Kenya will keep allowing petrol and diesel with up to five times the sulphur its own fuel standards permit for another six months. The Ministry of Investments, Trade and Industry announced the extension on 11th November 2026, keeping the ceiling at 50mg/kg, the temporary limit it first set at the end of April when war in the Middle East made cleaner fuel hard to buy.
So the fuel going into your car or matatu stays the same as it has been since May, and it will stay that way well into 2027.
What the limit is and why it was raised
Sulphur is found naturally in crude oil, and refineries remove most of it before the fuel is sold. The limit is written in milligrams of sulphur per kilogram of fuel, which is the same as parts per million (ppm), so you’ll see 50mg/kg and 50ppm used for the same thing. The rules live in two standards: KS EAS 177:2025 for diesel and KS EAS 158:2025 for super petrol. The EAS stands for East African Standard, a standard shared across the East African Community, and the KS means Kenya has adopted it as its own.
Those standards cap sulphur at 10mg/kg. That’s recent. Trade Cabinet Secretary Lee Kinyanjui told the Senate on 6th May that Kenya only moved from 50ppm to 10ppm in August 2025. So for years before that, 50mg/kg was simply the fuel Kenya sold.
Then came the war. Kenya imports all of its fuel already refined, much of it under a government-to-government deal with Gulf suppliers Saudi Aramco, ADNOC and ENOC. Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow channel between Iran and Oman that tankers use to leave the Gulf, was disrupted, and Kinyanjui says refineries across the Middle East were damaged, so less 10mg/kg fuel was on offer. On 30th April the government waived the sulphur limit for six months. Allowing 50mg/kg fuel means Kenya can buy from more refineries. Only the sulphur limit changed; the rest of each standard still applies.
When senators questioned the decision in May, Kinyanjui told them: “Our fuel import options have been thoroughly compromised.” Then he put the choice plainly: “Between having perfect quality and availability, we chose availability.” He also told them the supply problems could last one or two years.
What the extension says
As in April, the request came from the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum, and the National Standards Council, the body that approves Kenyan standards, recommended it. The ministry’s statement says it follows a technical assessment of the continuing uncertainty in the Middle East and the disruption to petroleum supply, including the Strait of Hormuz. The point, it says, is to widen the sources of compliant fuel and protect Kenya from shortages. The measure will be reviewed at the end of the six months, or earlier if global supply improves.
What the statement leaves out is when those six months run. The first waiver was announced on 30th April for six months, so it would have run out around the end of October, and this extension is dated 11th November. The statement doesn’t say whether the new period follows on from the first one or starts from the announcement, so the limit ends somewhere between the end of April and mid-May 2027. It also doesn’t say what “improve” would have to look like for an early review, and it doesn’t mention pump prices.
What it means for you
For most cars on Kenyan roads, 50mg/kg is nothing new. They ran on it for years before August 2025, which is the point Kinyanjui made to the Senate when he said this is “the same fuel that the country has been consuming”. Newer vehicles are a different story. Diesels with particulate filters and other exhaust treatment systems are built around cleaner fuel, and when the waiver began in April we went through what higher-sulphur fuel does to modern engines and how to look after one over a long stretch of it. That stretch is now a year long.
Prices are a separate decision. EPRA, the regulator that caps pump prices every month, has Nairobi super petrol at KES 226.96 a litre and diesel at KES 227.76 until 14th November, after the October increase we covered, and the next review is due by that date.
We think drivers should plan on 50mg/kg fuel until at least May 2027. Kinyanjui told senators in May that supply could take one or two years to recover, and six months later the government has extended the waiver for the reasons it gave in April. Unless shipping through Hormuz recovers before the next review, we wouldn’t be surprised to see a third six months.
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