Uganda: DRC Oil Friction Ruled Out The Monitor...

Uganda: DRC Oil Friction Ruled Out


The Monitor (Kampala)

September 21, 2006
Posted to the web September 20, 2006

Elias Biryabarema
Kampala

THE Ugandan government has discounted the possibility of a friction with the Democratic Republic of Congo, following the signing of a production sharing agreement with Heritage Oil & Gas for petroleum exploration along the borderline area.

Apparently, the two countries share the Albertine Graben, the vast stretch that lies in the northern part of the western arm of the East African Rift Valley system, and currently the focus of intensive hydrocarbon surveys.

The Graben sprawls from Uganda's border with Sudan in the north to Lake Edward in the South and extends in some parts of DRC. Oilfields in the Graben may be found in Uganda, at the border or in DRC but according to Mr Ernst Rubondo, the Deputy Commissioner for Petroleum Exploration and Production Department in Uganda's energy and mineral resources ministry, none of those discovered in Western Uganda straddle the borderline.

Congo itself has not struck any oil in the Graben and the Heritage exploration programme is expected to commence at the end of this year. It is only when such a scenario (petroleum discovery at border) occurs that fears of sucking up another country's oil deposits may arise.

"It is possible that some oilfields could be in the Ugandan territory, along the border or in Congo but so far we have not had any discovery on the border,"Rubondo said in an interview with Daily Monitor recently.

Daily Monitor reported on September 16 that Congo had signed a deal with Heritage to start exploring for petroleum in an area covering part of Lake Albert and its borderline with Uganda - suggesting that it was a possible rush to forestall a drain of its oil by drilling operations on the Ugandan side.

Hardman Resources has already confirmed existence of millions of crude oil deposits in Mputa-1 and Waraga-2 wells both located near the northern tip of Lake Albert.

Heritage is currently drilling the Kingfisher prospect, an onshore well that is expected to confirm hydrocarbon deposits believed to exist underneath the lakebed.

In 1993 both Uganda and DR Congo signed an agreement for "cooperation on joint exploration and exploitation of common fields" and the two governments, Rubondo said, would readily thrash out modalities for development of joint infrastructures to facilitate borderline petroleum operations.

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In securing Democratic Republic of Congo's extension of the Albertine Graben, Heritage cited the sharp focus by the West on the region as the new petroleum exploration frontier.

The Heritage's Chairman and CEO, Mr Micael Gulbenkian, said: "We believe there should be a continuation of the oil play through the basin across the international boundary between Uganda and DRC."

On the company's ambition to establish a stranglehold on the region he said, "our strategy is to prove-up a substantial new hydro carbon province in the albertine Graben with Licenses in DRC and Uganda," he said.