The Ugandan government has sued Kenya at the East African Court of Justice over alleged restrictions on access to the Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC).
In an application submitted by the Ugandan Attorney General, the landlocked country claimed that the Kenyan government restrained the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA) from issuing them with a license to import oil from the Mombasa Port.
"The complete reliance and dependency on Kenyan OMCs to import and supply petroleum products to Uganda have exposed the Republic of Uganda to supply vulnerabilities resulting in an avoidable increase in fuel pump prices," the court documents read in part.
Uganda argued that it has a right under the Treaty for the Establishment of the East African Community and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to transport oil through the Kenyan territory.
This lawsuit comes a month after Uganda was forced to change its oil importation policy after Kenya entered Government to Government deal with Saudi Arabia and UAE on the acquisition of fuel.
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Uganda which imports 90 percent of its fuel through Kenya said that the deal had the country as a secondary option whenever there were disruptions in the supply.
As a result, Uganda amended its Petroleum Supply Act, 2003 through the Petroleum Supply (Amendment) Bill, 2023 to mandate the Uganda National Oil Company to import petroleum products for the Ugandan Market.
"Despite the price-competitive nature of the Open Tender System in Kenya and its relatively normal supplies, it exposed Uganda to occasional supply vulnerabilities where the Ugandan OMCs were considered secondary whenever there were supply disruptions," Uganda's Minister for Energy and Mineral Development Ruth Ssentamu stated.
On November 7, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni alleged that middlemen in Kenya inflated prices by up to 59 percent, inflicting avoidable pain on consumers.
“Without my knowledge, our wonderful people were buying this huge quantity of petroleum products from middlemen in Kenya. A whole country buying from middlemen in Kenya or anywhere else! Amazing but true.
“Why not buy from the refineries abroad and transport through Kenya and Tanzania, cutting out the cost created by middlemen?” Museveni posed.
