Local oil firm looks to expand to Uganda

Güneş Kömürcüler ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Turkish oil firm, Petoil, is looking forward to racing in a number of tenders for oil exploration licenses that the Ugandan government is set announce, an official says.

Petoil, a Turkish independent petroleum exploration and production company, has expressed its official interest in expanding into Uganda, announcing plans to join a tender for the East African country’s petroleum resources.

“We have been in Uganda for more than five years, looking forward to a new oil law. The Ugandan government finally passed the law in April. They will announce a number of tenders for the existing petroleum sites. We will be there to compete with other energy companies for these sites,” Mehmet Ali Ak, the general manager of the Ankara-based Petoil, told Hürriyet Daily News.

3 billion discovered oil

He said the sites in Uganda have around 3 billion cubic meters of discovered oil. “The amount is the case for one basin that has already been drilled. There are two more basins which are confirmed to have petroleum but need to be drilled to learn the exact amount,” Ak said.

Petoil has already registered a Ugandan subsidiary to prepare for the new licensing in more than one bloc. The company is now waiting for the remaining regulations to be made and new institutions like the Petroleum Authority of Uganda and the National Oil Company, among others, which are expected in less than one year.

According to some stories in Ugandan newspapers, Petoil is one of more than 100 oil companies that have queued up for the next round of licensing in Uganda’s oil industry.
“We do not know whether

that many companies are involved in the process. We met the C-levels of less than five companies, including French Total, at a press meeting which the Ugandan officials organized for the potential petroleum investors of the country,” Ak said.

Rush to Africa

The company is looking to become one of the early-comers to Uganda’s still mostly untouched oil market. Petoil representatives said Africa may be the most feasible markets for Turkish investors as other regions having proven energy resources have already been taken by big oil. The company has operations only in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) other than Turkey. Petoil holds 20 percent of the Chia Surkh 10 well with Anglo-Turkish Genel Energy, which owns 60 percent of the well, and the KRG, which has the remaining 20 percent.