Rwandan President Paul Kagame has inaugurated a US$22mn fuel depot in Gasabo District’s Rusororo sector on the outskirts of Kigali
The depot was built and financed by Societe Petroliere (SP) with extra financing from EcoBank. It is the first fully automated fuel terminal in Rwanda with a 22mn-litre capacity. The facility can store 10mn litres of diesel, 10mn litres of essence and two million litres of jet fuel.
President Kagame said, “We celebrate the capacity gained in the petroleum sector for this capacity can solve a number of issues.”
He added that the depot comes at a “good time when the price of petrol is going down – an advantage to Rwanda that has no natural petroleum source”.
SP group chairperson Egide Gatera noted that the facility will bring Rwanda’s fuel storage to a long-awaited ambition.
"The already existing fuel depots would serve the country for only two weeks, but the country’s objective is to have a fuel storage facility that would, at least, serve the country for three months; we still have a gap of one-and-a-half-months in terms of fuel reservoirs. It is, therefore, a call to all my investors to join in establishing investments that would solve the issues our country faces,” said Gatera.
The facility is located on a 12 hectare piece of land and fulfils the requirement of a modernised and international fuel depot. It has a comprehensive fire fighting facility with water storage capacity of 1.5mn litres, loading and offloading gantries, which can handle seven loading and three offloading trucks simultaneously, CCTV surveillance, a well-equipped laboratory for product quality management and parking capacity of more than 100 long haul trucks.
According to Gatera, SP further plans to increase the storage capacity of the depot to reach 60mn litres within the next five years.
