Uganda’s parliament on Tuesday passed a bill allowing the state-owned oil company Uganda National Oil Company (Unoc) to source and supply oil to the domestic market.
If approved by President Yoweri Museveni, the bill will end the country’s decades-long practice of relying on Kenyan companies for oil imports.
MPs who supported the bill said it would reduce fuel costs by cutting out middlemen and “fuel cartels that arbitrarily influence fuel pricing”.
Uganda’s Energy Minister Ruth Nankabirwa recently said that the country needed to stop importing oil through Kenyan companies as it “exposed Uganda to occasional supply vulnerabilities where Ugandan oil marketing companies were considered secondary whenever there were supply disruptions”.
Uganda, a landlocked country, imports more than 90% of its fuel through Kenya’s Mombasa port and the remainder through Tanzania’s Dar es Salaam port, according to Ms Nankabirwa.
The country is also seeking to shift more of its oil transportation via Tanzania.