Kenya has announced plans to construct three additional ships to increase the shipment of oil products to Uganda through Lake Victoria.
The project, estimated at US $15M aims to enhance Kenya’s market share of oil exports in East Africa. Currently, shipments are done on a weekly basis, but the construction of these ships would enable daily trips, significantly improving the transportation capacity. The fuel is delivered to the Mahathi terminal in Entebbe, Uganda, where it is loaded onto trucks for further distribution to countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, Burundi, and Rwanda.
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Increasing supply reliability
Transporting the fuel across the lake is expected to be cost-effective and help reduce road traffic congestion while increasing supply reliability. A single ship with a capacity to transport 4.5 million liters of oil products could replace 135 trucks, according to Cabinet Secretary Davis Chirchir.
During a visit to the Kenya Pipeline Company’s oil-loading jetty in Kisumu, Chirchir emphasized the importance of optimizing the benefits of this infrastructure. He acknowledged that further infrastructural improvements are needed in the petroleum export sector. Additionally, Chirchir mentioned that a Chinese contractor has been engaged to improve the road network to expedite truck transportation.
The construction of the oil jetty was completed in February 2018, but its utilization was delayed until January 2023 because a similar facility in Uganda needed to be built first. On January 3, 2023, the first shipment of petroleum products through the MV Kabaka Mutebi II arrived at the Mahathi jetty, marking the end of the five-year wait for the facility’s operationalization.