CCCC wins bid for oil terminal

Kenyan facility to have 10 times capacity compared to existing one

MOMBASA: ChinaCommunications Construction Co (CCCC), operator of Kenya’s new railway, won a bid to build an oil terminal that will have capacity to store 10 times more than an existing facility, according to the East African nation’s port authority.

Kenya and China signed infrastructure deals last week after bilateral talks between their leaders, President Uhuru Kenyatta said in a statement following an African heads-of-states summit in Beijing. The accords included the establishment of a special economic zone at Dongo Kundu in the port city of Mombasa, where the new terminal will be situated.

The Chinese company and the Kenya Port Authority (KPA) have yet to sign a contract for the facility, which will be able to store 400,000 tonnes of petroleum products, acting managing director Daniel Manduku said Wednesday in an interview in Mombasa.

The existing Kipevu terminal – which handles about 90% of oil imported into Kenya and petroleum products in transit to neighbouring nations – can manage only one cargo of 35,000 tonnes at a time, he said. The new terminal will replace the current site situated within the Mombasa port and will have the capacity to berth four 100,000-tonne vessels simultane- ously, according to the KPA.

An initial tender for the new terminal was cancelled in 2016 to include a liquefied-petroleum gas line, according to the KPA. It was originally scheduled for completion by 2019 and will now be ready in the last quarter of 2020 after two years of construction, according to Manduku.

CCCC already operates the US$3.8bil railway linking Mombasa to the capital, Nairobi. China provided 90% of the financing for the 472km route commissioned in June 2017. It was built by China Road and Bridge Corp, a subsidiary of CCCC.

Chinese President Xi Jinping announced US$60bil of loans and other financing for the continent at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation last week.

Mombasa, which serves at least five landlocked nations including Uganda and Rwanda, last year handled 1.19 million TEUs, or 30.4 million tonnes, and is expected to grow to 41.4 million tonnes in 2022, Manduku said. Trends point to the overall cargo handled in 2018 surpassing projections of 1.28 million TEUs, or 31.4 million tonnes, he said.

“Volumes are growing,” he said. “We are going by the fact that we have surpassed our half-year projections.” — Bloomberg

Chinese investment: Kenyatta (third from left) during the opening of the SGR cargo train runs on a China-backed railway from the port containers depot in Mombasa Kenya, to Nairobi. Kenya and China signed infrastructure deals last week after bilateral talks in Beijing. — AP Have deals will travel: Benko was part of an Austrian business delegation that travelled to Abu Dhabi in April to seek deals.