OIL & GAS: Uganda woos investors at African Energy Week 2023 in South Africa

. Plans bidding round in 2024

By Eyo Nsima

Uganda, a major East African nation, has urged investors to come and invest as it is blessed with huge energy potential, awaiting exploitation.

The nation made this known at the just-concluded African Energy Week 2023 in Cape Town, South Africa, adding that the government has provided adequate policies and incentives to enhance the growth of businesses.

Entitled `Invest in Uganda Energies’, the roundtable event was led by Ms. Irene Batebe, Permanent Secretary at the country’s Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development, and supported by representatives from the government-owned Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC) and the regulator, Petroleum Authority of Uganda (PAU).

Speaking at the event, Batebe said after almost 20 years of prospecting, planning, investing, engineering, and construction Uganda is on track to start pumping its first oil and gas in 2025, with two already licensed development and production areas forecast to produce 230,000 barrels of oil per day, adding that earnings from the new oil and gas sector will drive the country’s zeal to meet global environmental targets.

Ms. Batebe shared, “Our energy transition plan strategically exploits petroleum revenues for investments in renewable sources, aligning with ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) standards.”

Similarly, Mr. Ali Ssekatawa, Director for Legal and Corporate Affairs at PAU said: “To provide confidence to the investor we have worked for several years to set up a rigorous legal and regulatory framework specifically designed to boost both investor confidence and future tax revenues that will allow Uganda to drive its development agenda. That framework is now in place. Uganda offers a world-class business environment for investors.’’

The three-tiered investment opportunity strategy laid out today covers profitable opportunities to become involved in the blocks already licensed for production and the major infrastructure projects associated with opening up Uganda’s oil and gas frontier. These range from the strategic level, such as involvement with the planned 60,000 barrels a day refinery which will revolutionise petrol availability and pricing not just in Uganda but regionally, to the tactical level, such as catering, accommodation and logistics.

It covers the Joint venture and partnership on the next blocks that will be developed in the same geological space as the existing blocks. For example, UNOC has successfully won the competitive round to explore one of these new blocks, and with survey data returning highly favourable figures the company would entertain partnership approaches from established majors in the oil and gas production industry.

It also covers opportunities in entirely new geological spaces within Uganda, basins in the centre and the east of the country where early prospecting work indicates deposits just as rich as the area where the two blocks have been licensed for production. It is expected that a round of competitive tendering for these new areas will be launched as soon as mid-2024.

However, Ms. Proscovia Nabbanja, the Chief Executive Officer at the country’s National Oil Company (UNOC) revealed that, “Our investments in the oil and gas infrastructure across the entire petroleum chain stands as a testament to our commitment to contributing to economic transformation, innovation and excellence”.

“Uganda’s oil and gas revolution has so far been focused on the far west of the country close to its frontier with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, around Lake Albert, one of the Great Lakes of central Africa and part of the upper Nile system.

“The area has long been known for its unique geology, the lake formed as a small section of the western branch of the Great Rift Valley, a tear in the earth’s surface that runs 4,000 kms from Lebanon in the Middle East in a southerly direction through Africa.

“Locals have long reported what are known as `surface manifestations’ around Lake Albert, with soil darkened by oil seepage from deep underground, the sheen on small bodies of water and occasional sulphurous odours associated with oil.

“But it was not until 2006 that the first commercial quantities of oil and gas were confirmed by industry surveyors in what is known to geologists as the Albertine Graben, a large area that includes the lake as well as a large slice of land buffering the lake that runs roughly north-south as part of the western Rift.

“The two areas already licenced for development and production are mostly on land although some of the reservoirs extend underneath Lake Albert. Drilling work there will be done either from rigs on the shore using lateral drill techniques that stretch out under the relatively shallow waters of Lake Albert or traditional offshore rigs.

“The scale of Uganda’s potential far beyond these two blocks was referred to by President Yoweri Museveni in his keynote remarks that opened African Energy Week which runs 16-20 October, 2023 at the Cape Town International Convention Centre.”

`President Yoweri Museveni, had noted that, “Only 10% of the Albertine Graben of Uganda is licensed for petroleum development and other potential basins are also under consideration. Investors are welcome to invest in Uganda’s oil and gas sector.”