Tanzania, Uganda signs crude oil pipeline partnership agreement
Tanzania and Uganda governments have joined oil companies Total of France and CNOOC of China in signing a series of accords yesterday that will pave way for the construction of a pipeline to carry crude from Uganda to a Tanzanian port on the Indian Ocean.
A joint press release says the agreements signed yesterday by Uganda president Yoweri Museveni and his Tanzanian counterpart Samia Suluhu Hassan mean “all outstanding issues related to the EACOP Project have been amicably resolved”.
It also stipulated that a shareholding agreement had been reached and that companies could now award construction contracts.
In 2020, Museveni and Magufuli launched the construction of a 1,445-kilometre oil pipeline that connects landlocked Uganda and Tanzania.
Uganda had initially planned to connect the project with Kenya before changing its position in 2016 and opted for the Tanzania route.
Uganda said it dropped Kenya after it realised it would be cheaper using Tanzania’s Tanga port.
It added that the Kenyan route would delay the project, as it lacked roads and was always affected by monsoon winds for up to three months annually.
Kenya and Uganda had in August 2015 agreed to jointly build a 1,500-km (930-mile) pipeline to pump oil from Uganda to the Indian Ocean
The Kshs.382.5 billion ($3.5 billion) project led by Total and CNOOC provides for the management of oilfields in the Lake Albert region in Uganda’s west and proposes pumping the crude to the coast across Tanzania via the East African Crude Oil Pipe Line (EACOP).
The discovery of the crude reserves in 2006 sparked hopes in Uganda that the country could become an oil Eldorado, but drilling and pipeline projects failed in the face of commercial and tax disputes.
Beneath the waters and on the banks of Lake Albert, a 160 kilometre natural border separating Uganda from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, lie some 6.5 billion barrels of crude, of which about 1.4 billion barrels are currently accessible.
The Uganda reserves could last 25 to 30 years with a peak production of 230,000 barrels per day.
The EACOP is a heated pipeline stretching 1,400 kilometres (900 miles), including a 300 km (180 mile) stretch within Uganda, that will carry the crude to the Tanzanian port of Tanga.
