Tanzania plans to complete
construction of a crude oil pipeline from Uganda in 2020 at an estimated cost
of $3.5 billion, its energy ministry said on Monday.
Uganda said in April it
would build a pipeline, to ship out crude from its fields in the Albertine rift
basin, through Tanzania rather than Kenya, which had wanted to secure the
export route.
Picking a route is vital for
oil firms to make final investment decisions on developing reserves found in
Uganda and Kenya, which are among a string of hydrocarbon finds on Africa’s
eastern seaboard. Tanzania has found natural gas offshore.
“The pipeline will have a
length of 1,443 kilometres… and is expected to be completed in 2020,”
Tanzania’s ministry of energy and minerals said in a statement.
Tanzania said three oil
firms operating in Uganda – London-listed Tullow Oil, France’s Total and
China’s CNOOC – have all agreed to participate in the construction of the
pipeline, with building work scheduled to start in June 2017.
Land-locked Uganda found
crude oil reserves estimated by government geologists at 3.5 billion barrels in
Hoima near the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in 2006
but production has repeatedly been pushed back.
The jointly developed
pipeline will carry Ugandan crude oil to Tanzania’s Indian Ocean port of Tanga
for export.
Report by Reuters/FT
No comments:
Post a Comment