- Kenya and Uganda have initiated discussions about extending the petroleum products pipeline from Eldoret to Kampala.
- The project is poised to impact the region’s fuel import market and follows Uganda’s recent transition to independent fuel imports earlier this month.
The Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) has announced that Kenya and Uganda have initiated discussions about extending the petroleum products pipeline from Eldoret to Kampala.
The pipeline extension will see Kenya construct a multi-product pipeline from Eldoret to the Kenya-Uganda border town of Malaba, about 127 kilometres from Eldoret.
Meanwhile, Uganda will build a connecting line about 236 kilometres long from Malaba to the capital, Kampala. Future expansion to the Rwandan capital, Kigali, has also been mooted.
“Extension of the pipeline to Uganda is a strategic move for Kenya as the country seeks to regain its competitive advantage in the petroleum export market, particularly in light of Uganda’s new importation strategy,” KPC Managing Director Joe Sang said.
Last week, Uganda’s Energy Minister Ruth Ssentamu met with top officials in Kenya’s Energy Ministry, including Principal Secretary Mohammed Liban. They later toured the KPC headquarters in Nairobi. Also, Ssentamu said last week’s visit entailed planning and preparing for the project’s kick-off and understanding Kenya Pipeline’s operations, infrastructure and human capacity.
The project is poised to impact the region’s fuel import market and follows Uganda’s recent transition to independent fuel imports earlier this month. This move ends Uganda’s previous dependence on Kenya for the supply of refined petroleum products.
Under a new agreement between the Uganda National Oil Corporation (UNOC) and Dutch energy multinational Vitol Bahrain, Kenya’s western neighbour aims to secure more competitive fuel prices.
Uganda will still rely on Kenya’s port of Mombasa and KPC’s infrastructure to transport oil products to the Eldoret and Kisumu depots.
Until earlier this year, Kenya and Uganda were at loggerheads after Nairobi denied its landlocked neighbour’s government-owned oil marketer a licence to operate locally and handle fuel imports to Kampala. Kenya refused to use KPC infrastructure to move refined petroleum products from Mombasa port to Uganda.
It resulted in Uganda suing Kenya at the East African Court of Justice in December last year, accusing Kenya of denying UNOC rights to operate as an oil marketing company in Kenya.
In February, President William Ruto met with Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni to discuss the matter and announced that the row was being resolved. In May, he hosted Museveni at State House, Nairobi. He thereafter announced that they had tasked their respective ministers with urgently mobilising resources for the project and reporting on progress by the end of 2024.