Page 12 - DMEA Week 17 2021

DMEA PIPELINES DMEA

Head of LAPSSET reports

progress on oil pipeline project

AFRICA MAINA Kiondo, the director-general of the and design [FEED].” Additionally, he stated, the
Lamu Port-South Sudan Ethiopia Transport team has completed a geotechnical study of the
Corridor (LAPSSET) project, said last week that right-of-way along the proposed pipeline route.
his organisation was moving forward with plans LLCOP’s initial throughput capacity is
for the 892-km Lokichar-Lamu Crude Oil Pipe- expected to reach 60,000-80,000 barrels per day
line (LLCOP), which will link the Lokichar basin (bpd). When finished, the link will be part of a
to the Indian Ocean. transport and telecommunications corridor that
According to a report from The EastAfrican also includes roads, a railway line, a petroleum
newspaper, Kiondo expects LAPSSET’s $1.5bn product pipeline, a fibre-optic cable offering
pipeline project management team to wrap up internet service and other facilities.
the inspection and survey of the proposed cor- This corridor will terminate at the Kenyan
ridor in the near future and then issue its pre- port of Lamu, which is already more than 85%
liminary report in June. Once this milestone complete, according to Kiondo. The port is on
has been reached, he said, the team will be able track to launch its first berth and container facil-
to start acquiring real estate for the project and ity in about three months and will begin regular
compensating landowners. commercial operations in October of this year,
These are necessary prerequisites to building after the roads linking it to major regional hubs
LLCOP, he added. are finished, he said.
The director-general also described LAPS- He also noted that land acquisition would
SET’s plans for the pipeline as “advanced,” saying be crucial, since the corridor is slated to be 500
that the project had “undergone a major trans- metres wide. To date, though, Kenya’s govern-
formation from completion of initial preliminary ment has not acquired any of the land needed to
studies to completion of front-end engineering build the new infrastructure.™

P12 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 17 29•April•2021