Uganda chooses group with GE to develop refinery

Bloomberg

Uganda chose a group including General Electric Co. to build and operate a 60,000-barrels-a-day refinery that will process part of the crude extracted from fields being developed by Total SA and Tullow Oil Plc.
The Albertine Graben Refinery Consortium — which also includes Yaatra Ventures
LLC, Intracontinent Asset Holdings Ltd.
and Italy’s Saipem SpA — was picked after
a review of more than 40 companies, Uganda’s Energy Ministry said in a statement on its
Facebook page.
The government expects to conclude a project framework agreement with the consortium over the next two months, the Kampala-based ministry said. Uganda has been seeking a new developer for the $4 billion facility since negotiations with groups led by Russia’s RT Global Resources LLC and South Korea’s SK Engineering & Construction Co. collapsed.
“The consortium has proposed to government a financing approach and a path to establish, develop and operate a commercially viable refinery company with a strategic benefit to the country and the region,” the ministry said. “The oil refinery is expected to spur growth of petrochemical and other related
industries in Uganda.”
The facility in Hoima district will initially have a capacity of 30,000 barrels a day. It will be supplied from 2020 by fields with a 6.5 billion barrel resource being developed by Total, London-based Tullow and China’s Cnooc Ltd.
While Uganda initially reserved 40 percent of the refinery for itself — with an option to sell part of that holding to regional countries including Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi — it hasn’t disclosed the share to be controlled by the consortium. Landlocked Uganda will build a refined-product pipeline from the oil fields to Kampala and a crude-export pipeline through neighboring Tanzania.