Uganda Chamber of Mines and Petroleum (UCMP) is running the third edition of 90 Days of Oil and Gas Media Campaign with the main objective of giving an update on the sector’s projects, emerging opportunities, challenges, and possible solutions.

Under the theme, “Facts Behind Uganda’s Oil and Gas Sector” and hashtag #90DaysofOilandGas the campaign kicked off on August 1st and will climax on October 31.

Humphrey Asiimwe, the Chief Executive Officer of UCMP said, as the oil and gas sector development phase gains momentum, a campaign of this nature is critical.

“We are offering an opportunity to oil and gas sector reporters to get fast-hand and accurate information as they tell their stories,” he said, “We also want to offer space for sector players to interact, network, and share opportunities for growing their enterprises and the sector as a whole.”

The campaign is designed to run on weekly topics including opportunities and challenges, updates on sector projects, taxation, insurance, sectoral linkages, environment social and governance issues, women and youth, local content and value addition, the role of the media, financing of the oil and gas sector and the role of civil society organizations and more.

The third edition of this campaign is happening 19 months after the signing of the Final Investment Decision (FID) on the Lake Albert Development by TotalEnergies EP Uganda, CNOOC Uganda Limited, the Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC), and the Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC).

After the signing of FID, the government envisaged that between US$15-20bn would be invested in what it termed as the ‘development phase’ before first oil is achieved in 2025.

A significant amount of this money has so far been invested in the development of the Kingfisher and Tilenga projects in the Albertine Graben and the construction of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) and other sector projects.

The government hopes that investments after the FID will facilitate Uganda’s GDP growth by 22% and also unlock thousands of jobs and related opportunities. As of 2006, Uganda’s discovered commercially viable oil reserves are estimated at 6 billion barrels of oil with 1.4bn being recoverable.