The committee charged with organising Uganda’s first-oil ceremony has settled neither a venue nor a message, sources in the ministry of energy say, amid complaints about how it is led and run.

Uganda has left the first-oil date open until June 2027, and sources expect the ceremony to draw President Yoweri Museveni, Tanzania’s president and the chief executive of TotalEnergies.

The committee has two options and has made no serious move on either, sources say. One is Kabalega International Airport in Hoima, which would draw attention to an airport the works ministry says is about 99 per cent complete and due to start full commercial operations in January. The other is an event similar to the final investment decision ceremony held at Kololo Independence Grounds in Kampala on 1 February 2022.

A government source familiar with the committee’s work said it is still planning and setting parameters for the event and for its communications.

The committee is chaired by Herbert Magyezi Mugizi, a principal petroleum engineer in the ministry’s directorate of petroleum who also coordinates the East African Crude Oil Pipeline project. Sources say he was chosen by Irene Batebe, the ministry’s permanent secretary.

Batebe and Mugizi share a midstream background, the refining, transport and storage end of the oil business. Mugizi sits on the board of the Uganda National Oil Company, the state’s commercial arm in the sector, and Batebe chairs its refinery subsidiary. Batebe worked as a refining engineer before serving as acting commissioner of the petroleum directorate. Insiders blame the committee’s drift on the choice of chairman and question the reliance on midstream people.

Insiders say the committee meets when it chooses to, with little structure or planning. Its decisions mostly come from the top and rarely have buy-in from other members. Sources in the ministry also complain of a laissez-faire attitude to the work.

In further questionable conduct by its members, this website understands that they are fronting unproven and dubious consultants for some of the committee’s deliverables. In particular, insiders told this website that one of the jobs for which consultants have been proposed is a documentary on Uganda’s oil journey.

Its remit covers protocol, communications and organising the first-oil event. It has no communications plan and no plan to present the project, insiders say, and little to show for its work.

Oil companies are unhappy too, according to people familiar with their views. TotalEnergies has begun documenting its own journey in Uganda, which insiders say is work the committee should be doing. China’s CNOOC has also complained.

A committee of its own organised the 2022 ceremony, insiders say. Museveni commissioned a legacy publication on Uganda’s journey to first oil to mark the announcement, and a book, Uganda’s Oil Journey, followed in 2023, published by Independent Publications. The present committee has no comparable plan to document Uganda’s journey from the discovery of commercially viable reserves in 2006 to the first barrel, insiders say.

Samia Suluhu Hassan, Tanzania’s president, signed off on the pipeline at Entebbe in April 2021, and the Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation holds 15 per cent of the pipeline company. Museveni has travelled to Dar es Salaam twice this year, and the second visit produced a memorandum on an energy hub at Tanga between Uganda’s national oil company, the Tanzanian corporation and the trader Vitol.

Kenya staged a ceremony of its own on 30 September, when several heads of state, including Museveni, attended the groundbreaking of a refinery at Lamu. Museveni said there he would ask Samia why a planned regional refinery moved from Tanga to Lamu.

The source said members receive no compensation beyond their government salaries, and that the rewards are access to the president and a place in the record.

The committee’s lack of seriousness is yet more evidence of the energy ministry’s failure to prioritise first oil, and it leaves unanswered what the committee is required to deliver, by when and at what cost.

This is a developing story.