MPIGI — Senior figures from Uganda’s oil and gas sector have gathered in Namwabula, Mpigi District, about 26km (16 miles) west of the capital, Kampala, where President Yoweri Museveni is due to launch construction of a major fuel storage facility on Thursday.
The president is expected to arrive shortly for the groundbreaking ceremony.
The Kampala Storage Terminal (KST) is being developed by the state-owned Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC), which says it will own and operate the facility.
According to UNOC, the terminal will cover about 300 acres and hold up to 320 million litres of petroleum products. The company estimates that Uganda uses about 240 million litres of fuel a month, so the terminal’s full capacity would be equal to about 40 days of national demand.
UNOC says construction will cost about $310m and that it has secured the funding with government support.
The company says the terminal will add to the 30-million-litre Jinja Storage Terminal and to privately owned depots, strengthening the country’s reserves and its ability to cope with supply disruptions.
It is expected to handle both imported fuel and products from the planned Uganda Refinery in Hoima, to which it will be connected by a 211km pipeline. UNOC says it intends the site to become a regional distribution hub once the refinery and connecting pipelines are completed.
The site will also host the planned Mpigi Remote Refinery Terminal, which UNOC says will receive products by pipeline from Hoima for storage and distribution within Uganda and across the region.
The ceremony comes two weeks after Mr Museveni named Uganda’s crude oil Pearl Sweet. At that event, he argued that refining crude at home would cut some of the costs of importing finished fuel.
“Our refinery will be one of the most profitable because, first of all, it’s far from the ocean and it does not have the transportation cost which imported oil has,” he said. “When we refine our oil here, you don’t pay transit charges.”
This is a developing story.
