Kiboko oil leak exposed bad job, affected many people

An open tank containing a mixture of water and oil extracted from trenches at the Kiboko oil spill site in 2019. [File, Standard]

One morning in March 2019, in a remote village in Kibwezi, Makueni County, about 160 kilometers from Nairobi, residents awoke to find their main source of water contaminated and smelling of fuel.

The water they relied on for daily use and farming was no longer usable, sending the entire village into a panic.

When the community traced the source of their troubles, they discovered it right in their neighborhood. A Sh48.4 billion pipeline had recorded its first major fault just eight months after its commissioning.

Environmental activists and experts quickly raised the alarm, urging the government and the Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) to take immediate action to contain the spill and mitigate its impact. However, residents say the response was slow, and by then, many families had already been affected.

“It felt like a horror inflicted on our community. You’d fetch water, and it would smell of petrol. It scared us a great deal, given that this river is our main source of water,” Jane Kioko, a resident, confided to The Standard.

It is estimated that several thousand people directly depend on the river, particularly in the Kiboko and Emali areas.

“I couldn’t allow my children to drink from the river anymore. Fuel could be seen floating in the water; it was beyond our understanding,” said Risper Muasya, a mother of four who runs a food kiosk at Kiboko market.

The March 2019 oil spill was no ordinary incident. It seeped into the Kiboko River, a vital water source for the local community. This point, popularly referred to as Kilometre 305, exposed the quality of work that went into constructing the multi-billion-shilling Line 5.

Lebanese construction company Zakhem International Construction Ltd, headquartered in Cyprus, won the contract (SU/QT/032N/13) in July 2014 to build the new 450-kilometre pipeline. The project was intended to replace the aging Line 1, built in 1978, and enhance the nation’s fuel transportation capacity from Mombasa to Nairobi.

“This happened well within the defect liability period, having been noted from the very beginning of the construction of the line. Ideally, Kenya Pipeline should have tasked the contractor with fixing it,” noted an expert who sought anonymity.

Yet, as Kenya Pipeline scrambled with what to do, it became apparent that the Kenyan public was going to bear the burden of repair works at the Kiboko River crossing just six years after commissioning.

In February 2023, Kenya Pipeline issued a tender for the replacement of Line 5 at the Kiboko River crossing. According to KPC officials, the tender was to focus on another section of the pipeline, a kilometre away from where the previous spillage occurred.

“You need to understand the terrain we are dealing with. Fuel runs at very high pressure, and you can expect wear and tear at some point. We are fixing a different section of the pipeline, not the exact point where the leak happened,” explained a KPC official.

However, The Standard’s investigation showed that some experts working on the project had warned KPC about damaged pipes during the construction stage, but their concerns were ignored.

An expert familiar with the construction of Line 5 said the Kiboko damage occurred during the construction of the line and that this was communicated to Kenya Pipeline. Due to the sensitivity of the matter, he agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity. He witnessed several irregularities during his tenure and, for the first time, is revealing the details of the Kiboko River crossing scandal.

“Here’s the thing: from the word go, it was known that constructing the pipeline across the river was not going to be easy. But for a specialised contractor, this should have been done right. The river crossing was not supposed to be diverted from the beginning, according to NEMA requirements,” said the source.

“The only option was to employ a system called Horizontal Direct Drilling (HDD). So, we’d go about 200 metres away from the centre of the riverbed on one side and 250 metres from the other side, a total of 500 metres. In the process of drilling and pulling the pipe as it passed beneath the riverbed, about seven metres deep, the drilling feed was overfed, cutting a larger layer than it was supposed to. In that process, the shaft of the HDD gave in and crashed, severely damaging the pipe wall,” explained the expert.

Kenya Pipeline has defended its position, saying the line was commissioned without any defects and that the handover certificate was issued without any red flags. KPC maintains that the work done by Zakhem International Construction was above board.

A confidential document detailing the contract’s modus operandi in our possession indicates that upon completion of any work, the contractor would raise a request for inspection (RFI) to both the consultants and KPC for a joint inspection.

“The parties would inspect the works and sign off the RFI,” it states.

The Standard’s request for a comprehensive inspection report before the project was handed over to KPC has yet to be honoured by the state corporation.

“There is no way the inspection reports would fail to show such a glaring issue on Line 5 unless someone chose to look away,” one source claimed.

KPC has insisted that everything was above board. The construction of Line 5 was anchored on FIDIC rules — standardised rules widely applied in international construction and engineering to provide a fair and balanced framework for managing complex projects.

Although KPC says they conducted an elaborate clean-up, a section of residents we spoke to think otherwise. 

When the Kiboko oil spill was scrutinised before the Senate, senators were perturbed that Kenya Pipeline lacked a digital leak detection system on the new pipeline. Then Petroleum Cabinet Secretary John Munyes assured Kenyans that the spillage had been contained at the time and all the trenches had been cleaned.