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July 20th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda KAMPALA (Reuters) – Uganda is confident its planned refinery with a 120,000-barrel per day capacity will attract investors, the oil minister said on Thursday, rejecting arguments by British explorer Tullow Oil that a plant of more than 60,000 bpd will not be viable.
Energy minister Irene Muloni told Reuters in an interview the project’s initial phase with a refining capacity of 20,000 barrels per day (bpd) would be completed by 2015.
Uganda, East Africa’s third-largest economy struck commercial oil deposits in 2006 in the Albertine rift basin along its border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The government estimates reserves at 2.5 billion barrels.
“We have a study and this study has established what is viable and what is not viable,” Muloni said.
“It depends on how they’re looking at it … We can’t start arguing about whether this works or it doesn’t .. the feasibility study is there and shows the refinery would still be viable at the capacity we want.”
Muloni said the project was not yet at a phase to start looking for investors. She said the government intended to develop the refinery as a public-private partnership venture in which a private investor with “expertise and financial muscle” would have a dominant stake.
In May Tullow, which operates in Uganda, said it favoured a refinery with a capacity capped at 60,000 bpd, adding output above that level would make the project unviable and would have difficulty attracting investors.
The company early this year completed its long delayed $2.9 billion partnership venture with France’s Total and China’s CNOOC and says the three firms plan to spend up to $750 million on exploration and appraisal activity in the country this year.
OIL LAWS
Muloni said the refinery’s capacity would be expanded to 60,000 bpd in two years after the initial phase was completed in 2015.
“By that time more exploration will have gone on and more oil will have been discovered… So we think by then we can increase capacity to 120,000 bpd,” she said, adding that level could be reached by 2017.
So far only 40 percent of the Albertine has been explored.
Commercial production, Muloni said, would likely commence in late 2013 or 2014, producing a minimum amount of crude to feed a thermal power plant, and thereafter gradually rise as the various stages of the refinery are completed.
Muloni also rejected criticism from transparency watchdog, Global Witness, that proposed laws concentrated too much power in the executive branch and did not require government to disclose crucial information.
“The role of parliament is to make good laws, scrutinise, debate, analyse, get input and feedback and that’s what’s happening now,” she said. “You talk about the minister having many powers (but) I don’t see them.”
Parliament is scrutinising three pieces of legislation designed to manage the sector and the government is awaiting their passage before it starts a licensing round to auction more blocks.
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