The Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA) issued its press release on 14th April 2026 announcing new maximum retail petroleum prices.
The price hikes which became effective on the morning of April 15, 2026 are as follows: Super Petrol and Automotive Diesel rose by KShs.28.69 and KShs.40.30 per litre respectively, while Kerosene was held flat.
In Nairobi, motorists and hauliers woke to Super Petrol at KShs.206.97 per litre and Diesel at KShs.206.84.
On the Coast, Mombasa – Kenya’s maritime gateway and the beating commercial heart of the East African seaboard – recorded KShs.203.69 and KShs.203.56 for petrol and diesel, respectively.
The coastal discount that geography and logistics once afforded is thin comfort when absolute numbers are this high. These are not merely regulatory adjustments. They are a national economic stress event, delivered in a single overnight revision.
To EPRA’s credit, the regulatory arithmetic is transparent. The landed cost data published alongside the price schedule tells its own unsettling story. Between February and March 2026, the weighted average cost of imported Super Petrol increased by 41.53 percent – from US$582.11 to US$823.87 per cubic metre.
Diesel fared worse, rising 68.72 percent from US$636.45 to US$1,073.82. Kerosene – the fuel of Kenya’s poorest households – recorded the most alarming movement of all: a 105.15 percent surge, from US$639.48 to US$1,311.93 per cubic metre.
That EPRA managed to hold kerosene pump prices constant is a fiscal intervention worthy of acknowledgement. This is achieved partly through the Petroleum Development Levy Fund and partly through a VAT reduction from 16 to 13 percent across all three product categories.
A measure was formalized by Cabinet Secretary for the National Treasury John Mbadi Ng’ongo under Legal Notice No. 69, dated the same day.
The government further deployed approximately KShs.6.2 billion from the Petroleum Development Levy to cushion the pump price impact. Although the stabilization tools are real, the question is how long they can be sustained against such violent international price volatility.
The Annex II cost breakdown published by EPRA is instructive in ways that headline prices are not. At the Nairobi pump, of the KShs.206.97 per litre charged for Super Petrol, taxes and levies alone account for KShs.82.09 – nearly forty percent of the retail price.
These include excise duty, Road Maintenance Levy, Petroleum Development Levy, Railway Development Levy, Anti-adulteration Levy, Merchant Shipping Levy, Import Declaration Fee, and VAT.
Diesel carries KShs.74.90 in taxes per litre; kerosene, KShs.68.03. This is the uncomfortable truth underlying every Kenyan fuel price conversation: The State is itself a significant component of what consumers pay at the pump. The fiscal dependency cuts both ways.
The government needs petroleum tax revenue to fund infrastructure, maintain roads, and service Railway Development Levy obligations tied to Standard Gauge Railway debt.
Consumers need affordable fuel to run businesses, transport produce, power generators, and move goods. When global markets spike as violently as they did in the February-to-March 2026 import cycle, both sides of this equation break simultaneously.
The cost breakdown also illuminates the magnitude of the Price Stabilisation Deficit – the gap between what fuel actually costs to land and sell, and what government policy allows the pump price to reflect.
For kerosene, this deficit stands at a remarkable KShs.108.10 per litre. For diesel, KShs.23.92. For Super Petrol, KShs.4.68. These are not trivial sums. Aggregated across the millions of litres consumed nationally each month, the Stabilisation Account is absorbing considerable financial exposure.
The concern is not that the mechanism exists – managed petroleum pricing is a legitimate policy tool, practised across much of Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond – but that the underlying structural conditions generating these deficits are not being addressed at source.
Kenya remains almost entirely dependent on imported refined petroleum products. It has no meaningful domestic refining capacity since the Mombasa-based Kenya Petroleum Refineries Limited effectively ceased commercial operations.
Every swing in international crude prices, every movement in the dollar-shilling exchange rate, every disruption in global shipping lanes is transmitted directly into Kenya’s national cost structure, with only the stabilisation fund and tax rate adjustments standing between global markets and the Kenyan household.
This structural exposure carries particular significance for Kenya’s productive sector. Diesel is not a lifestyle fuel. It powers the trucks that carry food from farms in the Rift Valley to markets in Nairobi. It runs the fishing vessels operating out of Mombasa, Malindi and Shimoni.
It drives the generators that keep cold chains functional, factories operational, and hospitals lit when the national grid falters. A KShs.40.30 per litre increase in diesel is a shock that ripples through every segment of the formal and informal economy. Transporters will pass it on through freight surcharges.
Farmers will absorb it through compressed margins on produce that global commodity markets price in dollars they do not earn. Small manufacturers will see input costs rise at precisely the moment consumer purchasing power is under pressure. The inflationary transmission is predictable and near-immediate. The Central Bank of Kenya will be monitoring the second-round effects on the consumer price index with considerable anxiety.
Mombasa and the coastal strip deserve particular attention here. The Coast has historically been Kenya’s economic underdog – commercially strategic, geographically endowed, but persistently under-served by national investment and structurally disadvantaged in the terms of trade it faces with the interior.
The Port of Mombasa handles the overwhelming majority of East Africa’s seaborne imports and exports. The Kenya Coast Guard Service and Kenya Navy operate from its waters. The fishing communities of the Indian Ocean coast – including many veteran seafarers who have worked cargo routes from the Gulf to South Africa over decades of service – depend on affordable diesel and kerosene for their livelihoods and domestic energy.
A pump price of KShs.203.56 per litre for diesel on the Coast, even fractionally lower than Nairobi, represents a meaningful proportion of the daily operating cost for a small fishing vessel or dhow operator. It is also a burden borne by households among the least equipped, economically, to absorb it.
The government’s response – VAT reduction, PDL Fund deployment, exclusion of the MT Paloma cargo from the price computation – reflects a sincere attempt to mitigate the worst of the impact. But these are essentially demand-side palliatives applied to a supply-side structural problem.
Kenya’s long-term energy security and pricing stability cannot rest indefinitely on tax levers and stabilisation funds calibrated against monthly import cost fluctuations. The investment case for regional refining capacity – whether within Kenya or through the East African Community framework – becomes more compelling with each price cycle of this magnitude.
So, does the urgency of accelerating the energy transition in productive sectors: expanding LPG penetration in households, electrifying commercial fleets where grid access allows, and investing in solar-powered irrigation and cold chain infrastructure that reduces the diesel dependency baked into agricultural logistics. None of these are quick fixes. All of them are necessary.