By Stephen Akabway Jr
Uganda’s first oil is ready and begging to be produced. Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation ( CNOOC) , mandated to manage the Kingfisher oil project, completed the fifteen wells required to produce Uganda’s first oil.
This means, CNOOC is more than ready to deliver the much anticipated milestone.
Unfortunately, the government of Uganda and it’s allies mandated to construct an oil pipeline have not yet accomplished their part of the bargain.
But all is not lost, particularly because the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) is expected to accomplish the said critical milestone by the second half of next year
John Bosco Habumugisha, EACOP’s deputy managing director, confirms the above-mentioned timelines.
He underscores the need to build for Uganda an intelligent, innovative and sustainable pipeline system using green energy, emphasizing that’s more prudent than rushing through the job.
Returning to the accomplished oil wells, Dennis Mulondo, a geologist at CNOOC, credits the report.
” These fifteen wells are sufficient. We need fifteen wells for first oil, so as a building partner we are ready to produce,” the geologist authoritatively asserts.
Ernest Rubondo, the boss of the Petroleum Authority of Uganda (PAU), credits Mulondo’s assertions and lauds CNOO over the critical milestone.
” Kingfisher is supposed to have a total of 31 wells, and CNOOC is moving very well,” PAU’s elated boss emphasizes.
Rubondo illuminates that as CNOOC still has seventeen more wells to accomplish, the fifteen wells available are enough to produce Uganda’s first oil.
He stresses that the outstanding wells can be drilled in the course of producing the country’s initial oil.
President Yoweri Museveni refused to sell crude oil, reasoning that it doesn’t make much financial sense since crude oil sells at a song on the world market.
The Big Man further asserts selling crude deprives an oil producing country of the byproducts of crude oil like methane and fertilizers.
Western countries seeking to buy Uganda’s oil cheaply, put pressure on Gen Museveni to sell crude oil and when he refused, they also refused to fund the construction of an oil pipeline and other essential infrastructures, aiming to sabotage the lucrative project.
When the Big Man secured alternative sponsors of the critical pipeline system, governments in the Western countries sabotaged most of the deals by blacklisting the sponsors as abusers of the ecosystem.
But Museveni completely refused to kowtow to the orders from the imperialists and co-opted Tanzania whom Uganda is working with to construct the pipeline system. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
