Future Outlook: Regional Readiness for Oil and Gas Development – Speech by Hon Minister of State for Minerals

On behalf of the Government and people of Uganda, I welcome you to this Oil and Gas Convention. I extend a special warm welcome to the international delegates tuned into this event across the globe.

I wish to recognize and appreciate the Uganda Chamber of Mines & Petroleum and the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development, together with all the other partners for organizing this Oil and Gas event.

The Conference is happening at a critical time in Uganda where tremendous progress has been made towards finalization of negotiations leading to the Final Investment Decision (FID) for Uganda’s Oil and Gas projects, which is expected by the end of this year.

Progress has also been made in taking forward the key projects leading up to First Oil. These projects involve putting in place the required infrastructure to produce and commercialize the Oil and Gas resources discovered in the Country.

These projects are technically mature. The infrastructure and investments required for their development have been agreed upon and the necessary processes to ensure that the environmental and social co-existence frameworks are being put in place. The key outstanding elements relate to the commercial frameworks.

We recently signed the Host Governments Agreement between the Oil Companies and Government of Uganda for the EACOP (East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline) project after a long period of negotiations. I, thereafter, led a team to Tanzania and held discussions with our counterparts where we agreed to fast track all pending agreements. This closes out a number of the outstanding commercial frameworks for the project.  This includes the agreements related to our Uganda National Oil Company taking on its role as Government’s commercial representative in each of the projects.

We know that the Oil pipeline will start in Buseruka Sub-county, Hoima District and run for 1,445km to the Tanzania Port City of Tanga and when completed, it will be the world’s longest heated Oil pipeline. We have also granted the Albertine Graben Refinery Consortium an additional 17 months to complete the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) studies and the Front-End Engineering Design of the project.

Since we discovered Oil in Uganda, there has been  alot of debate and negotiations on terms to be applied, amount of tax and other expenses, which has delayed the commencement of the project. It is good that these are reaching a close and we are ready for the project to commence the construction phase. The project is set to exploit 6 billion barrels of oil, of which 1.4 billion barrels is recoverable. This is over an area covering 40% of the total area that has been discovered to have this natural resource.

This is expected to bring into the country, investments of between US$ 15 to US$ 20 billion in the next 3 to 5 years, before commencement of oil production. This kind of investment is in excess of 60% of Uganda’s current GDP and is unprecedented.

We have made tremendous progress in; ensuring skills, enterprises and human resources development, putting in place an enabling legal framework, institutional capacity and local content, among so many others.

We now have laws in place to govern the upstream, midstream and downstream. All our Government institutions are operationalized with a team of very patriotic negotiators.

To facilitate the completion of all negotiations, His Excellency Dr. John Pombe Magufuli, President of the United Republic of Tanzania and I agreed to commence negotiations of all pending project agreements with immediate effect and to expedite the implementation of the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline project.

We can confidently say that we are ready for the commercialization of Uganda’s Oil. This has, often times, been seen as delaying but, in actual sense, it has been a continuous preparation process. There is no short cut for a country whose agenda is, sustainable exploitation of natural resources in order to create lasting value for society.

The conference theme, “Future Outlook: Regional Readiness for Oil and Gas Development” is timely for both the public and private sector players to get ready to utilize the opportunities that will accrue from the exploitation of the petroleum resources.

We will ensure that this growth and development transforms the livelihoods of our people by investing in other productive sectors of the economy such as Agriculture, Manufacturing and Tourism, in order to cause a multiplier effect across the country and the region.

Finally, I want to assure you all that Government is not only committed to delivering First Oil, but more importantly, to ensuring that the Country benefits from the efficient management of the resources.

With these few words, it is now my pleasure to declare this Conference open.

I thank you.