In laying the foundation for a new regional fuel hub, President Museveni is relying on TotalEnergies SE and Cnooc Ltd to produce oil from Uganda’s fields over a four-year time frame.
The goal is to reach a daily output of 230,000 barrels which is way less than what Nigeria, Africa’s biggest producer, pumps. However, it is predicted that that will make Uganda bigger than some Organisation for Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) members on the continent.
In an interview with Bloomberg News on Sunday 31st October, 2021, referring to his pact with the French and Chinese explorers, the President said that output starting by 2025 was agreed on with the oil companies “and nobody will change that.”
He said there was nothing pending for the government to do with regards to starting production and a final investment decision will be announced “soon”.
Fields in South Sudan and Uganda’s planned 60,000 barrel-a-day plant, together with other prospects on the continent could make up a larger oil network. “Now that we have our own oil, there’s no way we can continue importing refined products with all that additional transport cost,” Museveni said.
Even as many countries seek to cut reliance on fossil fuels because of the effect on global warming, a number of African nations including Uganda, Senegal, Mozambique, expect to profit from planned oil and gas projects.
Uganda however, faces opposition from civil society groups who are concerned about the planned pipeline’s impact on the environment and local communities. This has urged potential funders like Standard Bank Group Ltd to assess their involvement in the project.
To these non-governmental organizations President Museveni said, “They are just wasting people’s time.”
The logic behind this being that compared to global industrial superpowers like China and the United States, Uganda is responsible for a small fraction of greenhouse-gas emissions.
He stressed the fact that oil inevitably remains important to the world given that it has other uses besides fuel, including the manufacture of plastics, petrochemicals and fertilizer.
The timeline set for the project will however be a challenge given the fact that Uganda’s oil reserves were discovered about 15 years ago followed by ongoing delays including changing the export route. In addition to that, breaking ground for the $4 billion refinery has also been elusive and finally the international companies are set to develop the fields as well as a 1,443 kilometre (897 mile) heated pipeline to transport the waxy crude to the port of Tanga in Tanzania.
All of these may culminate in delays in achieving the set goals for the project within a four-year time frame.
