Tanzania’s fourth EACOP pumping station, in Geita region, has reached 88% completion and is expected to be finished before the end of October, according to the project’s acting Tanzania manager. A separate pumping station in Kagera region was inspected by a delegation from the Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation and the energy ministry on 8 August, part of routine monitoring of construction progress. Four of the pipeline’s six pumping stations sit on Tanzanian territory.
The 1,443-kilometre East African Crude Oil Pipeline runs from Uganda’s Lake Albert oil fields to the port of Tanga on Tanzania’s Indian Ocean coast. It is designed to carry up to 246,000 barrels of crude per day. The project has moved through several completion estimates over the past year, from 70% in late 2025 to figures above 90% by mid-2026 depending on the source and the specific section measured. Commissioning has been targeted for the fourth quarter of 2026, after an earlier goal of July slipped.
Tanzania’s stake in the outcome is direct. The government holds 15% of the pipeline entity and has already invested roughly 260 billion shillings in construction. Officials project the country will earn about $3.5 billion and create more than 18,000 jobs over the pipeline’s first 25 years of operation. The Port of Tanga is undergoing a separate $163 million modernisation specifically to handle the crude once it arrives, expanding capacity and deepening berths ahead of first exports.
The pipeline has not been without friction. Financing took longer to secure than developers originally planned, and the project has faced legal challenges tied to its environmental and social impact, raising questions in some analyses about whether its economic returns will match the investment made. None of that is resolved by this month’s construction progress; it sits alongside it.
What to watch: whether the remaining stations clear the same 88%-plus threshold on schedule, and whether the fourth-quarter commissioning date holds after the project’s previous deadline already slipped once.