President Yoweri Museveni is expected to commission first oil on 15 December at the first pump station of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline in Hoima, according to a person familiar with the arrangements.

The government has not confirmed the date or the venue. Uganda Business News put questions to the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development, the Petroleum Authority of Uganda and the Uganda National Oil Company, and had received no reply by publication.

The source did not say what the ceremony would mark. A commissioning event is not production, and it is not the loading of a first cargo. The date would also fall well before the window UNOC gave this month, when Kristina Kasebayo, its head of compliance, said production would start “before the end of our financial year”, which closes on 30 June 2027.

Pump Station One at Kabaale, in Hoima district, is where crude from the Kingfisher and Tilenga fields is to be combined before it enters the 1,443km heated pipeline to Tanga in Tanzania. Officials told Parliament in September that the pipeline should be ready to receive crude by mid-December. A mid-December ceremony would be consistent with that readiness date.

Edith Tushabe, UNOC’s head of commercial and business development, told S&P Global Commodity Insights on 8 September that the first shipment of Pearl Sweet crude was expected to load into a Suezmax tanker in December 2026. UNOC’s statement this month did not say whether that target stands. A ceremony on 15 December would not itself put a cargo on a ship, because the heated pipeline must be commissioned and filled before crude can be loaded at Tanga.

Completion figures given to MPs this month were 92 per cent for the pipeline, 90 per cent for Kingfisher and 78 per cent for Tilenga. Sandra Santa Alum, the state minister for economic monitoring, said Kingfisher alone could not support commercial production.

Official dates have moved before. A schedule reported by the Daily Monitor in January put technical commissioning at 31 July and political commissioning in October. The July date passed without first oil, and no October event has been announced.

Museveni took part in a ceremony in Hoima district on 2 September at which Uganda named its crude Pearl Sweet, AFP reported. Irene Batebe, the ministry’s permanent secretary, said then that Kingfisher would start at 28,000 barrels a day by the end of the year, the agency reported.

A Suezmax carries about 1mn barrels, so a first cargo from Kingfisher alone at that rate would take about five weeks to assemble, before any crude needed to fill the pipeline. The calculation is ours and rests on assumptions that EACOP has not confirmed.

The budget assumes commercial production later this year and Shs1.8tn in petroleum revenue in 2026/27, so the timing of the first barrel matters to the Treasury as well as to the ceremony planners.

This article will be updated.