Ugandan Energy Minister, Ruth Nankabirwa has announced on Tuesday, that it is negotiating with an investment company led by a member of Dubai’s royal family to develop a planned $4 billion refinery for some of its crude oil.
The African Country, in July last year, terminated negotiations with a consortium that included a unit of U.S. firm Baker Hughes over its failure to mobilise financing in time.
Uganda is counting on the 60,000 barrel-per-day refinery for its nascent hydrocarbons industry.
Nankabirwa said “Expressions of interest were received from several potential investors and they were evaluated following which a memorandum of understanding was signed on the 22 of December 2023,”
Negotiations on the key commercial details between the government and United Arab Emirates-based Alpha MBM Investments started on January 16 and are expected to be completed within three months, she added.
Alpha MBM Investments’ website says it is led by Sheikh Mohammed bin Maktoum bin Juma Al Maktoum, a member of Dubai’s royal family.
Uganda expects to start pumping crude commercially in 2025 from fields in the Albertine rift basin in the country’s west near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The fields are jointly operated by the Ugandan government via the state-run Uganda National Oil Company, China’s CNOOC and France’s TotalEnergies
President Yoweri Museveni’s government wants to process some of its crude domestically to boost employment and benefit from technology transfer.
Nankabirwa also said Uganda had on Tuesday issued a licence to CNOOC to produce Liquefied Petroleum Gas at a plant to be constructed in the Kingfisher development area that CNOOC operates.
Kingfisher is one of Uganda’s two commercial oil development fields. The second, Tilenga, is operated by TotalEnergies.
The minister did not say how much gas CNOOC would produce annually.
Uganda’s gas reserves are estimated at 500 billion cubic feet.
(Reuters)