The Energy Committee report on findings into an oil spill at Kiboko in March 2019 will find it’s way into the Senate floor in the next session.
The report by the nine-member committee chaired by Senator Ephraim Maina has been handed to the Senate Clerk.
The leak from the Kenya Pipeline Line 1 occured on March 30, 2019, some 400 metres away from Kiboko Springs in Makueni. The pipe was damaged by a rock when it was being laid by Zakhem International nine months earlier.
“A rock was found within the soft pudding that was used to protect the pipeline,” the report states.
By July 2019, KPC had removed up to 194,000 litres from the area but Kiboko Springs still remained seriously contaminated.
Senator Maina’s panel probed the incident after a petition by Makueni Senator Mutula Kilonzo Jr raised concerns that residents could be using polluted water. f
The Senate committee said that KPC failed to install a Leak Detection System on the Sh48 billion Line V and also failed to properly monitor the installed Impressed Current Cathodic Protection System which could have aided the detection of the leak.
Line V began operations in July 2018 and runs for 450km parallel to the 40-year old Line I.
On Monday, KPC chairman John Ngumi said that he could not comment on the report he saw.
In May, the Water Resources Authority also issued a precautionary notice advising the public not to use Kiboko water but that notice was later lifted on November 14 when the WRA advised that “the water resources of Kiboko springs of Kiboko River are free from oil and grease”.
The report states that ‘extensive analysis by professionals from the University of Nairobi and Bureau Veritas S.A. produced nil results for oil and grease in Kiboko Springs’.
The panel asked KPC to compensate Kiboko residents but the spill was confined to a 10-acre farm owned by a Mr Mutiso but all the locals have been hoping for compensation.
The report said KPC should continue supplying water bowsers to Kiboko residents and to provide a medical camp to check residents who feel they might have been affected by the spill.
