Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is counting on TotalEnergies SE and Cnooc Ltd. to produce oil from its fields in four years, laying the groundwork for a new regional fuel hub.
The East African nation hopes to reach a daily production of 230,000 barrels, although that is far less than Africa’s largest producer, Nigeria, but will still make Uganda larger than some OPEC members on the continent.
Production starting in 2025 has been agreed with the oil companies “and nobody is going to change that,” Museveni said in an interview with Bloomberg News last Sunday, referring to his pact with French and Chinese explorers. There is nothing pending for the government to do about starting production, and a final investment decision will be announced “soon,” Museveni said.
Other prospects, including fields in South Sudan and Uganda’s planned 60,000 barrels per day plant, could make up a larger oil network. “Now that we have our own oil, there is no way we can continue to import refined products with all that additional transportation cost,” Museveni said.
Uganda is among several African nations – such as Senegal and Mozambique – that hope to profit from planned oil and gas projects, even as many countries seek to reduce dependence on fossil fuels due to the effect on global warming. The country also faces opposition from civil society groups, whose concerns about the impact of the planned pipeline on the environment and local communities have led potential funders such as Standard Bank Group Ltd. to evaluate their own involvement.
They are “just wasting people’s time,” Museveni said of the non-governmental organizations opposing the project. Uganda accounts for a small fraction of greenhouse gas emissions compared to global industrial superpowers like China and the US.
Oil will continue to be important to the world as it has other uses besides fuel, including making plastics, petrochemicals and fertilizers, Museveni said.
The president’s timeline for the projects will be challenging. Uganda’s oil reserves were discovered about 15 years ago, which was followed by continued delays that included changing the export route. The breaking ground for the $4 billion refinery has also been elusive. International companies are set to develop the fields, as well as a 1,443-kilometer (897-mile) heated pipeline to transport the crude to the port of Tanga in Tanzania.
