SOUTH SUDAN – South Sudanese oil marketing giant Trinity Energy Ltd is set to inject $10 million worth of new investments in its Kenyan operations and build a $500 million crude oil refinery in South Sudan to serve the region with refined petroleum products.
The firm which controls close to 40 per cent of the South Sudanese oil market is planning a 40,000 barrels per day (bpd) modular refinery at Paloch in the oil-rich Upper Nile State with the potential of expanding capacity to 200,000bpd as well as petroleum storage facilities at Nesitu in the south part of the country.
South Sudan has the third-largest oil reserves on the continent after Libya and Nigeria estimated at 3.5 billion barrels with much of it yet to be explored.
The refinery to be built by American firm Chemex is expected to be operational in two to three years with further plans to start distribution of refined petroleum products to Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo by road owing to the lack of railway line and pipeline connectivity between these countries.
It is understood that the feasibility study and the designs for the proposed refinery have already been concluded with Afreximbank together with big regional banks operating in Juba expected to provide financing.
“We are already making steady progress towards our refinery project. We have already identified and secured land for the refinery in Paloch and engaged Chemex of the United States as the project manager for this project. Separately we are close to tying up project preparatory work financing from Afreximbank and this will aid in the engineering and design work for the facility,” the firm’s chief executive Robert Mdeza told The EastAfrican in an interview.
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