Presidents Kenyatta, Museveni to discuss pipeline plan Monday

President Uhuru Kenyatta and Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni together with oil company executives will meet on Monday to hold further discussions on a route for a pipeline to transport the two countries’ oil, this is according to State House Spokesman Manoah Esipisu.

“President Uhuru Kenyatta will host Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni tomorrow (Monday). They will discuss the construction of the Uganda-Kenya oil pipeline, a key plank of the Northern Corridor Infrastructure Projects,” read the statement in part.

Uganda’s oil producers – Irish company Tullow Oil, French company Total and China’s CNOC – have been invited to the meeting, which will be held at State House, Nairobi.

The pipeline project was designed to move crude oil from the oilfields of Hoima to the Port of Lamu, through Kenya’s own oilfields at Lokichar.

In a communiqué issued after President Kenyatta’s State Visit to Uganda in August 2015, the two leaders said the development of a crude oil export pipeline needed to be implemented expeditiously to avoid any further delay in commercializing especially Uganda’s petroleum resources which were discovered nine years ago.

“In construction of the pipeline, Kenya favours the “northern route” through Lokichar, because as part of the Lamu Port, South Sudan, Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) project, it would transform infrastructure and the way of life of the people in the towns and counties across its path,” further read the statement. 

Resolving the pipeline route is crucial to helping oil companies involved in Uganda and Kenya to make final investment decisions on developing oil fields.

Last week, Tanzania’s President John Magufuli said that Total, which has a stake in Uganda’s crude oil discoveries, had set aside USD4 billion to build a pipeline from Ugandan fields to the Tanzanian coast and that Tanzania wants the three-year construction schedule shortened.

The comments raised the stakes in a competition to secure the pipeline with Kenya, which wants Ugandan oil to be exported across its territory and wants the pipeline to link up with Kenyan oil fields.