Mombasa Refinery to Commission Power Plant

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Human Rights Watch (Washington, DC) 2 June 2011 press release Tunis — The Qatari government forcibly returned Eman al-'Obeidy, a recognized refugee, to rebel-held Benghazi in eastern Libya on June 2, 2011, Human Rights Watch said today. Al-'Obeidy and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) both repeatedly protested her forcible return but were ignored, Human Rights Watch said. "Forcibly returning a refugee who survived gang rape not only violates international law, but is cruel and could trigger further trauma," said Bill Frelick, refugee program director at Human Rights Watch.

Business Daily (Nairobi)

Zeddy Sambu

2 June 2011

The Kenya Petroleum Refineries Limited has said it will commission a power plant by year end, stabilising supply to the facility in the event of outages.

The $13 million (about Sh1.12 billion) 9 megawatt plant announced last year will use materials derived during processing of crude oil.

The refinery CEO Bimal Mukherjee said generators had been tested, paving way for civil works and construction of tanks.

“The KPRL board has decided to fast-track the building of a dedicated power plant at the refinery. This will resolve the issue of external power supply interruptions which have recently caused production problems,” said Mr Mukherjee, in a statement following a board meeting on Monday.

A month ago, external power failure saw the refinery shut down for one week. The power generation venture is part of short term improvements at the facility meant to confront challenges arising from lack of investments in equipment and frequent power outages. KPRL supplies 40 per cent of the local demand but is unable to meet demand due to inconsistent power supply, equipment failure, and poor technology.

Power upsets lead to interruptions in product supply in the market leading to damage of the equipment used in the manufacture of petrol. Other plans include switching from KPRL’s current tolling model to a merchant model, a move aimed at making the refinery more accountable to oil marketing companies and to consumers.

White oils

Essar Energy has since mid 2009 held a 50 per cent interest in the Mombasa refinery and is also the firm’s operator under the Technical Services Agreement. The other half is owned by the Government.

The refinery was commissioned in 1963 and has a capacity of four million tonnes of crude per year (80,000 barrels per day).

However, it currently processes only 1.6 million tonnes of crude per year or 32,000 barrels per day.

The refinery, the only one in East Africa, serves Kenya, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda. Tanzania imports refined products, known as white oils.

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Mombasa Refinery to Commission Power Plant