TotalEnergies, the French energy group, and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation have announced the long-awaited final investment decision for Uganda’s oil projects, collectively referred to as the Lake Albert Development Project.
The decisions were announced at a ceremony held at Kololo Independence Grounds in Kampala attended by Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni and Philip Mpango, the vice president of Tanzania. Patrick Pouyanné, the chairman and chief executive of TotalEnergies and representatives of Cnooc, the Uganda National Oil Company, and the Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation were also in attendance.
The project sanctioning unlocks a total investment of close to $10bn that will be spent on developing the projects. The Lake Albert development includes the Tilenga and Kingfisher exploration and production oil projects, and the construction of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline from the oil projects to the Tanzanian coast.
“The Tilenga project, operated by TotalEnergies, and the Kingfisher project, operated by Cnooc, are expected to start producing in 2025 and to reach a cumulative plateau production of 230,000 barrels per day,” TotalEnergies said in a statement.
“The upstream partners are TotalEnergies (56.7 per cent), Cnooc (28.3 per cent) and Unoc (15 per cent). Production from the oil fields in Uganda will be transported to the port of Tanga in Tanzania through the EACOP cross-border pipeline, whose shareholders are TotalEnergies (62 per cent), Unoc (15 per cent), TPDC (15 per cent) and Cnooc (8 per cent).”
Mr Pouyanné announced the final decision on behalf of the project partners. “The development of Lake Albert resources is a major project for Uganda and Tanzania, and our ambition is to make it an exemplary project in terms of shared prosperity and sustainable development. We are fully aware of the important social and environmental challenges it represents,” he said.
Mr Pouyanné added: “We will pay particular attention to use local skills, to develop them through training programs, to boost the local industrial sector in order to maximize the positive local return of this project.”
The energy minister, Ruth Nankabirwa, said the occasion officially marks the beginning of the engineering, procurement, and construction phases of the project and, as a result, a commitment to produce first oil from the fields by 2025. The discovery of Uganda’s commercially viable oil and gas reserves was announced in 2006.
“It is during this phase that we expect Ugandans to accrue significant benefits and opportunities from the sector through local content,” Ms Nankabirwa said.
Ernest Rubondo, the executive director of the Petroleum Authority of Uganda, said the development stage will offer a lot more opportunities to local companies and, with world-class contractors setting up base in the country, lead to an increase in investment.
