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DIPLOMACY 

KAMPALA - Kenyan President William Ruto says issues affecting the flow of petroleum products between his country and Uganda are being resolved.

“I am glad that the issues affecting the flow of petroleum products between Kenya and Uganda are being resolved. We have agreed on a way forward of sourcing and scheduling imports for the region in a manner that will ensure we achieve the most competitive pricing and maximum logistical efficiency,” Ruto says.

The president posted his remarks on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday (February 26) a few hours after meeting his Ugandan counterpart, Yoweri Museveni at the latter’s Kisozi farm in Gomba district.

Ruto's comments come barely a week after Uganda sped up negotiations with the Tanzanian government to use Dar es Salaam port as an alternative route to import petroleum products directly from the refineries overseas after its plan to use Kenya’s oil pipeline hit a snag last month.

Ruto and his host also had a meeting with the former’s main competitor in the August 2022 presidential elections, Raila Odinga.

He said in his meeting with Museveni, they also discussed the need for the two countries to urgently pursue the design and construction of the earlier conceptualised Eldoret-Kampala-Kigali refined petroleum product pipeline.

Importing through Tanzania

On February 20, 2024, Uganda energy minister Ruth Nankabirwa said the Government desires to increase its importation of petroleum products through Tanzania.

She posted the remarks on X after meeting with Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu in Zanzibar to progress discussions on the supply of petroleum products into Uganda.

“Uganda is committed to strengthening the utilisation of the Tanzanian route, improving the supportive infrastructure, and any processes required to realise the policy change by the Government of Uganda to empower Uganda National Oil Company Limited (UNOC) to be the sole importer and supplier of petroleum products for Uganda,” she said.

Uganda is currently a net importer of petroleum products, where more than 90% are imported through the Mombasa Port in Kenya and the rest through the Dar-es-Salaam port in Tanzania.

The importation is currently done independently by licensed oil marketing companies through the importation structures in Kenya and Tanzania.

Under these structures, the Ugandan oil marketing companies have been accessing their petroleum products import allocations through their affiliated Kenyan companies registered and participating in Kenyan and Tanzanian import structures.

Nankabirwa told New Vision Online in an interview that they were supposed to use the Kenyan pipeline and pay them “huge amounts of money, but if they don’t want to and they maintain that, we are left with no alternative but to try the Tanzanian route”.

“We have to create an escape route. When you are squeezed too much, you just think about an alternative,” Nankabirwa said on January 23. 

This was after reports emerged that the Kenyan High Court in Machakos County had declined to dismiss a petition stopping the issuance of a license to UNOC, which signed a contract with Vitol Bahrain E.C to source and supply the petroleum products in the country.

Court stayed an injunction that was issued in November last year by the High Court in Nairobi, barring the state-owned Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA) from processing a license application from UNOC.

The injunction stemmed from an earlier application filed by some individuals in Kenya.