TotalEnergies has been given a greenlight by Petroleum Authority of Uganda (PAU) to carry out comprehensive designs for crude oil Central Processing Facility (CPF) in any location abroad.
Engineering works for the designs will be held in London, England. The French energy giant had raised design concerns related to high costs of transporting engineers from abroad to Uganda, to draft detailed engineering designs for the 190,000-barrel facility.
News of greenlighting Total to conduct extensive designs for the CPF from outside Uganda were confirmed on April 29th by Alex Nyombi, the Director for Development and Production at PAU, during the 2023 Oil and Gas skills Expo at International University of East Africa (IUEA)
In the recent past, unconfirmed reports had started to emerge that TotalEnegies may have kept away Ugandan engineers from taking charge of the works on the project, an allegation strongly denied by PAU.
According to Nyombi, major engineering works are being conducted in London, and what is being done in Uganda are minor activities, due to the specialized nature of the job.
He revealed that TotalEnergies was allowed to conduct the studies abroad, due to the need for specialized disciplines, which are lacking in Uganda, and that transporting foreing experts to Kampala would have been more expensive than carrying out the work in London itself.
Unlike the Kingfisher project which commenced operations in January 2023, the Tilenga project is not yet operstional due to a yet to be constructed Central Processing Facility, which is projected to process 190,000 barrels of oil and 700,000 barrels of total liquid per day.
Nyombi also made an assertion that the rigs for the Tilenga project are already in the country, and their testing may take a while before PAU allows the rigging exercise to begin.
“The Oil and Gas sector in Uganda is continuing to grow with investment of US$15 Billion, expected to be brought into the country, for the period from 2022-2026 and planned commencement of oil production in 2025,” Nyombi said.
He also elaborated that the rigs have been designed in a way that is commensurate with tourism and wildlife, to ward off concerns by environmentalists about the likelihood of devastating impacts of noise pollution on iconic species, notably giraffes.
Until February 2020, proposed works by TotalEnergies on a site for Central Processing Facility had remained on paper, but since then, the French energy giant has been uping the ante for the project, clearing the site and other industrial areas in preparation for the first oil expected in 2025.
Nicolas Terraz, the Vice President of TotalEnergies E&P Africa, said maximum resource mobilization has taken center stage, in close coordination with local communities to avert any harm linked to the project on the locals.
“Significant resources have been mobilized to implement them in an exemplary way. For four years, the affiliate has been in close contact with the local people and has been striving to minimize the project’s impact on the local community. We are proud to be a part of these major developments for the Company that promises to transform their host countries,” said Terraz.
The Tilenga project which is expected to boost Uganda’s energy products is jointly operated by TotalEnergies (56.6%), CNOOC and UNOC. Experts project that the project will create more than 8,000 jobs, hence immensely benefiting the local community, with an estimated UGX. 700 million worth of investments in local ventures.
The multi-million dollar project is expected to encompass drilling of 400 wells from 31 locations with production to be accomplished from buried pipelines to a treatment plant located in kasenyi, where fluids, namely; water, oil and gas will be separated and treated.
It will also involve the development of six fields, which will be fed with all the water produced, and gas will be channeled to produce energy needed for the treatment process, while surplus electricity will be exported to the pipeline and Uganda’s power grid.
Covering 700 acres of land, the Tilenga project is in the same cohort with CNOOC’s Kingfisher, as the two mature mega projects seeking to exploit Uganda’s vast energy reserves in the Albertine Graben.
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