After $3.6bln spend, Uganda-Tanzania pipeline enters last ‘12-month sprint'

Zawya

14-07-2025

A string of 24-inch pipes stretches across a 75 kilometres from the Waiga River, half a kilometre from Butiaba port, on Lake Albert, to kilometre-Zero at the Kabalega Industrial Park. By end of this year, no pipes should be visible, only an improvised road and regenerating bush.
The pipes will be buried, marking the crucial link between Pump Station 1 (PS-1) of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (Eacop) and Uganda's flagship upstream project, Tilenga, a 190,000 barrels per day oilfield.
About 200 kilometres southwest of Tilenga, the Chinese-managed Kingfisher oilfield, a 40,000 bpd project, is at least six months ahead of the TotalEnergies-operated project. Except for a section that connects to PS-1, its 50 kilometres feeder pipeline on the shores of Lake Albert, is 95 percent complete – and buried.
During a tour of the sites this week, Eacop engineers told The EastAfrican that the project is entering a 12-month sprint, during which the contractor should complete all the pipeline and all support infrastructure, to launch Uganda into the oil exporters' club in the second half of 2026.
A series of setbacks and delays that have forced Uganda to push back its production timelines, and first oil sale next year could come exactly two decades after the East African nation discovered 6.5 billion barrels of commercially viable reserves in the Albertine Graben.
That means once civil works are finished, everything else will move faster.'Wafta's projection echoes the prognosis by Eacop managing director Guillaume Dulout earlier this year that Uganda's oil will flow from Hoima to Tanga in 2026.
He said the timelines for PS-1, which sits on 182,000 square metres at Kabalega Industrial Park (KIP) in Hoima District. Next month, piping is expected to start, with installation of IT equipment to follow in September, and pre-commissioning to begin in March or April next year.
Pump Station One, a key component of the pipeline project is by far the biggest of all the stations, as it will house metering equipment, processing and utility areas. Here, the quantity of crude from Tilenga and Kingfisher will be measured and comingled.
A 40-tonne pump will then move the crude under pressure for the next 180 kilometres before another pump at Sembabule injects more pressure to drive the oil onward and beyond the Uganda-Tanzania border.
Eacop contractor China Petroleum Pipeline Engineering Co Ltd, or CPP, says in many engineering aspects, the 296 kilometres section in Uganda – which in project execution is identified as Lot-1 – is ahead of Tanzania, although PS-1 is at the same level of progress as PS-4 and PS-5, both in Tanzania.
With a total spend of $3.6 billion so far, the project is entering a critical phase. But the contractor admits that it isn't the home stretch yet, as a few topographical challenges lie ahead.
Pipe bending is one of those aspects. The 1443 kilometres pipeline traverses uneven terrain, 600 crossings of wetlands, rivers and roads, as well as maximum elevation of 1,532 metres and 1,738 metres above sea level in Uganda and Tanzania respectively, according to the project design.
Due this, the contractor has thousands of pipes to bend to meet design and delivery timelines where they are to be strung, welded and buried. These are thermally insulated 24-inch, 18m-long steel pipes, of varying thickness ranging from 10.5mm to 23mm.'Up to now we have performed 500 bends [but] we still have many more to do,' said Shafiq Mohamad, mechanical quality control engineer at Kasambya in Kakumiro District.
This is equivalent to nine kilometres of the pipeline.'The profile of the pipeline is not yet finalised. We have 2,000-3,000 bends to do in Lot-1 because Uganda is more elevated than Tanzania.'Read: Uganda's funding headache for Eacop, SGR projectsDespite the historic announcement of the final investment decision (FID) on February 1, 2022 for $10 billion to finance development of the oilfields and support infrastructure in the three Lake Albert oil projects, upstream has raced ahead of Eacop, after the latter was held back by local and international activists.
As external funding delays threatened to stall the project, TotalEnergies – the 62 percent shareholder in the pipeline – along with partners Uganda National Oil Company, Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (Cnooc) moved to fork out additional funding, which took equity financing above the share for project loans.
In March this year, Eacop got a shot in the arm after reaching the long-awaited financial close for $1 billion via a syndicated loan from local and regional lenders Stanbic Bank, KCB Bank, Standard Bank, Afriexim Bank, and the Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private Sector.'We are on schedule for Tilenga feeder pipeline to be buried by end of this year,' said Moses Kirumira, Eacop deputy construction engineer for Lot-1. 'The only challenge is Waiga River, where we've done topographical studies to determine wettability. Other than that, and maybe the rains, we don't anticipate any serious challenge.'
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