Kenya Gives Investigators 60 Days on Fuel Case

Eastern Africa · Energy

The Kenya fuel probe into three former energy officials now has a clock on it, after the Senate Energy Committee demanded a consolidated status report from investigators within 60 days. Nobody has been charged, and the detectives have published nothing since arresting the three in April.

What the Senate asked for

The committee’s recommendation is broader than a single agency. It asks the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum, the Public Service Commission, the State Corporations Advisory Committee and the boards of the energy regulator and the pipeline company, together with all relevant investigative agencies, to report jointly.

The clock runs from the adoption of the committee’s report rather than from any calendar date. Business Daily reports the deadline lapses on 19 October 2026, which implies the committee adopted its report around 20 August. We have not seen the Senate’s own record of that adoption.

The target everyone is watching is the Directorate of Criminal Investigations. Its detectives travelled to Saudi Arabia as part of the inquiry and have published no findings.

The directorate has said publicly that the three men are not off the hook despite having resigned from government.

The three men at the centre of the Kenya fuel probe

Mohamed Liban was Principal Secretary for Petroleum and Joe Sang was managing director of Kenya Pipeline Company. Daniel Kiptoo was director-general of the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority.

All three were arrested on 2 April 2026 and released on cash bail. The allegations concern manipulation of fuel stock data and the procurement of an emergency petrol cargo at inflated prices.

None has been charged. These remain allegations, and the investigating authority has produced no public evidence.

All three have since left their posts.

How a closed strait produced a scandal

The origin is geopolitical rather than domestic. Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz stranded a Gulf Energies vessel carrying 85,000 tonnes of petrol at Jebel Ali.

Kenya held 124.39 million litres of petrol for its local and transit markets as of 19 March 2026, about sixteen days of cover. On that arithmetic the country faced a stock-out from 4 April.

The National Security Council Committee ordered backup imports. On 25 March, One Petroleum and Oryx Energies were each awarded contracts for 81.3 million litres, which is roughly 60,000 tonnes of petrol.

Hass Petroleum and E3 Energy also bid. The awards were made outside the normal government-to-government framework.

The price, and the cargo that failed

The pricing is where the case lives. One Petroleum quoted a premium of about US$290 a tonne, against roughly US$84 for a comparable quantity under Kenya’s arrangement with Saudi Aramco, ADNOC and Emirates National Oil Company.

The Energy Ministry alleged in April that the emergency import had not been necessary at all, because Saudi Aramco Trading Fujairah, ADNOC Global Trading and Emirates National Oil Company Singapore were all meeting their contractual obligations.

Then the cargo itself became a problem. The One Petroleum vessel was owned by BP and bound for Angola, and its petrol failed Kenyan fuel standards.

One Petroleum told the Senate in June that no penalties or formal liabilities had been imposed on it by the government, and that it had made no claim against the government.

Why this matters beyond Kenya

Uganda stores fuel in Kenya Pipeline Company reserves, so a Kenyan supply failure is a regional one. The northern corridor carries fuel for a landlocked interior.

It is also a test of the government-to-government import framework that Gulf state trading arms bid into. If emergency cargoes can be bought outside that framework at three and a half times the premium — the freight, insurance and handling surcharge added on top of the cargo’s price at the loading port — the framework is worth less than it appears.

For traders and financiers the practical question is whether the case is prosecuted or quietly filed. The Senate’s 60 days is an attempt to force that answer.

The committee has no power to prosecute. What it has is the ability to make the silence visible.

There is a reputational cost to Kenya either way. A case this public that ends without charges tells traders one thing about enforcement, and a case that ends in convictions tells them another.

Sixty days is not long in a criminal investigation that has already run five months. It is long enough to establish whether anyone intends to finish it.

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