Energy experts from Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda met in Kampala last week alongside all key stakeholders in the oil pipeline project.
The meetings were being held ahead of the Northern Corridor Summit when President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya and President Museveni of Uganda are scheduled to meet over the contentious issue.
Tanzania wants the pipeline to end at Tanga while Kenya is offering Lamu, both along East African coast.
The Tanzanian Team of Experts (ToE), according to a press statement from the Tanzanian Ministry of Energy and Minerals, emerged as key drivers of the meetings by making a compelling case as to why the infrastructure should pass through Tanzania.
The ToEs included the Ministry of Energy and Minerals Permanent Secretary Prof Justin Ntalikwa and his deputy in charge of energy Eng. Dr Juliana Pallangyo, and experts from the Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC) and the Tanzania Ports Authority (TPA).
Negotiations and lobbying teams from the three neighbouring East African Community states spent busy hours working out the advantages and disadvantages of the options presented by Kenya and Tanzania.
The team made a case that the proposed 1400-km pipeline from Hoima in Uganda to the port of Tanga should pass through the country owing to its experience in such projects, citing examples of among them the legendary 1,710-km, Tanzania, Zambia Mafuta Pipeline (Tazama), the latest development of the SongoSongo—Dar es Salaam gas pipeline, Mnazi Bay—Mtwara and the main pipeline from Mtwara to Dar es Salaam as success stories.
The statement touched on the point that Kenya did not have a running project that matched the Tanzanian experience.
In addition, the Uganda team was further convinced on the land policy in Tanzania. Land is owned by the state and it allows the President of Tanzania to acquire and relocate it as the state sees fit. In this arrangement citizens are compensated according to the law, whereas in Kenya land is owned by private individuals, making the acquisition a complex one in which it may attract more costs and delays.
Tanzania is selling the operational Tanga port as the best route to pump Uganda’s reportedly rich reserves of crude oil, which is expected to start flowing to international markets in 2018, unlike Kenya’s yet-to-be-built Lamu port.
The tug-of-war for the project between the two neighbouring countries appears to have been intensified by a disagreement of sorts over which route is better among the three international oil firms involved – The French oil company Total, Britain’s Tullow Oil and China’s CNOOC.
The Tanga route remains the most cost effective, according to Total E & P Uganda general manager Adewate Fayeni. Fayeni said that as far as the company is concerned all the options have been evaluated carefully and the least cost remains the Tanga route. The Total company has already committed funds for the $4 million-plus project.
“As a company, our position remains that we are going through to Tanga route, I understand there are issues being discussed, but our position remains the same,” Fayemi told an East African Oil and Gas conference in Dar es Salaam.
Tanzanian authorities have also been steadfast in maintaining that the agreement between President Magufuli and his Ugandan counterpart Presidenti Museveni over the project in early March, was conclusive despite Kenya’s continued lobbying.
According to the presidency’s acting director of communications Gerson Msigwa, maneuvers by high-level officials in Kenya to try to snatch the project from Tanzania will eventually prove futile.
“The Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation and Ministry of Energy and Minerals are already carrying out tangible activities in relation to this project,” Msigwa said.
“At the end of the meeting, the Kenyan team reportedly refused to sign the (meeting) minutes in protest against the Ugandans’ apparent preference of the Tanzanian route rather than that offered by Kenya,” the statement read.
Source: Business Week

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