The Minister for Energy and Mineral Development Eng Irene Muloni has reaffirmed that Uganda is already on track and by 2020 the country shall be start producing oil.
She added that 2020 is Ugandans “magical year” of achieving most of her goals starting from oil production which has been a long awaited dream.
Hon Muloni made her remarks while launching the Front End Engineering Design (FEED) for the East African Crude Oil Pipeline project on Monday at the Ministry’s headquarters.
The launching involved Uganda, Tanzania and the Lake Albert upstream partners: CNOOC, Total and Tullow.
Various pre-development studies were carried out on the pipeline route and meetings, leading to the development of a crude oil export pipeline from Kibaale in Hoima District ,Uganda) to Tanga (in Tanzania).
“Project teams are in place to ensure smooth implementation of the project on a fast track basis, with the goal to commission the pipeline for operation by 2020,” she said.
“The f(FEED) activities are critical to the implementation of the project and are estimated to last for a period of 8months, involving a composite team of engineers and relevant discipline specialists from the feed contractor and EACOP project participants”
The project’s estimated cost is 3.55 billion dollars per now.