TANZANIA: Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is scheduled to visit Tanzania on Saturday, November 27th, to attend an oil and gas conference and then conduct bilateral meetings with Tanzanian counterpart Samia Suluhu Hassan.
According to aides, President Museveni will deliver a keynote speech at a private-sector-organized conference to explore the potential given by the 1,445km East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) project.
According to President Museveni’s deputy press secretary Farouk Kirunda, the Ugandan leader will begin a three-day working visit to Tanzania on Saturday, where he will meet with Tanzanian President Suluhu to discuss the progress of the $3.5 billion EACOP project, which will connect Uganda’s oil fields to Tanzania’s port of Tanga.
In April of this year, the two nations signed the Host Government Agreement, Share Holder Agreement (for the pipeline firm), and Tariff Agreements, three major agreements to begin building of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) with total and CNOOC of France.
However, the project is still facing funding difficulties after some European lenders declined to fund it.
The EACOP project is estimated to generate over 5,000 direct employment and over 20,000 indirect jobs.
Uganda has purchased five acres of property in Tanga, Tanzania, to build a business complex to track the country’s planned oil income stream from petroleum exports.
Following the commencement of project work on the $3.5 billion EACOP project in April, the first oil drop from the Albertine Grabben belt is projected to flow in 2025.
According to an earlier statement by Tanzania’s private sector foundation, the symposium, which kicked off on Friday at the Julius Nyerere International Convention Centre in Dar es Salaam, is expected to increase private awareness of the legal, policy and regulatory frameworks for oil and gas in Uganda and Tanzania and create synergies and areas of cooperation between private sector companies in the two countries.
Participants will include Tanzania and Uganda private and public stakeholders in the oil and gas industry, private sector associations, legal firms, insurance firms, logistics providers and national oil companies
The symposium is a hybrid event expected to gather in-person over 200 high-level private sector officials from both Uganda and Tanzania, and over 2,000 will follow the discussion virtually.