Bobi Wine, a pop star-turned-politician and an opposition candidate in Uganda’s presidential election next week, will review all oil contracts the country has with international oil firms and revise any deals that aren’t favorable for Ugandans.
“We shall study all agreements,” Wine told Reuters in an interview published on Thursday, a week before Uganda – an aspiring oil-producing nation – holds presidential elections on January 15.
“And any part in those agreements that does not favour Ugandans will definitely be revised,” said Wine, who will be running for president against incumbent Yoweri Museveni in a second consecutive election after winning about 35% of the vote in 2021.
Museveni has ruled Uganda for 40 years and his critics accuse him and his leadership of using violence to suppress dissent.
France’s oil and gas supermajor TotalEnergies and China’s state-controlled CNOOC have production-sharing agreements with Uganda and are expected to begin oil production later this year, after years of stalled development amid environmental controversies and delays in the construction of a major pipeline to a port in Tanzania for export.
The $5-billion East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), which is planned to export crude oil from Uganda via a port in Tanzania, is now nearly completed, moving landlocked Uganda a step closer to becoming an oil exporter.
EACOP, a controversial pipeline project that has seen a lot of environmental opposition and planning and construction delays, is about three-quarters completed, the Petroleum Authority of Uganda (PAU) said at the end of November.
With pipeline construction progressing, Uganda now aims to begin oil production from its oilfields in its Albertine rift basin in the west in the second half of 2026.
Moreover, Uganda’s state-owned oil company, Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC), has recently confirmed it has identified nine potential oil wells in the Kasuruban block containing “significant new crude oil deposits,” estimated at about 600 million barrels of recoverable crude.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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