Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan and Rwanda have now formed a technical team to manage the extension of Kenya’s oil pipeline from Eldoret to Kampala and Kigali.
The formation of the Joint Technical Committee (JTC) was announced by State Department for Petroleum Principal Secretary Mohamed Liban on Thursday.
The PS was speaking in Entebbe during a joint ministerial meeting of the Northern Corridor Integration Projects (NCIP).
The NCIP was formed in 2013 and includes projects to develop railways, roads, oil pipelines, and modernize ports with a membership of Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The formation of the JTC comes months after the member countries in the oil pipeline extension project agreed to revive it in May before a meeting was held in July in Nairobi where they agreed to establish a Joint Technical Committee at a later date.
Truck congestion on roads
Mr Liban said the extension of the oil pipeline from Eldoret would address the current bottlenecks of loading the commodity on trucks even as demand for petroleum products in the region continues to rise.
“The use of trucks is not ideal given its effects on the environment, while trucks are also prone to accidents and spillages,” Mr Liban said.
The Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC), a fully State-owned company, and operates all the pipeline network across the country totaling 1,342km, including the pipeline from Nairobi to Eldoret.
Currently, truckers load the fuel from the Eldoret depot and transport it via road to Uganda. The EKK project will see the pipeline extended to Kampala and thereafter to Kigali, which is expected to remove thousands of truck congestion on roads.
During the Entebbe meeting, the Joint Technical Team was issued with a mandate to manage the affairs of the project, which is expected to cost billions of shillings to undertake.
Refined petroleum products
The team will also be charged with overseeing quality control of the project and mobilize resources. This comes even as details about how the pipeline will be financed remain scanty so far.
“Rwanda stands ready to collaborate with partner states, contributing expertise and resources to overcome challenges and realise our shared goals,” said Rwanda High Commission in Kampala Charge de affairs Ismael Baguma.
The plan to build the pipeline was first conceptualized in 1995 but little progress has been made since then. Fresh air was breathed into the project in 2013 when Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda entered into a tripartite agreement to develop the pipeline under the NCIP framework.
During the inaugural Tripartite Infrastructure Summit, the three countries agreed that a construction of a common pipeline to transport refined petroleum products from Eldoret was critical for serving the region’s energy needs.
