President Yoweri Museveni will on Thursday, September 17, 2026, preside over the groundbreaking ceremony for the Kampala Storage Terminal (KST) development, a major petroleum storage facility that will significantly increase Uganda’s storage capacity.
Set on about 300 acres in Namwabula, Mpigi District, about 26 kilometres west of Kampala, the terminal will store up to 320 million litres of petroleum products and will be linked to the planned Uganda Refinery through a 211 km pipeline from Hoima.
Uganda currently consumes about 240 million litres of fuel a month, according to Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC), which is leading the project. KST will complement the 30-million-litre Jinja Storage Terminal and other private terminals and depots in the country to increase Uganda’s fuel reserves as well as resilience to supply disruptions.
Construction of the terminal is expected to cost about $310 million and UNOC has already secured the funding, with support from the government. The national oil company will own and operate the terminal.
The groundbreaking comes just two weeks after President Museveni named Uganda’s crude oil, Pearl Sweet, marking another significant milestone in the country’s journey towards energy sustainability.
During the naming event, President Museveni pressed the case for domestic refining, arguing that refining Uganda’s crude locally would reduce some of the costs associated with importing finished petroleum products.
“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.”
KST will receive both imported and locally refined petroleum products. It is expected to be a regional distribution hub for the petroleum products once the planned linking pipeline projects and the Uganda Refinery are commissioned. The terminal will also include a future Mpigi Remote Refinery Terminal which receive different petroleum products through a pipeline from Hoima, store and distribute them to the domestic and regional markets.
The KST groundbreaking adds another piece to Uganda’s emerging petroleum infrastructure, connecting the country’s progress towards crude oil production and refining with the storage and distribution infrastructure needed to strengthen domestic petroleum supply.
