Nairobi accounts for 50-60 per cent of fuel consumption in the country.

Petrocity Energy Kenya Limited, is putting up a storage and loading facilities at Malili near Makueni, 70 kilometres south of Nairobi.

Petro City Director Mr Harish Asodia says the facility currently under construction by Comacon Limited is 40 per cent complete. It is expected to be operational by around October at a cost of Sh1.5 billion, thus reducing damage to the road to Mombasa.

Capacity

The facility will comprise six storage tanks for oil with a capacity of 40 million litres of petroleum products.

Asodia says the latest technology and safety standards currently missing at the Nairobi terminals will be incorporated at Malili, where virtually all operations will be automated and run from a central control room fitted with CCTV cameras, graphics and other modern communications equipment.

“Efficiency is our hallmark. With ample track parking space and fast loading mechanisms, transporters will cut down on their costs and pass the benefits to consumers with a positive multiple effect down to Wanjiku,” he says.

Demurrage costs

“Currently, oil importing companies are paying demurrages at the rate of Sh20, 000 per day to shipping companies due to long delays in offloading at the port of Mombasa. Our storage space will help reduce the delay, cutting expenses for importers who in turn will pass the advantage to consumers.

Asodia observes that ships have been taking 20 to 30 days to offload their consignments at the port because the batch in Nairobi is not moving fast enough to create room in the Kenya Pipeline tanks in Mombasa. “Our facility will more than halve the waiting time at the port. We have the capacity to take a whole ship at ago as we can load four million litres of fuel per day”, he says.

He observes that Kenya cannot store enough fuel to last 15 to 20 days in times of distress. “It is due to constraints in storage space that importers often settle for less than the share allocated to them. Our storage once completed will boost fuel imports with all importers delivering the full share allocated to them,” he assures.

Why Malili

Mr Harish says the location away from the city, carries with it a safety component in these volatile days of international terrorism.

“It is only appropriate that storage for inflammables such as fuel be as far away from big population centres as possible to avoid incidents such as the Sinai fire tragedy.”

The entry of Petrocity into the storage market will ease Nairobi’s traffic congestion by reducing the number of lorries waiting to be loaded at the Kenya Pipeline Terminals in the capital.

Mr Harish says eight to nine million litres of fuel is still transported by road from Mombasa, adding that the costs saved by the facility through efficiency is likely to see the price of fuel drop by four to five shillings per litre.

He pointed out that a seventh tank will contain water to be drawn from boreholes for utility and other purposes.