Page 4 - AfrOil Week 15 2021

AfrOil COMMENTARY AfrOil

(Image: African Energy Chamber)
(Image: African Energy Chamber)

EACOP ready to launch

Uganda, Tanzania, Total and CNOOC are very close to clearing all the paperwork

needed to start construction work on the 1,445-km Hoima-Tanga oil pipeline

AFTER more than a decade of waiting, Uganda Petroleum Development Corp. (TPDC).
has come very close to passing another mile- The third document, meanwhile, was Ugan-
WHAT: stone on the way to monetising its crude oil da’s host government agreement (HGA) with
EACOP’s shareholders reserves. It has a concrete plan in place for the EACOP holding company for the project.
have finalised all but one moving future production to market, and it has Tanzania had also been slated to finalise its own
of the agreements needed nearly wrapped up the task of establishing the HGA with EACOP on the same day, but it post-
to launch construction. legal foundation for its plan. poned the signing until next week. According
The milestone in question is the signing of to the Ugandan press, this move was related to
WHY: three more documents on the East Africa Crude last-minute revisions of the document, and no
The agreements allow Oil Pipeline (EACOP) in Entebbe on April 11. more delays are expected.
Total to set 2025 as the One of those documents was a tariff and trans-
target date for bringing portation agreement (TTA) between EACOP’s Obstacles overcome
Uganda’s oilfields on shareholders and the companies that will use These signings are notable partly because the
stream.
the pipeline to transport their oil to market, and documents involved represent the last adminis-
another was a shareholders agreement (SA) that trative obstacle to starting work on the 216,000
WHAT NEXT: detailed the shareholder structure of EACOP barrel per day (bpd) pipeline, which will follow
The upstream and
midstream projects are and the obligations of each shareholder. Both a 1,445-km route from Hoima, a town near Lake
slated to create many of these documents were signed by the heads Albert in western Uganda, to Tanga, a port on
new jobs and boost for- of EACOP’s four shareholders: France’s Total, Tanzania’s Indian Ocean coast.
eign investment in both China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC), But they are also important because they
Uganda and Tanzania. Uganda National Oil Co. (UNOC) and Tanzania represent the overcoming of certain difficulties.

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