Hoima-Tanga pipeline spurs energy planners into action

STAKEHOLDERS are meeting today in Tanzania to discuss and compute pump prices for petroleum products for the northern regions soon to be getting supplies through the port of Tanga.

Tanga port is currently feeding oil tankers with the commodity under the newly established bulk procurement system (BPS), and has served ‘several’ of these carriers without notable challenges since July, 2015.

A statement from EWURA, the energy and water utilities agency, says that pump prices had been computed just for the region due to limited capacity by the terminals to serve both Tanga and the Northern regions.

The receiving and storage terminal capacity in the region has since increased from about 20,000M3 to current capacity of about 120,000M3.

“Now that GBP Tanzania has accomplished the expansion of its terminal from the 20,000M3 to more than 120,000M3, it is the right time for Tanga port to start serving Northern regions as well as Tanga region itself,” the statement read in part.

The decision to receive BPS oil tankers through Tanga port was pegged on the economic benefits, such as increasing the security of petroleum products supply chain across the country, as a fall-back option to Dar es Salaam Port.

This will reduce the costs of petroleum products consumed in Tanga and the northern regions -- Kilimanjaro, Arusha and Manyara -- mainly by cutting back on the transport costs between Dar and those regions, lifting up the level of economic activities of Tanga City and reducing traffic congestion between Dar and the Segera (Tanga) highway.

The port of Tanga is now billed to have better economic opportunities and could serve over five times the current consignment as a result of planned implementation of various construction projects including industries and Hoima-Tanga crude oil pipeline.

Currently, the port serves an annual average of 700,000 tonnes of consignment, but that’s now projected to rise up to 3.5 million tones, Port Manager Percival Salama was quoted as saying recently.

He stated that though the size of haulage of materials needed to construct the Hoima-Tanga oil pipeline construction was yet to be announced, the project implementors may need some 25,000 trucks to transport the offloaded cargo from the port to the inland destinations.

“By next September, the contractors of the Hoima-Tanga (over 1,499km) pipeline project will be certain about the size of cargo for construction materials that they will be importing through the Tanga Port,” Mr Salama said.