You are reading: Multinational Oil Development In Uganda Set To Kick Start.
Doubts set in if the local population will reap a fair share of the Ugandan Multinational oil development business.
‘’We have grown with the industry”, says Kabuchu in his expansive office in Kampala.
In the 1990s Edward Kabuchu and his brother were mining tungsten in western Ugandan when they were approached by a foreign company looking for oil in the region.
Kabuchu was understandably excited on 11 April when the Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni signed three milestone oil agreements with his Tanzanian counterparts Samia Suluhu Hassan.
After several years of stasis, the main construction phase of the project now seems just around the corner.
Over the next few decades, the French oil company Total and the China National Offshore oil Corporation (CNOOC) plans to extract more than a billion barrels of commercially recoverable oil from the Lake Albert region of Western Uganda.
The project will bring $15bn of investment into Uganda, a country with a GDP of $38bnin 2020.
The government says that over $4bn of that money will flow into the coffers of Ugandan companies, supplying everything from construction materials and transport to legal services and food.
The question here is Can Uganda succeed where other countries have failed? Because the oil industry- technical specialized, and capital-intensive- has a track record of operating in enclaves, extracting resources without building strong linkages to local economies.
The long-awaited development, including the construction of a 1.443km pipeline to the Tanzanian coast, is set to begin this year with the first oil expected in 2025.
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