President William Ruto’s government was taken to court by 96 oil companies after he struck deal with Middle Eastern oil giants to supply the country with fuel.
The government-to-government deal was to see three firms led by Saudi Arabia’s richest oil firm, Aramco, export fuel to Kenya.
The other companies involved in the deal were Abu Dhabi National Oil Corporation Global Trading (ADNOC) and Emirate’s National Oil Company (NOC).
Once the fuel was brought to Kenya, the three firms were to sell all their products to three locally identified companies.
The local companies handpicked to receive the oil include; Gulf Energies, Oryx and Galana Oil Kenya Limited.
The three companies were given tender by the company to be solely bidding for oil for a period of nine months.
This led to the rest of the locally-based companies moving to court claiming that the government was edging them out of the market.
Before the government deal was announced in March 2023, over 100 companies had placed their bids for the tender to import fuel.
With the current 9-month deal, the 96 companies will be left in the cold and can only seek to bid in 2024.
In the meantime, they will resort to buying imported fuel from Gulf, Oryx and Galana fuel companies.
President William Ruto on Tuesday, April 11, revealed that the deal was phenomenal and was saving the country Ksh68 billion every month as well as easing pressure on the dollar.
“As a country, we can buy fuel using local currency and from this month of April, all our fuel marketers will be able to use the shilling in buying our fuel products,” the President touted the deal.
The deal is expected to ease pressure on the dollar since the 96 companies will now be forced to buy the imported fuel using local currency.
