Proscovia Nabbanja Shares her Vision for the Future of Uganda National Oil Company

Proscovia Nabbanja, CEO of UNOC (Uganda National Oil Company Limited), shares her vision for the future of the company in the medium term.

“Within the three-year term, we hope to have made FID by December 2020, then realize first oil within three years after that. I would envision an economy that has entered into the producer space and is producing oil that is reaching the international market but is also retaining a reasonable amount to create value within the country through the refinery. That is key. The returns are good, but in the bigger picture, the refinery has macro-economic benefits for Uganda. We have seen from the mapping of the different industries that it is likely to impact industries such as the agricultural sector and the other interfaces with the petrochemical businesses and the export market through the second international airport. In the three years, there will be low-hanging fruits. When COVID happened, even through a pandemic, an opportunity was created. Through the low prices in oil due to COVID, there was the opportunity to get strategic stocks. In the three-year term, we can realize that space”, says Proscovia Nabbanja.

“We also want to get LPG onto the market. The upstream developments and the refinery will produce substantial amounts of LPG, but they are not yet online. We have a window to start importing LPG into Uganda and we need to change the mindsets of people in order to adapt to LPG compared to biomass. All these discussions about oil and gas are sitting at a backdrop of the energy transition discussion and the climate change discussion. We want to be that energy company that is not only focused on so-called “dirty energy” but also looking for ways of entering into the cleaner energy space”, she adds.

“Another goal for the three-year period is our access to licenses. Today we are non-operators with Total, CNOOC, and Tullow, but how do we move ourselves from that position to an operatorship position in the long-term? We need to start with baby steps. We need to get a license, get a strategic partner to back hope on, acquire the requisite skills, and then in the long-term take over operatorship or acquire licenses independently and operate them”, she concludes.

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