Essar Energy has completed acquiring a 50% stake from Shell, BP & Chevron in Kenya Petroleum Refineries Ltd, this is a subsidiary of Essar Group the parent of Essar telecommunications which has a majority stake in Yu.

The Govt of Kenya holds the remaining 50% stake in KPRL which processes about 4M metric tonne per annum.

Essar Oil is currently operating a 280000 bpd refinery in India. The Mombasa refinery is the only refinery in Eastern Africa and currently produces LPG, gasoline, diesel, kerosene and fuel oil. The refinery is planned to be upgraded by adding secondary units at a project cost of USD 450M.

KPRL’s products are sold into the Kenyan market and exported to neighbouring countries including Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda. Demand for petroleum products in these markets is estimated at 5M tonnes per annum.

Essar also operates “yu”. It launched the GSM service in Oct 2008 and already has approx. 400,000 subscribers on its network mostly in Nairobi and Mombasa

About Essar Energy

Essar Energy is a fully integrated oil & gas company of international scale with strong presence across the value chain — from exploration & production to oil retail. It has a portfolio of onshore and offshore oil & gas blocks worldwide, with about 70,000 sq km available for exploration. It also has over 310,000 bpd (barrels per day) of crude refining capacity together with operating over 1,240 Essar branded oil retail outlets in various parts of India.

About KPRL

The highly ineffecient KPRL serves the East African region with lpg, petrol, diesel, fuel oil and bitumen and grease. It has two refinery complexes with distillation, hydrotreating, catalytic reforming and bitumen production units. Crude oil from the Middle East is transported by sea to Kipevu Oil Jetty in Kilindini Harbour (3km from the complex at Changamwe) and then carried by pipeline to the refinery. The finished products are also mostly transferred to customers by pipeline.