Workers reconstruct an oil pipeline in South Sudan: Kenya had made it
clear to Uganda and Tanzania that it will soldier on to construct its
own pipeline after the talks collapsed in Kampala last Friday. FILE
PHOTO | AFP
By EDWIN MUTAI, emutai@ke.nationmedia.com
The proposed oil pipeline from Lokichar to Lamu via
Isiolo will be live by the second quarter of 2021, Energy Cabinet
Secretary Charles Keter told a parliamentary committee Wednesday.
Mr Keter said Kenya will construct the pipeline at a cost of $4.2 billion (around Sh424 billion).
He said the decision by Uganda to build an oil
pipeline from Hoima through Tanga in Tanzania may have been influenced
by Kenya's failure to develop the Lamu Port, South Sudan, Ethiopia
Transport (Lapsett) corridor “which was dead by December last year”.
“I cannot deny that we delayed in doing the Lamu
port which should have been done a long time ago. Lapsett had died until
December when President Uhuru Kenyatta went there and saw the need to
revive it. We now have Sh5 billion allocated in the in mini budget to
revive it. If we had done the Lamu port and the road network, may be it
would have helped Uganda to make the decision to transport its crude oil
through Kenya,” Mr Keter said in response to questions raised by
committee vice chairperson Dan Mwazo.
The CS expressed regret that Kenya was excluded
from make or break talks between Tanzania and Uganda's energy
ministries, effectively locking Kenya out of making its case to the east
African partner States.
Kenya now plans to transport about 2,000 barrels of
crude oil per day by road from Lokichar to Eldoret and then use the
railway to Mombasa even as it construct a new pipeline along the Kenya
North route to Lamu.
“Going forward, our early pilot scheme includes the
ongoing road-rail and pipeline-rail,” Mr Keter told the Senate
committee on Energy in a brief on the Hoima-Lokichar-Lamu port crude oil
pipeline project.
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