JINJA –The Finance and Energy Ministries have taken over the management of the Jinja fuel storage terminal.
The terminal has been under the management of a Joint Venture Partnership between One Petroleum Limited -OPL consortium and Uganda National Oil Company Limited –UNOC. However, effective December 23, 2022 – UNOC assumed its management and operational roles.
The take-over was officially announced on Friday at a ceremony, where the Minister of Finance, Matia Kasaijja presided over as chief guest. In attendance was the UNOC Chief Executive Officer – CEO, Proscovia Nabbanja as well as a number of politicians from Jinja city.
According to a statement, in 2017, UNOC entered into a joint venture partnership with the consortium comprising One Petroleum limited, One Petroleum Uganda limited, and Mbaraki Bulk Terminal limited for the operation and management of the Jinja Storage Terminal.
One Petroleum Limited -OPL reportedly took a decision to focus on other core businesses within their portfolio in line with their business strategy and as such the partners have reached a mutual consensus and agreement for the consortium to hand over the operation and management of JST to UNOC.
Finance Minister, Matia Kasaijja said that the Jinja Storage Terminal was a capital intensive venture requiring huge sums of money.
He, however, noted that UNOC was expected to profit from it in the long run when it begins to trade in oil products – hoping that with earnings, it would become self-reliant.
Kasaija also noted that several youth had undertaken specialised courses in oil and gas and UNOC would serve as their primary employer.
Kasaija reiterated government’s commitment to refurbish both the meter gauge and standard gauge railway networks as a way of easing the transportation of already processed UNOC products to the different parts of the country.
Meanwhile, Ruth Nankabirwa – the Energy and Mineral Resources’ Minister said that the Jinja city’s based reserves with their 30 million-litre storage capacity would be boosted with another proposed storage facility in Mpigi, slated to have a holding capacity of 300 million litres. The Kampala Storage Terminal – KST as it is popularly known, when complete will keep up to 320 million litres of refined petroleum products.
These products, would, according to Nankabirwa be received as imports through Kenya and Tanzania and later from the planned refinery in Hoima. KST will also have an extension terminal to serve as a storage facility for Liquified Petroleum Gas -LPG.
It is expected that KST will reduce Uganda’s petroleum products shortages that usually lead to speculations and sometimes abnormal increases in fuel prices.
UNOC boss Nabbanja said they planned on improving the facility’s efficiency, through the installation of an oil pipeline terminal through Lake Victoria, which would ease delivery of oil products directly to the oil facilities, located about 300 metres away from the oil reserves.
