Blogs

PART 4. DOWNSTREAM AND MIDSTREAM OPERATORS

(ii) MIDSTREAM

If I had a civil works or related company, the current market atmosphere would find me angling for a position, for when a piece of cake or it's crumbs begin to fall, but what do I know? Yeah? As mentioned earlier, midstream segment encompasses facilities and processes that sit between the upstream and downstream and these include mostly the transportation and storage of the crude. Transportation of crude is mainly done via pipelines which tend to be enormous cash intensive projects that serve for a long time. Apart from South Sudan, none of the other East African countries have any midstream infrastructure with only Kenya having a pipeline for the transportation of processed petroleum.

SOUTH SUDAN

The Great Nile Petroleum Operating Company is an E&P company operating in Sudan, it build and maintains the Great Nile Oil Pipeline(GNOP). It is a joint operating company with China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) being the majority owner with 40%. The company is also referred to as the Greater Pioneer Operating Company.

The Sudd Petroleum Operating Company; owned by Malaysia's Petronas and South Sudan's Nile Pet operates the block 5A concession located in the oil rich Unity State. the company has it's headquarters in Juba, South Sudan.

The South's second pipeline, DPOC is operated by Petrodar Operating Company. The marjority owners are CNPC(41%) and Petronas(40%). The company operates in blocks 3D, 3E and 7E, of note also that it(the company) is incorporated under the laws of the British Virgin Islands, with "a branch operating in the country".....hmmn.

UGANDA AND TANZANIA

The UTCOP(Uganda-Tanzania Crude Oil Pipeline) pipeline was expected to begin construction in August 2016, after closed door meetings between delegations led by oil ministers from both Uganda and Tanzania held in Hoima, it was announced that construction would begin in January 2017 and last for thirty six months. This is expected to be completed by 2020. The pipeline was reportedly renamed, EACOP (East African Crude Oil Pipeline), with Total said to fund its construction, worth about $4 Billion.

KENYA
Kenya has set out to embark the transportation of its crude via road and railway, with Cabinet in August 2016 okaying plans to transport between 2000 - 4000 bpd. Tullow was set to commence the EOPS program with two trucks by TransEast Logistics, which is the transport division of Freight Forwarders  Kenya Ltd.

The Kenyan cabinet also approved Kenya's construction of its own pipeline from Lokichar to Lamu at a cost of Kshs 425 Billion, this was after it was snaked by Uganda.Bidding for the design of the pipeline is set to start around November 2016.

So that is my two cents on the operators in the downstream and midstream segments of the East African Petroleum Industry. Next week we take an "in depth" look on the upstream segment, which will be the end of the series.

For those concerned about the exclusion of gas we will do a whole series on the topic, thanks for reading :)