Kenya is inviting more private investment in the country’s storage terminals.

 

Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) chairman John Ngumi announced this week that KPC would not be investing in additional tankage, but would instead call on private players to build new facilities.

 

“We would prefer that investors who are land owners in the counties develop and own the storage facilities,” Ngumi said, in a major shift that would cut KPC’s monopoly of the storage of petroleum products.

 

Migori and Busia counties are prime targets for KPC’s proposed business plan because they are border crossing points. Northern Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda depend on road transport to move their petroleum imports through Kenya.

 

The state corporation, which is mandated to store, transport and deliver petroleum products across the country through its pipeline system and depots said it would be extending the petroleum pipeline beyond Kisumu and Eldoret terminals to the border towns in less than two years.

 

Other counties where private investors could be contracted to build storage are in densely populated regions, especially Central Kenya, that currently receive petroleum transported in tankers.

 

16th July 2015