East African crude oil pipeline construction an ‘emergency project’

The Kenyan government has announced that the construction of its 800km pipeline  part of the 1300 kilometer Uganda-Kenya pipeline will be classified as an emergency project.

The entire pipeline which is expected to cost about $4 billion will be undertaken by a single lead consultant with each of the three countries involved namely Kenya, Uganda and South Sudan implementing their own portions.

Already the three countries have already adopted a front-end engineering design in their wish to speed up the building up of the pipeline.

Kenya’s energy principle secretary Joseph Njoroge says the completion of the pipeline will ensure the region realizes faster revenue.

“We are expediting it as an emergency project. We want to realise oil revenues as fast as possible,” He said.

Bids for the project are expected to be in by next month with Kenya’s ministry of energy last week saying the advertisement for bids is expected to be out in the next two weeks.

According to the principal secretary the evaluation of bids will take four to five months with the winner expected thereafter.

The speed up of the project is in line with Uganda’s refinery construction plan with the lead investor expected to be known by next month following which negotiations between the winner and the government will start most likely in the fourth quarter.

Kenya on its part has also asked for development plans from Tullow Oil and its partners with development studies for the pipeline having already commenced.