Lead image for Nairobi-Dar refinery rivalry: Oil projects expose long running regional tensions.
East Africa, a region that has been working to deepen economic integration for more than 25 years, has a history of disagreements about the location of energy infrastructure. Uganda discovered oil in 2006 with the potential to pump an estimated 210,000 to 230,000 barrels of oil per day at peak production. Back in 2014, Kenya and Uganda agreed on a joint crude oil pipeline from Uganda’s oil fields at Lake Albert to the Indian Ocean. But the plan was shelved in 2016. Eventually, Uganda chose a southern route through Tanzania, forcing Kenya back to the drawing board.
This year, Kenya’s president William Ruto and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni announced plans for a new east african oil refinery, reportedly in Tanzania by Nigeria’s Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest person and the founder, president and chief executive of the Dangote Group. The refinery plans looked like a win for east african solidarity and sovereignty. However, days later, President Samia Hassan said she hadn’t been consulted on the plans to build it in Tanzania.
The Dangote refinery has now been slated for Lamu, Kenya’s new port north of Mombasa. That should have closed the matter but it did not. Uganda and Tanzania have since signed a memorandum of understanding with commodity trader Vitol Bahrain to build a US$20 billion regional energy hub in Tanga, Tanzania complete with petroleum storage, refining, logistics, trading and distribution facilities.
Brendon J. Cannon and Stephen Mogaka have written about east african politics, pipelines and security for over a decade. They shed light on these latest developments.
You studied the regional energy rivalry in east africa over a crude oil pipeline. How did it play out?
Uganda and Kenya agreed in 2014 to jointly build a pipeline from Uganda’s oilfields to Kenya’s planned port at Lamu.
The deal collapsed within two years. Kenya’s push for its northern route, inflated security concerns and land compensation issues all played a part.
But the decisive factor was Total, the French oil major developing Uganda’s fields. It lobbied for and helped finance an alternative pipeline bypassing Kenya entirely to Tanzania’s port of Tanga. Landlocked Uganda’s chronic unease about depending on Kenya did the rest.