Uhuru, Wang Yi to assess progress of new Kipevu Oil Terminal

President Uhuru Kenyatta and Chinese Foreign Affairs Minister Wang Yi are scheduled to inspect the progress of ongoing works at the new Kipevu Oil Terminal (KOT) on Thursday.

The Chinese top diplomat is set to arrive in the country Wednesday ahead of the tour, and will pay a courtesy call on President Kenyatta at Statehouse, Mombasa, before they proceed on a tour of the new Kshs. 40 billion oil terminal, that is constructed by China Communication Construction Company (CCCC).

The new KOT is an off-shore facility located at the Port of Mombasa, opposite to the existing Kipevu Oil Terminal. The project consists of one offshore island terminal with four berths whose total length is 770m and one work boat wharf at Westmont area for landing facilities.

It also has five sub-sea pipelines which were buried 26 meters under the seabed to allow for future dredging of the channel without interfering with the pipes.

There are risers dedicated to a separate oil product connecting the terminal to the Kenya Petroleum Refineries Limited (KPRL) and Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) storage tanks.

Once complete the new oil terminal facility will have four berths (One not fully equipped) capable of handling six different hydrocarbon import and export products; it is also fitted with a Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) facility, crude oil and heavy fuel oil. It also has provisions for handling three types of white oil products (DPK- aviation fuel, AGO – diesel and PMS – petrol).

The terminal will for a start be able to accommodate three ships concurrently with a capacity of 200,000 tons each. A fourth berth has already been constructed provisionally, which will be fitted with facilities in future commensurate with demand, to be able to handle a fourth ship.

This new Oil Terminal will effectively replace the old Kipevu Oil Terminal situated on the mainland Port Reitz, which was built in 1963 to serve the then East Africa Oil Refinery (EAOR) which later became the Kenya Petroleum Refineries Limited (KPRL).

The Old KOT is a single jetty with a capacity to accommodate only one vessel at any given time. Then the discharge pipe sizes were smaller, product and discharge flow rates were also much slower although they served well at the time.

According to the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) Ag. Managing Director Amb. John Mwangemi, the new terminal will have various benefits to the economies of the region.

Some of these benefits include; reduced vessel turn-around time from 4 days to 2 days, guaranteed security of supply for the region, expected significant reduction in demurrage costs, expected reduced freight costs owing to improved cargo handling capacities and leverages associated with larger economics of scale, enhanced vessel operational flexibility through the increased vessel handling capacity, enhanced LPG importation facilities which will lead to possible reduction of LPG costs and more LPG uptake in the Country, improved fuel handling in cases of quality challenges, as well as customers  benefiting from economies of scale as bigger vessels call the port with reduced freight, among others.

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