Key infrastructure like pipelines, refinery, and storage facilities still yet to come onboard ahead of the much-anticipated oil production date of 2020, the company’s first revenue-generating asset has no connection to the oil in the Albertine region—but rather a facility that was set up in the 1970s.
UNOC has taken over operation and management of the 30 million-capacity Jinja Storage Terminal. Handed over to the company in May this year, the terminal was refurbished before Kenya went to the August poll.
UNOC moved to prepare adequately this time as they did not want a repeat of what happened ten years after post-election violence in Kenya when Uganda was hit by fuel shortages.
Frank Nagimesi, a board member with the company said, “I’m happy to report that by the time the presidential elections in Kenya took place, the facility had 10 million liters of petroleum,”
The facility currently holds 15 million liters of petroleum in reserves.
The terminal is being operated in a joint venture with a private firm, One petroleum. The storage facility had gone through a horrid past after its establishment in the 1970s.
The reserve was used inconsistently and erratically for much of its existence. By 2007, it had been abandoned, until government tried to get a private partner to revamp it. Plans to upgrade the reserve had been halted over controversies over the bidding procedure since 2008. Eventually, Hared petroleum took the deal in 2012 but did not last long too.