unfold – at least, not as planned – due to the glaring absence of the main operator. Grounded in ethnographic research conducted during more than twelve months of fieldwork within the exploitation sites in the semi-arid Turkana East sub-county, this dissertation explores how the truncated delivery of the bold development promised was experienced and navigated. In order to explore the ‘petroscape’ and the ‘development limbo’, this dissertation develops an original analytical framework that brings together the Anthropology of Development and the Anthropology of Morality. As such, this study focuses on how, despite the absence of the promised potentiality of oil, different actors within the proximity of the newly established oil well pads keep their life trajectory on track by taking into account new opportunities and challenges to pursue a self-accomplished life. It does so by giving a unique, intimate insight into the local dynamics of the affected community.