This morning I had a discussion with some East Africans (Kenyans and Tanzanians) on oil and gas issues, again am surprised st the hype the sector has in the minds of citizens. (I will be blogging about the hype later). But lest get a few facts. 1. Kenyans and Ugandans have a high expectation of what their recently discovered oil and gas resources will bring, some have been made to believe that their reserves are far better than Ugandas but lets see facts. Kenya has confirmed 600 million barrels of oil, Uganda on the other hand has 6.5 billion barrels confirmed, out of this, 1.8 billion. Kenya has not declared how much of its resource is recoverable but the best technologies in the world are able to recover only about 45% which means only about 270 million barrels are recoverable. If Kenya and Uganda produced their oil at the same level/rate as Nigeria or Libya the oil will only last 270 days for Kenya and about 1800 days (4 years). 2. The resources in Uganda and Kenya combined cannot make a quarter of resources for big played like Nigeria, Algeria, Angola and other leading producers in Africa. In simple the resources are small and should not cause unnecessary excitement 3. Tanzania on the other hand has huge resources of gas, however gas is difficult and extremely expensive to export. Tanzania will need an undersea pipeline or specialized vessels and this takes a huge investment that eats into the profits. 4. Claims for sharing of income from oil and gas is a lie, we should place our efforts at getting employment and creating jobs (oil and gas sector in uganda and Kenya will not create more than 20,000 jobs)
Posted on: Tue, 09 Dec 2014 08:13:00 +0000
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