|Bitumen Africa|

Sunday, June 16, 2024 10:00 AM

Uganda more than doubled it's annual budget for the oil and gas industry as it moves closer to the start of production, targeted for the next financial year.

The government allocated 920.9 billion shillings ($246 million) to the sector for the year through June 2025, Finance Minister Matia Kasaija said Thursday in a speech in the capital, Kampala.

That compares with 447 billion shillings in the previous budget.

Funding will be centered on the 900-mile East African Crude Oil Pipeline, or EACOP, which will transport crude from fields in landlocked Uganda to Tanzania’s port of Tanga.

Total Energies SE is leading development of the country’s oil fields and the $5 billion pipeline, along with partners Uganda National Oil Corp, Tanzania Petroleum Development Corp. and China’s Cnooc Ltd.

Money will also be channeled to a planned 60,000 barrel-a-day refinery. Uganda in January said it had picked Dubai-based Alpha MBM Investments to lead development of the $4 billion plant, which will supply local and regional markets.

The government is targeting startup in 2028.

Funding will also be allocated to a petroleum geoscience laboratory, and to procuring thousands of liquefied petroleum gas cylinders for clean cooking, Kasaija said.

The country has about 6.5 billion barrels of oil resource, holding as much as 1.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil.