{UAH} Kenya to Build Own Oil Pipeline If Uganda Plan Falls Through - Bloomberg

Kenya may build its own pipeline to transport oil from the northern Turkana region to a port at the coast if a proposal to build one jointly with Uganda falls through, Kenyan Energy Principal Secretary Joseph Njoroge said.

"Whatever the outcome, we will build an oil pipeline, whether we are together with the Ugandans or not," Njoroge said in a phone interview Wednesday from Lokichar in northern Kenya.

Kenya's reserves, currently estimated at about 600 million barrels, "do not support the country building its own pipeline," Jacques Nel, senior economist at NKC Independent Economists in Paarl, South Africa, said in a phone interview. "To build its own pipeline at the moment is not viable."

"Kenya has so much more vested interests in the regional pipeline, they have more to lose," he said. "They may have to make some concessions on tariffs, levies to sweeten the deal with Uganda."

"Kenyan oil would be shipped via our ports," Njoroge said, dismissing a report in the Nairobi-based East African newspaper last week that crude extracted from Turkana might be shipped through Tanga. "It's a figment of an idea. It can never be."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-31/kenya-may-build-own-oil-pipeline-if-ugandan-plan-falls-through

Sincerely,

Brian M. Kwesiga