CNOOC officials and locals at the public hearing concerning the drilling of oil right in the middle of the vast continent of Africa.

 

With just about three years to first oil from the Albertine graben, locals in Bunyoro remain uncertain about how it will change their fortunes.  But those in charge of the sector like the Petroleum Authority of Uganda (PAU) and National Environment Management Authority (Nema) continue to reassure the public that efforts are in place for all Ugandans to benefit from the oil, writes BAKER BATTE LULE.

Speaking at a public hearing organised by PAU in Hoima and Kikuube districts to disseminate and discuss the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment [ESIA] report, government officials in charge of oil management and the China National Offshore Oil Company [Cnooc] that is developing the Kingfisher  oil project said  Uganda’s oil shall never be a curse.

The Kingfisher development project has about 30 oil wells. The project also includes the oil refinery and the Hoima international airport. Speaking at the hearing at Rwemisanga primary school in Kikuube district, Peninah Aheebwa, PAU’s director for technical support services who represented Ernest Rubondo,  the executive director, said they want to make sure that oil activities are not detrimental to the environment and people’s wellbeing.

“Our role is to ensure that international oil companies (IOCs) adhere to the country’s legal and regulatory framework and international best practice. This includes ensuring that all the oil and gas projects are implemented in a manner that does not degrade the environment and cultural heritage of the people of Uganda, but improves their wellbeing. I, therefore, call upon all of you to express your opinions openly and objectively,” Aheebwa said.

Robert Kasande, the permanent secretary of the ministry of Energy and Mineral Development who represented Irene Muloni, the minister, said the public hearing was an important step towards first oil.

“This public hearing brings us closer to what everyone is waiting for. One of the precursors to the Final Investment Decision (FID) being taken is proper documentation of both the positive and negative environment and social impacts of the projects, and the mitigation measures. FID will usher in the engineering, procurement and construction phase where many benefits for the country will be realized,” said Kasande.

The ESIA was conducted by Golder Associates, a UK firm, and Eco and Partner Consult from Uganda on behalf of Cnooc Uganda Limited that was awarded a production license by the government in 2012. The ESIA presents a description of the project facilities and the potential positive and negative impacts and mitigation measures during the construction, operation and decommissioning phases.

Cui Yujun, the vice president of Cnooc Uganda Ltd, presented the ESIA Report on behalf of the company that is the lead developer of the Kingfisher Development Project. Meanwhile, Jane Mbabazi Byaruhanga, PAU manager in charge of Environment, said people should also be more proactive if they want to maximize benefit from oil production.

“People’s lives have changed significantly compared to five years ago; they are starting businesses that are currently benefiting from oil activities but we encourage them to register with the national supply database because when you are together, it increases your visibility and chances of being selected,” Byaruhanga said.

She added that for the last one month, they have been having a national content drive training people in the oil districts of Buliisa, Nwoya and Hoima on how to benefit from national content. They are also to go to all the districts where the oil pipeline will pass through to Tanzania.

No crude oil sales

Gloria Sebikari, PAU’s manager for Corporate Affairs and Public Relations, disputed social media allegations that crude oil is already being shipped out of the country. She said those alleging thus have no understanding of how the oil sector works. 

“In order for you to start oil production, you require infrastructure to pump it out of the ground. You need to drill both development and production wells and infield pipeline to transport it. When oil comes out of the ground, it’s mixed with sand, water, gas, and soil and no one can use it. Therefore, you need a central processing facility to clean it up. Then you need a refinery if you want to use for cars. All these facilities are not yet in place; therefore, there is no oil being sold anywhere,” Sebikari said.

She added that the burden is now on them so that the public can clearly understand how the sector works. Sebikari explained that the 40,000 barrels of test oil that was mined is still in the field at Kasemene and Njiri awaiting a final decision from  Uganda National Oil Company (Unoc).

“We used to do flaring of the test crude oil but because we are working in communities, government prohibited flaring; so, the oil that was produced was put into tankers and is still in the field. Uganda National Oil Company is trying to find companies that can stabilize it and use it for generation of power but it’s not of commercial value,” Sebikari said.

Weary locals

Pius Wakabi Atwooki,  a member of parliament representing Bugahya county where Hoima airport is going to be, said their people have been left out of employment in the oil sector.

“We thank God who gave us this oil in our area and I thank our people for being peaceful even when they have not been treated very well. I have been moving in Hoima town but when you go in social gatherings, the language has even changed from Runyoro to Luganda which means that most of the people working in the oil-related activities are people from Kampala. If this oil was in Buganda, I’m very sure the process would not even begin; they would have a lot of political interference, they would be asking for even 50 per cent share. If they can fight for mere sand in Lwera, how about the oil?”

bakerbatte@observer.ug

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The oil companies operating in the Albertine graben in western Uganda have moved closer towards the production stage after getting government approval for the environmental report for the Tilenga project.

In a joint statement issued yesterday, Total E&P said “The Uganda National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) has approved the ESIA (Environmental andSocialImpact Assessment) report for the Tilenga project and subsequently issued a certificate to Total E&P Uganda B.V and Tullow Uganda Operations Pty Limited for the development of six oil fields, an industrial area, buried infield pipelines and sup- porting infrastructures, including camps.”

The statement noted that “the certificate of approval has been issued with a validity of 10 years.”

The two oil companies described the approval as “a key milestone in the progress towards the development of Uganda’s oil resources.”

The companies explained that the ESIA approval is also “a key prerequisite for the Final Investment Decision (FID) which will trigger the project execution and construction phase.”

The Tilenga project is a massive $4 billion project that is going to create employment opportunities in the area.The project is important for the exportation of crude oil through the oil pipeline to the Tanzanian port of Tanga.

The ESIA report, according to the Total E&P and Tullow Oil, describes the main characteristics of the project, the potential environmental and social impacts as well as corresponding mitigation measures that will be implemented to avoid and minimise potential negative impacts and enhance positive impacts.

The approval of the ESIA for Tilenga has not come easy. The ESIA report faced some opposition, mainly from the project-affected persons.

In their own report reacting to the ESIA, which they released late last year, the project-affected persons said that the “project seeks to destroy a Ramsar site. The Victoria Nile delta and wetland established under the United Nations Convention on Wetlands of International Importance. It has the most diverse and unique birds, fauna and flora in the world.”

The project-affected persons also noted that in the ESIA, “there is no complains mechanism” where they could issue out their grievances. Like many other infrastructure projects, the project affected persons said their compensation mechanism was not fair.

“There is no monitoring and evaluation mechanism on the stages of compensation and resettlement and the mitigations thereby. That is why the proponents of the project cannot specifically state who has been paid and when the rest will be paid.”

It, nevertheless, appears that with the approval of the ESIA, a number of these issues were resolved. The review process for the Tilenga ESIA began on June, 8 2018.

The companies held two public hearings on 12th and 15th November, 2018 in Buliisa and Nwoya districts where the project facilities will be located.The purpose of these meetings was to bring all the stakeholders up to speed on the possible effects of the project.

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There is new evidence that the African continental plate is in the process of breaking up alongside the mountains of Ethiopia, down to Somalia, through the Albertine region and down to Zimbabwe, Malawi and South Africa. 

Even if this break up might take up to 100 years to form, these drilling activities might accelerate the tipping point for the environment of these regions to change for the worst. 

By then much of this oil will have been exported to the well developed countries of the world to leave these African regions as desolate as the African Sahara and the Saudi Arabian deserts.

Minister of Finance Matia Kasaija

 

Minister of Finance Matia Kasaija has come under increasing pressure to name the public officials whom he says are hiding billions of shillings stolen from public coffers in their homes.

A week ago Kasaija told an accountants’ meeting in Kampala that he knew of people who had “stolen [in government] and even in their own private companies. Somebody was telling me people keep billions of shillings in their houses; what if thieves break in the house or if it catches fire?”

A senior State House official last evening accused the minister of abetting the theft of taxpayers’ money when he withholds such key information about individuals who are looting from Ugandans.

James Tweheyo, head of a new Anti-corruption unit appointed by President Museveni in July to work under State House, told The Observer that he was “not ashamed to say the minister is condoning corruption if he cannot name” the officials he says are stealing money.

“It is not enough to say I know and then keep the information to himself…,” Tweheyo said. “It is not fair. He should better come out and tell us if he knows so that they [corrupt officials] can be prosecuted.”

Tweheyo also said: “First of all, let him withhold the signatures or block the chain [for the money going to corrupt ministries or officials]. We shall reach him to see if he can be supportive."

Hours before State House had weighed in on the matter, anti-graft activists were already baying for Kasaija’s blood, saying he should resign if he cannot name public officials. Anti-corruption warrior and head of the Anti-Corruption Coalition of Uganda, Cissy Kagaba told The Observer on Tuesday that it was shameful to see a senior minister lamenting almost helplessly about a vice which is eating up the country.

“It is an embarrassment and the best thing to do is to resign. What this means is that the corrupt are high up there. I mean if he can’t name them, then it means they are not ordinary people like you and me. They are high up there.”

This is not the first time Kasaija has said he knows the corrupt officials or ministries. In May, while appearing before the Justice Catherine Bamugemerire-led commission of inquiry into land matters, Kasaija said a lot of government money is finding its way into the wrong hands illegally.

“There are some ministries where if I am signing off their money, I sign when my hands are shaking because I don’t know whether the money will reach where it is supposed to be,” Kasaija said, sending commissioners into a bout of laughter.

When he was asked to name the thieving ministries, Kasaija declined to name any publicly but promised to expose them in camera. The minister further said that despite his efforts to plug the holes, money continues to leak out.

To-date, Kasaija is not known to have revealed the identities of colleagues in government he believes are robbing from the nation. Earlier in February, Kasaija had said during a high-level meeting in Entebbe that he was “amazed by people wanting to get rich overnight, others wanting to take things by force.”

He said systems allow stealing money because there is a weakness somewhere. To Kagaba, this admission shows that the corrupt were probably more highly placed than Kasaija within government, probably the reason the minister was finding it hard to name them.

It also showed, she said, that this whole “talk of fighting corruption is a delusion, hoodwinking Ugandans.”

Tweheyo’s State House unit was formed after President Museveni expressed frustration at the way the Inspectorate of Government was handling corruption cases. Museveni said during the state-of-the-nation address in June that he thought the IGG was not doing enough to end corruption.

The president has repeatedly made declarations of zero tolerance to corruption a part of his election manifestos. However, despite such public rhetoric, graft continues to fester in a government he has led for three decades.

The IGG, Irene Mulyagonja, responded immediately telling Daily Monitor in June that the corrupt and powerful ‘big fish’ were hiding behind Museveni to frustrate her investigations.

“I still have a lot to do in fighting corruption. There are people who present the front that we are not competent enough to investigate them. Maybe they think my officers are too junior to investigate them…,” Mulyagonja said.

An official in the IGG’s office told The Observer yesterday that in the instance of Kasaija’s remarks, they always encourage these officials to bring the information forward. This official could not, however, say whether Kasaija had shared with the inspectorate what he knows.

Repeated calls to Kasaija went unanswered as this newspaper sought to know whether he has handed his information to investigating agencies. The corrupt are known, at least going by public outbursts of senior officials in government.

Richard Todwong, the vice chair of the ruling NRM party, said this year that people in his party were stealing so much “Ugandans were disgusted”.

Former regime insider and one-time minister for the presidency, Dr Martin Aliker, writes in his recent book, The Bell is Ringing, that while negotiating the sale of Sheraton Kampala hotel with an Ethiopian investor during the 1990s privatisation hysteria, a senior government official in Kampala placed a gun on the negotiating table, and asked the investor to pay them a bribe of $3 million. Museveni was told of the incident and the officials. He was annoyed, Aliker writes, but he did not act because they were his friends.

In September, Museveni gave out a toll-free number and that of Major Edith Nakalema, a State House aide, through which he said the public can report directly those involved in corruption. But one of the numbers which had been in use at Uganda Investment Authority had spent a year without receiving any complaint.

Corruption is a serious problem for Uganda, with the country scoring 26 on the Transparency International 2018 index. Zero is the most corrupt while 100 is the cleanest. This places Uganda among the most corrupt countries in world. The country ranks 151st out of 180 countries ranked by the organisation.

Transparency International said the key ingredient that the top-performing African countries have in common is the political leadership that is consistently committed to anti-corruption -- they go an extra mile to ensure implementation of anti-graft measures.

Kasaija himself admitted before Bamugemerire commission: “This problem [corruption] is a problem that touches all of us. These people who want to be rich quickly by looting the state in broad daylight must be dealt with quickly. If we don’t, it will become ugly.”

At a high level, corruption is a patronage tool, according to analysts, and the most powerful corrupt individuals might walk scot-free because of support they offer a standing government.

Widespread corruption is one of the major causes of poor delivery of public services across sectors, with education, health services, local government, infrastructure projects and public procurement particularly hit.

amwesigwa@observer.ug

Parliament has summoned Chinese sand miners to appear before the natural resources parliamentary committee next week amid increased concerns of unpredictable weather patterns and environmental degradation. 

The chairperson parliamentary committee on natural resources Alex Byarugaba summoned all the Chinese working with Only for You International Ltd following physical altercations between the miners and Wakiso district chairperson Matia Lwanga Bwanika last week.

Bwanika, with other district officials attempted to arrest the miners for illegally excavating sand from the Lake Victoria at Nangombe landing site in Kasanje sub-county last week. The Chinese attempted to physically assault the chairman, telling him they had been cleared by 'authorities' in government and State House to excavate sand in the area.

“We have summoned all Chinese and the owners of the land, George William Mulo because we need to know all the people involved in this deal from the top officials who told the Kasanje residents they work with State House. The same people told the Kasanje residents that the sand was used to build the Entebbe international airport but we expect these people to appear in Parliament next week” said Byaruhanga during a field visit on Thursday.

Byarugaba was accompanied by committee members including MPs Kefa Kiwanuka (Kiboga), Aja Baryayanga (Kabale municipality), Herbert Ariko (Soroti municipality) and Geoffrey Dhamuzungu (Budiope East).

Byaruhanga also ordered for the arrest of Patrick Muwanguzi, one of the drivers who operate the graders at the sand mining site in Nangombe. He said the reason why they arrested him is because he failed to hand over the keys for the graders which they wanted to park at Kasanje’s police for security purposes until the Chinese appear before Parliament next week.

“This man has keys for these graders but he has failed to hand them over to us and we have arrested him but we’re taking him with us up to Parliament because the Wakiso district chairman Matia Lwanga Bwanika told us how DPC Entebbe police Division has released the rest of the suspects. Now let’s go with this one and he will help us find the rightful owners of this illegal business” he added.

He also said the Parliament is also going to investigate the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) officials who have been visiting the site without arresting the Chinese.

“People on the ground have told us that NEMA officials have been coming here but they have been ‘eating’ the Chinese’s money and this has stopped them from arresting them. However, for us we shall arrest them and we need also to look at their working permits because I don’t think these people were accepted by our government to operate in Uganda” he added.

The district environment officer, Mpoza Esau told the MPs that he had earlier issued the Chinese with the warnings and stopped them from excavating sand from the lake, but they adamantly continued with their illegal activity.

“Their act of continuing excavating sand illegally from the lake forced me with the district chairman and other district officials to visit the site and take action on these people which we did and that’s why they have even abandoned the site which has helped us to save our environment and very soon it will be restored“ said Mpoza.

The MPs also visited the Kasanje police station and the OC station Amir Magulu said the miners are well protected by some ‘powerful people’ in government.

“You Hon. Byarugaba I am still new in this position, and I have nothing to do for you, unless when you call my supervisor DPC Entebbe division. But I can’t do anything because we also receive calls intimidating us and we can’t even tell who these people are” he told MPs.

Meanwhile, Uganda Local Government Association (ULGA) chairperson George Mutabaazi has hailed Bwanika for his fight against the illegal sand mining, saying that the illegal sand mining is not only in Wakiso but is also happening in his district (Lwengo) and even Masaka.

“You have been saying the opposition is fighting the government but some of the opposition leaders like Bwanika are doing good things...that’s why we have suggested as district chairmen to join Bwanika and fight these sand miners from Wakiso, Masaka , Lwengo and other areas to protect the country’s environment" said Mutabaazi.