Energy Cabinet Secretary Charles Keter[photo/werutv.co.ke]
The government has reiterated that it does not plan to use the Kenya Petroleum Refinery Limited (KPRL) facility in Changamwe to refine oil and will instead set up a new one in Lamu.
Energy Cabinet Secretary Charles Keter told the Parliamentary Committee on energy on Wednesday that the dilapidated facility, which is now fully owned by the government, has been converted into a storage space for the early oil exploration programme.
The oil which is set to be evacuated from the oil fields and exported for testing and sampling will first be stored in the KPRL facility in Changamwe.
“We can’t build a refinery in Mombasa now, we have to focus on Lamu,” he told the committee at Parliament Buildings.
The KPRL facility has 45 tanks with a storage capacity of 484 million litres.
The announcement by the Energy CS echoes Ministry of Industry, Trade and Co-operatives Cabinet Secretary Adan Mohamed who had earlier said reviving the KPRL facility for refining purposes will be counterproductive since it was unable to sustain its operations.
Mohamed, however, warned that construction of a new facility will depend on how crude oil produced from Turkana oil fields can be evacuated.
The CS was responding to departmental committee on Trade, Industry and Co-operatives which had asked him to explain plans of reviving dead companies such as the Changamwe’s KPRL, Nzoia Sugar and the Webuye Pan paper company.
Once the new refinery is set up in Lamu, trucks transporting crude oil will cover a distance of over 1,000 kilometres from the remote Turkana fields to the Coast for refining and exportation.
More convenient Total’s recent pledge to work with Kenya to set up an oil pipeline between Lokichar and Lamu could, however, be a faster and more convenient alternative for transporting crude oil.
Petroleum is Kenya’s single biggest import commodity, making up about 14 per cent of the total import bill. Keter also gave the energy committee a raft of measures which his ministry has put in place to avoid power outages in future.