00:01Christine Mudeo cooks with kerosene, but not because she wants to.
00:05When heated, kerosene emits toxic fumes and Christine knows this.
00:09The empty gas cylinder in her kitchen tells a story of better days.
00:13Right now, kerosene is what she can afford.
00:17At the end of the day, it costs me about €1.30 for kerosene
00:20and I can only afford to buy small quantities worth 30 cents
00:24because I usually don't have the money.
00:26When conflict flared in the Middle East,
00:28global fuel prices surged, including kerosene.
00:31In March, the Kenyan government stepped in,
00:34absorbing the cost before it reached the pump.
00:37Prices have steadied since the ceasefire in Iran was announced,
00:40but the crisis has exposed a bigger structural problem in the country.
00:45Kenya imports every drop of fuel it uses.
00:49The country has no strategic oil reserves,
00:51only a 21-day stock required by industry regulators.
00:55And that leaves a country exposed to price
00:57and supply shocks every time a shipping route is closed.
01:02This vulnerability runs deeper.
01:04All of the oil used in Kenya comes from the Middle East
01:07under long-term agreements with Gulf suppliers.
01:11Energy expert Ogutu Okudo says that single-source dependency is the core issue.
01:16If you're trying to go to destination A, it's important to have two different routes that go there.
01:21What has happened in the geopolitics in the Middle East has changed everything for a very long time.
01:26I don't see things going back to the norm.
01:28And that means we're going to have to pivot and we're going to have to look at the next best
01:33option.
01:34Kenya's own offshore resources may hold part of the answer.
01:38The country launched oil exploration years ago but halted it before meaningful investment took hold.
01:44Okudo says that while the geology is promising, exploration needs funding.
01:49To make an investment attractive, you need to invest in that investment.
01:54If you decided to go and sell a piece of land outside there right now,
01:58you would get more if you decided to fence the land, if you did a study on its soil, if
02:04you built a road.
02:05And that equivalent in Kenya is we need to invest in more seismic studies.
02:11Okudos are long-term solutions while Christine Mudeu is living in the short term,
02:16waiting to see whether the next disruption will be one she can survive.
02:20We have children and we have to cook for them.
02:22That means even if the costs go up, we will just continue to make pleas for it to be lowered.
02:27But we still have to buy it.
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