adminKenya is boosting its advantage over Tanzania in its bid to provide petroleum products in the East African region, with the nation’s cabinet this week approving the Kenya Pipeline Company’s (KPC) acquisition of assets from the bankrupt Kenya Petroleum Refineries Ltd (KPRL).
KPC is taking over KPRL’s 45 storage tanks, which have a capacity of 484 million litres, 254 million of which are designated for refined goods and the remaining 233 million litres for crude oil.
With the acquisition, Kenya will have infinite storage room for petroleum products, utilising the new Kipevu Oil Terminal 2.
Kenya hopes to double the capacity of handling transit petroleum products from 35 000 tonnes to attract Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi to begin using Mombasa as their petroleum product supplier since it will be cheaper than Dar es Salaam.
As ship waiting time and demurrage costs are added throughout the supply chain, Kenya’s petroleum products have been among the most costly in the area.
In order to keep the Ugandan petroleum transshipment business,
Kenya, which carries over 900 million litres of petroleum products each month, is relying on Tanzania’s shoddy fuel transportation infrastructure.
Kenya is also enticing Uganda, its primary transit market, to start importing petroleum from Mombasa by using the recently built US$170 million fuel jetty in Kisumu.
The expansion of LPG coverage throughout the nation and the area has been ordered by Kenyan President William Ruto.
KPC will use some of the property owned by KPRL to construct more LPG storage tanks.
For the design of the LPG import and storage facility in Changamwe, Mombasa, KPC has already hired the Pakistani company Petrochem Engineering Services. — Business Insider Africa
Online Reporter