For many years, the importation of Liquefied Petroleum Gas in Kenya has been dominated by African Gas and Oil Ltd.
However, this state of affairs will change after a new company, Mansa East Africa, constructs a Sh7.5 billion onshore storage and filling facility at Liwatoni, Mombasa.
Mansa, which is a partnership between US company Petredec and Kenya's Rift Gas, is expected to shake up the LPG import business.
The facility will be moving 12,500 tonnes of LPG monthly.
The first phase of the project will be completed in November at a cost of Sh850 million, Rift Gas chairman Lt Gen (Rtd) Njuki Mwaniki said on Saturday at the venue of the construction site next to Commarco’s private port.
The second phase will cost Sh2 billion. An additional Sh1.5 billion will be used in the construction of infrastructure in Nairobi, Nakuru, Kisumu and parts of the western region.
“When you add the funds that will be used here in Mombasa and all the down-stream infrastructure in Kisumu, Rift Valley, Nairobi and Western, the total foreign direct investment will hit Sh7.5 billion,” Mwaniki said.
Petredec East Africa manager Max Beckett said they will build a storage plant of 1,000-tonne capacity with additional 10,000 tonnes floating storage.
“The mounded LPG terminal will be supplied by a floating storage vessel moored at Comarco’s private port. We will have a small floating ship that would hold between 5,000 to 10,000 tonnes that will feed the onshore facility,” he said.
LPG penetration in Kenya is about 15 per cent and the target for 2020 set by the stakeholders and the Kenyan government in 2016 was 49 per cent.
Petredec has been delivering LPG to Kenya for many years and working closely with Total, Vivo – formally Shell, Oilibya and Hashi to get LPG to Mombasa efficiently and cheaply.
More recently, Petredec opened a separate infrastructure (Arm – Petregaz) whose focus is to invest in common user LPG assets and facilities globally to increase LPG penetration, improve transportation efficiencies and ultimately create more affordable LPG.
The company stopped being just a provider of LPG to the market at the port, started working with local partners and invested inland to improve Common User Logistics – thus getting the product to market more efficiently and subsequently improving affordability.
