Page 7 - AfrOil Week 17 2021

AfrOil PIPELINES & TRANSPORT AfrOil

Midway through the last decade, Engen came follows a similar move at the Kenya Petroleum
close to selling the facility to local state oil com- Refineries Ltd (KPRL) facility at Changamwe,
pany PetroSA before the deal collapsed over the Mombasa in 2013. The Kenyan unit was used
latter’s lack of funds. temporarily as a storage facility for crude oil pro-
With small and mid-size refineries struggling duced under the Early Oil Pilot Scheme (EOPS)
to keep up with rapidly changing emissions reg- at the country’s South Lokichar oilfields, which
ulations, ageing sub-Saharan units have faced a was halted in mid-2020 and is now being con-
serious challenge. The conversion of the facility sidered for conversion to process biofuels. ™

LAPSSET reports progress on oil pipeline

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

Lokichar-Lamu pipeline route map (Image: LAPSSET)

Week 17 28•April•2021 www. NEWSBASE .com P7