Uganda,Tanzania Delay Oil Pipeline Construction

Uganda,Tanzania Delay Oil Pipeline Construction

Construction of the planned Uganda-Tanzania oil pipeline is not likely to start in August as originally indicated by Tanzanian officials in March, but could take several months to move from blueprints to in-ground placement, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The Ugandan and Tanzanian governments are, however, trying to fast-track the $4b oil pipeline that would connect landlocked Uganda to foreign markets, giving way to transporting Ugandan crude to the Tanzanian port of Tanga located on the shores of the Indian ocean, wrote All Africa.

The Ugandan pipeline is to have an estimated capacity of 200,000b/d of crude. The investments are expected to come from French oil giant Total SA, the UK-based Tullow Oil and Chinese state-owned oil company Cnooc Ltd., as these are the three firms developing Uganda’s oil fields. The companies behind what could be East Africa’s first major oil pipeline, however, believe that the August start-date is unrealistic to complete work on the 1,403km pipeline.

According to initial plans, if the project was to go ahead as scheduled, construction would be completed in mid-2019 allowing several months for testing and commissioning before the infrastructure became fully operational. Yet, there is no definitive start date for construction in the absence of an official development plan.

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