AceWesh wrote:Although am not an oil expert the refinery at Changamwe is obsolete and so we would have to start from scratch to build a new refinery for which the costs are too high unlike Uganda which has a sponsor in the French giant Total.
Getting a customer for an occational tanker-full of crude oil cannot be that hard especial in the Asian markets of akina China and South Korea that have large and efficient refineries.
I am pretty sure if Uganda starts to refine its own crude oil we will not have to buy from them that much because GAPCO Kenya will still be able to import refined products from their owners in India at very low prices.
Refineries built 100 years ago are still in use in parts of the world.
Also the fact that ESSAR bought the refinery less than 10 years ago suggests its still useable,
The issue was that the cost of landed refined petroleum was lower than that of buying crude, shipping it over here and refining it.
But as we have our own crude, surely the refining costs even if inefficient should still be lower than importing the finished stuff.
My 2 cents.
"The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline." James Collins