Why Kenya is ditching pipeline plans to ship Turkana oil by train

Kenya plans to build 640 kilometres of new metre-gauge railway to carry crude oil from the South Lokichar Basin in Turkana County to Mombasa, ditching an earlier proposal for a dedicated crude oil pipeline.

The government wants the line, running from Rongai in Nakuru County to the oilfields in Turkana, completed by December 2031.

The railway is estimated to cost Sh220 billion (USD1.7 billion).

The decision to go with metre-gauge rather than standard-gauge came down to money and geography.

Building a standard-gauge line on the same route would cost at least Sh300 billion more.

Metre-gauge track also handles the steep, uneven terrain of the Rift Valley far better, requiring fewer tunnels and less earthmoving.

The push for a railway follows Cabinet's approval of a field development plan submitted by Gulf Energy Limited, a Nairobi-based firm that bought the Turkana oil blocks from British explorer Tullow Oil in 2025.

The plan, now before Parliament for ratification, sets out how the country will finally begin producing oil after more than a decade of delays.

One of the main challenges with Turkana crude is that it is waxy.

It solidifies at low temperatures and therefore has to be kept warm to flow.

In the first phase, crude will be trucked from Lokichar to Eldoret, then loaded onto the existing metre-gauge railway for the journey to Mombasa.

That trucking phase is expected to start by late 2026, with output at around 20,000 barrels per day.

Later phases of the project could push production to about 50,000 barrels per day, requiring insulated steam-heated rail wagons capable of moving the thick crude over the long haul to the coast.

To make the railway financially sustainable over the long term, it will carry more than just oil.

The line could also be used to move cargo such as clinker, cement and minerals, giving it broader commercial value and reducing its dependence on oil price swings.

For communities in northern Kenya, it would open up a logistics route that could bring down the cost of construction materials and farm inputs in a region that has long been poorly connected to the rest of the country.

The railway option also sidesteps the financing headaches that killed previous pipeline plans.

Earlier proposals centred on a roughly Sh193 billion pipeline from Lokichar to Lamu under the LAPSSET corridor.

Those plans stalled after regional partners, including Uganda, made separate arrangements.

Uganda is advancing its own Lake Albert oil development with a 1,443-kilometre pipeline to the Tanzanian coast.

With those partners gone and financing for a Kenya-only pipeline proving difficult to secure, the government pivoted to extending the existing rail network instead.

The project remains part of the broader LAPSSET framework, the Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport corridor, though the current focus has shifted from Lamu to connecting Turkana to the established port infrastructure in Mombasa via the Nakuru link.

Roads and Transport Cabinet Secretary Davis Chirchir, who appeared before a joint parliamentary committee in February, told lawmakers that the shift from road to rail is a priority for cutting highway congestion and improving safety.

He warned that without a rail extension to Turkana, peak production of 50,000 barrels per day could put as many as 1,500 trucks on the roads every day.