Large, state-owned builder China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) has won a $398m contract to build a new oil terminal at Kenya’s main port of Mombasa.
The terminal will raise the port’s oil handling capacity by a factor of five. Acting head of Kenya Ports Authority, Daniel Manduku, said yesterday that the new terminal will take 18 months to build, reports Reuters.
It will be able to handle 100,000 dead weight tonnes, up from 20,000 tonnes currently. “It’s going to take four ships at a time and it will also handle gas and liquefied petroleum (gas),” he told Reuters. “It will have LPG, oil and petroleum, both refined and unrefined.”
Kenya has been one of the fastest growing economies in sub-Saharan Africa, and is upgrading its energy importation capacity to keep up with growing demand. CCCC is playing a major role in the country’s development, having built a 470km standard-gauge railway from Mombasa inland to the capital Nairobi last year, and is building a second stage of the railway from Nairobi to Naivasha.
The plan is to extend the line all the way to Uganda.
