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KAMPALA, July 26 (Reuters) – Chinese oil company China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) wants to take a stake in a developing pipeline for the export of Ugandan crude oil, the company said on Friday.
Uganda discovered crude oil reserves about 13 years ago, but commercial production was delayed in part because of a lack of infrastructure, such as a pipeline. # 39; export.
The East Africa crude oil pipeline (EACOP), worth $ 3.5 billion, will pbad through neighboring Tanzania and will head to the port of Tanga, within 39, Indian Ocean.
"CNOOC will participate in the EACOP project," Aminah Bukenya, a spokesperson for the Ugandan unit of the company, told Reuters, adding that the level of equity participation would be determined by the joint venture partners.
CNOOC jointly owns the Ugandan oil fields with the French companies Total and Tullow in Great Britain.
Total had previously indicated that it wanted to finance the pipeline. Tanzania and Uganda should both take stakes.
About two-thirds of the cost of the pipeline will be debt-financed, and a Ugandan unit of the South African Standard Bank Group and Japan's Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp jointly contribute to the credit increase.
Ugandan officials said the government now wants commercial crude oil production to start in 2022.
Government geologists estimate at 6 billion barrels the country's reserves, located in the Albertine Rift Basin, near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Bukenya added that CNOOC also plans to produce gas and use some of it to generate up to 42 megawatts of electricity for the company's use and sale to the national grid.
Energy Minister Irene Muloni said in December that oil deposits in Uganda have badociated natural gas reserves estimated at 500 billion cubic feet.
Report by Elias Biryabarema;
Edited by Omar Mohammed and Edmund Blair
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