Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) is decommissioning Kenya’s oldest pipeline, which has not been in use since December last year, after 43 years of service.
KPC is currently removing petroleum products from he Mombasa-Nairobi pipeline – called Line 1 – which contains 25 million litres of diesel.
Afterwards, the company will excavate the 14-inch pipeline and dispose of it as scrap metal. 279 km of the pipeline will be recovered and sold as scrap, while the first 171 km will be taken over by the Mombasa Water Company for use in supplying water to the coast from Mzima Springs.
The pipeline was replaced by the new pipeline, Line Five, as the main mode of transportation for petroleum products between Mombasa and Nairobi. Line Five was commissioned in 2018.
The new pipeline has a capacity to move one million litres of products per hour. Once the decommissioning of Line 1 is complete, the company plans to upgrade Line 5, increasing its capacity to be able to move 1.8 million litres of fuel per hour. This is up from the current one million litres per hour.
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