GlobalData: Long-awaited investment decision to bring Uganda into top six African oil producers

The final investment decision (FID) taken on Lake Albert Resources Development Project is the second-largest FID taken in the oil and gas industry in the last two years, said Rami Khrais, an oil and gas analyst at GlobalData.

“The project will be one of the largest oil developments seen in Africa over the last 20 years, expecting to recover over 1.5 billion barrels of oil,” Kharis said. “It marks a much-anticipated move for the government of Uganda, as the Tilenga and Kingfisher fields (part of the Lake Albert development) is the first FID to be taken on an oil project in Uganda and it will bring approximately $8 billion to its coffers.

If the production from Tilenga and Kingfisher is materialized according to the planned schedule, Uganda will be able to produce approximately 230,000 barrels of oil per day by the end of the decade, Kharis said.

“Tilenga will contribute via a Lake Albert pipeline with a 213,000 barrels per day capacity from the north. Kingfisher is expected to add another 40,000 barrels per day from the south, before the heavy oil enters EACOP heated pipeline. Uganda’s production is currently zero, so production from these two fields alone will put the country among the top six crude producers in Africa.”

If the project is successful, this cross-country collaboration can bring further infrastructure development and trading, such as the earlier envisaged Tanzania-Uganda trans-border gas pipeline, which had been stalled since 2016, according to GlobalData. This could potentially market Mozambique gas across Tanzania and Uganda for domestic use, seeing that Eni’s Coral South will finally come on stream later this year.