Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC) said it is targeting a weekly shipment of at least three million litres of petroleum products, petrol and diesel on barges via Lake Victoria as part of plans to restock the fuel storage terminal in Jinja.
Peter Muliisa, UNOC’s Legal and Corporate Affairs Manager, described the shipment as a “significant development”, a prelude to the company’s plans of increasing frequency of the fuel shipments via the lake.
UNOC hauled six million litres of petroleum products on barges from Kisumu port in Lake Victoria in Kenya to the Jinja pier, where the fuel tankers were transported by rail to the Jinja storage terminal.
Muliisa said: “Our intention is to ensure that the Jinja storage terminal are fully operational and one way is to use the lake for optimisation. Each fuel truck carries at least 35,000 litres yet one wagon tanker carries one million litres. In this way the lake is far an efficient mode of transport.”
With neighbouring countries such as Rwanda, Burundi, eastern DR Congo and South Sudan relying on Kenya as the main gateway for imports, including fuel products, Mr Muliisa said the Jinja storage terminal has been restocked to full capacity to market it as the point of pick up as an option to Mombasa or Kisumu.
The Jinja fuel terminus have a capacity of 120 million litres for petroleum products, but according to the Ministry of Energy, Uganda’s petroleum products imports average at 85 million litres.
For more information visit www.unoc.co.ug
