(Business in Cameroon) - In 2022, Cameroon will continue with the construction of oil storage infrastructure to guarantee supply in the country. On November 26, 2021, while presenting the government’s 2022 economic, financial, social, and cultural program before the parliament, Prime Minister Joseph Dion Nguté announced that new oil products storage tanks and a 1,000 metric tons liquefied petroleum gas storage tank will be built in Bonabéri, Littoral region.
The construction works announced by the Prime Minister are part of a large program whose long-term goal is to boost the storage capacities of the Cameroon Petroleum Depot Company (SCDP) by 34,500 metric cubes in Yaoundé, Douala, and Bélabo. The ambition was stated by Minister of Water and Energy Gaston Eloundou Essomba in December 2020 while defending his ministerial department’s 2021 budget before the national assembly.
“The fire outbreak that occurred at Sonara [ed. note: Cameroon’s only national refinery] forcing the country to resort to imports as the only way to supply the national territory in oil products highlighted the need to improve SCDP’s logistics, notably its storage capacities,” Minister Eloundou Essomba told the MPs.
To fund the projects, Cameroon officially added XAF2 to the right of way per liter of oil products stored in SCDP’s plants. At the time, the Minister of Water and Energy explained that 48% of the products stored in the plants were emergency stocks. Meaning that the oil product distributors operating in Cameroon were able to use just a little above 50% of SCDP’s storage facilities since the safety stocks can not be brought out of storage facilities if there is no emergency.
According to a report by the Technical Committee for Rehabilitation of Public and Para public Sector Enterprises (CTR) on state companies and institutions performance in 2019, SCDP’s storage capacity needs to be boosted by 108,000 m3 for white products (gasoline, diesel, kerosene, etc.) and 15,000 metric tons (MT) for LPG or domestic gas.
BRM