Uganda battles to revive oil project

The energy ministry’s aim to achieve FID in early 2020 looks ambitious

The Ugandan government claims to have found a solution to the impasse blocking development of its huge oil production and pipeline export project. However, there is little sign of an early resolution with companies over the dispute, ostensibly over a tax issue but also the development’s wider commercial framework.  Efforts by partners Total, Cnooc and Tullow Oil to develop an estimated 1.7bn bl of recoverable resources in the Albertine Graben around Lake Albert in western Uganda have suffered a series of setbacks since Tullow made the first commercial oil discoveries in 2006.  Most recently—despite months of wrangling with the Ugandan authorities over the treatment of tax—Tullow was unable t