Kenya is seeking $400m to $500m in loans to pay for the construction of a new fuel pipeline from the port of Mombasa, east Africa’s trade gateway, to the capital.
Tender documents by the Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) seen by Reuters news agency on Monday said the bigger pipeline would replace an older one and was designed to help meet demand for petroleum products in the region.
KPC said the project would be financed through the company’s internally generated funds and an external borrowing limited to between $400m and $500m. Details of the total cost of the entire project were not immediately available.
"The key objective of this project is to replace the existing Line 1 with a suited pipeline size to meet the projected demand of petroleum products in Kenya and the eastern Africa region up to year 2044," the company said.
KPC has said the existing pipeline linking Mombasa to Nairobi has outlived its 30-year lifespan and is prone to ruptures.
Many of the products from east Africa’s only refinery in Mombasa have to be trucked to countries in the region, which is slow and unreliable due to the breakdown of trucks and damaged roads.
The existing pipeline runs from Mombasa to Nairobi and then on to the town of Nakuru in the west before splitting with forks to the towns of Eldoret and Kisumu.
Kenya and Uganda also hope to revive plans to extend the pipeline past Eldoret to Uganda’s capital, Kampala, a distance of about 350km.
