Business
East African nations Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda to embark on major joint infrastructure projects
(Reuters) – Uganda has agreed to a plan to build a pipeline from its oilfields to a new port being developed on Kenya’s northern coast, Uganda’s foreign minister said on Tuesday, enabling crude exports and boosting its oil industry.
The new pipeline to Kenya’s Lamu port, where work on berths has commenced, would also provide a route to export crude oil from South Sudan, which now relies on a pipeline through its northern neighbor Sudan. Rows between the two have disrupted flows.
Uganda, Kenya and other East African states want to capitalize on a string of oil and gas finds across the region that could make the area a major energy exporter. But production has been delayed, partly due to questions of export routes.
Another project agreed by the presidents of Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda, will involve extending to Uganda and Rwanda an existing pipeline running from Kenya’s Mombasa port that now stops inside Kenya.
“It was agreed that we develop two oil pipelines – one pipeline that currently exists and brings products from Mombasa to Eldoret (in Kenya) should be extended to Kampala and Rwanda,” Ugandan Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa told a news conference after the summit between Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, Kenya’s Uhuru Kenyatta and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame.
South Sudan previously put the price of a pipeline to Lamu at US$3 billion.
Extending the Mombasa-to-Eldoret produce pipeline to Uganda was previously estimated to cost $300 million.
