27 August 2011, Sweetcrude,Nairobi – Kenya Petroleum Refineries Limited (KPRL), owned by Essar Energy Plc and the East African state, has secured a $13.5 million loan from Barclays Bank of Kenya Limited (BCBL) to build a 9.3 megawatt power plant.
Bloomberg reports that the plant will help ensure stable electricity supply to the refinery, Mukherjee said in an interview in the port city of Mombasa.
The sole fuel processor in East Africa’s biggest economy often suffers power outages due to a national shortage of energy and aging infrastructure.
Shutdowns due to electricity issues reduced fuel output by about 9 percent at the start of this year, Bimal Mukherjee, Kenya Petroleum’s chief executive officer was quoed as saying.
The planned conversion to a merchant refinery from a tolling refinery is estimated to cost the company $450 Million by January, he said. KPRL, as the company is known, said it will end all tolling deals and sell its fuels directly to distributors.
In a tolling arrangement a company provides the feedstock and collects the finished product, paying a fee for processing.
The KPRL refinery has a capacity to process 90,000 barrels a day of crude, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
In another development, Ghanaian cocoa production reached an “unprecedented” 1 million metric tons in the ongoing 2010-11 crop season, the Ghana Cocoa Board said in an e-mailed statement on Friday.
The light, or mid, crop in the world’s second-biggest producer of the chocolate ingredient totaled 87,384 tons in the 10 weeks to August 18, according to the Accra-based board.
