Amuru
For a couple of months now, Heritage, an international oil company dealing with the government, has quietly been working at the recently discovered vast oilfields in Amuru District.
The oil fields have also been sealed off by elements from the Presidential Guard Brigade (PGB) and Saracen - a private security firm, Sunday Monitor can reveal.
On a recent visit to the site, this newspaper also found out that Heritage has already completed the first phase of the oil exploration and pipes have been sunk down to the underground water level.
Saracen is one of the many businesses, which have been linked to Gen. Salim Saleh, President Yoweri Museveni’s brother.
Access to the oil fields is restricted, taking of pictures prohibited and on the day Sunday Monitor visited the area, our reporter was accosted by a Caucasian gentleman, probably an employee of Heritage Oil who said it “was a mistake for journalists to have been allowed” access. The reporter were asked to leave the premises.
A cloud of secrecy hangs over the oil exploration business at Amuru, a state-of-affairs which has prompted leaders in the district to complain.
When Sunday Monitor travelled to Pakuba in Purongo Sub-county where the main oil well is located, security teams on the ground refused to allow access to the drilling site.
Local authorities are also distressed that contrary to expectation that their area would reap indirect benefits – through employment opportunities for locals -- from the oil find, Heritage ferried in its own workers including casual labourers to do jobs like digging trenches and erecting grass-thatched cottages.
This contradicts earlier promises by the government that the oil exploration would immensely benefit the locals including offering them employment opportunity, Amuru LC5 vice chairman Patrick Oryema observed.
“No single person from the local community or from the district has been engaged or employed in the process so far,” Mr Oryema told this paper in an interview.
With this, the excitement that preceded the official disclosure by the oil explorer, Heritage Oil and Gas, that it had found the biggest oil well in Amuru, is fizzling out as suspicion creeps in.
“We have not got any official information on this oil and that makes us very suspicious why the government is behaving that way.
We expected the company (Heritage) or the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources to update us on the progress so far,” Mr Oryema said.
On January 13, Heritage announced that there were now sufficient reserves discovered in the Albert Basin located in the northern Ugandan district of Amuru to exceed the commercial threshold for development.
Based on current mapping, the company’s initial estimate of reserves for the Buffalo-Giraffe block is over 400 million barrels. The company called the discovery, at Giraffee-1 exploration well in block 1, “world-class”
But since then, nothing has been said about the discovery again. Local leaders now say the secretive approach the government has taken on the oil and its decision to deploy the PGB in the area is getting them more worried.
“We don’t want to go and block the programme but we want to be informed so that we also inform our community (about) what is happening. We are just hearing it from the media,” Mr Oryema who is also the area councillor of Purongo observed.
Mr Oryema is the only councillor to have had the opportunity to visit the oilfields in December last year and explains that the community is losing hope that something good is ever going to come out of the oil.
He said: “We are really worried of the intention of the government, because the whole process is not clear and what now worries us more is the deployment (of the PGB) there.”
Mr Oryema visited Pakuba with the district chairman, Mr Anthony Atube Omach, and the Resident District Commissioner, Mr Edwin Yakobo Komakech.
“What we saw was the sinking of the pipes and according to the person who explained (things) to us, the pipe had reached the water point. The person from Heritage said they were still in the first phase of the exploration,” Mr Oryema recalled.
The army confirmed their presence in the area describing it as a constitutional duty. Speaking in an interview with Sunday Monitor on Thursday, the 4th Division spokesman, Capt. Ronald Kakurungu, said the Uganda armed forces is one, be it PGB or military police, they are all UPDF under regular army.
“The UPDF has a constitutional mandate of cooperating with the civil society in maintaining security. In the Pakuba (where the oil is found) case, we have UPDF deployment,” Capt. Kakurungu said.
Defending their stay at the oil well, he said: “Considering that there is a viable economic activity there (which is) strategic for the country, our deployment is constitutional.”
“That is an installation where access must be restricted. There must be order, access to the place must be systematic; okay, we have a military deployment in Pakuba full stop,” Capt. Kakurungu said without elaborating.
The local leaders argue that without having representation in the process of exploring this oil, it will be very hard for them to know how the government will calculate the district’s expected percentage from the oil royalties.
The Amuru oil well is tucked right inside the Murchison National Park. The land is a gazetted area inhabited by wild animals.
It is about four hours’ drive from Gulu town and some 56 km west of the Karuma/Pakwach highway. The oil well in Pabit village sits adjacent to Albert Nile.
This suggests therefore that no individual household will directly receive the royalty of three per cent as provided for in the Petroleum Act, but Amuru says the three per cent should now go towards the development of Purongo Sub-county.
Unconfirmed reports indicate that the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) wants to claim the three per cent royalty fee.
“We are hearing as rumours that UWA wants to take the percentage. And if it’s true then we are saying no,” Mr Oryema said.
He said other rumours trickling in say the government is planning to take the Amuru oil for ‘refining in Mbarara’, a position that will not go down well with the people in Acholi sub-region if confirmed.
The government, however, has not yet said where it will build any oil refinery to process the crude drilled oil from the Albertine Grabben.
“We have already informed our communities to be on high alert to find out whether the many tankers which have already entered there have started coming out (with oil),” Mr Oryema revealed, adding that so far they have no such reports.
He said the only way to stop this sort of speculation is for the government to open up and become transparent with the way it is handling the Amuru oil.
“If this kind of silence continues then our communities will conclude that the government has come to cheat them. As district leaders we will also say the government is not willing to help us develop but is out to exploit us.”
Not surprisingly, the chairman of the neighbouring Gulu District, Mr Nobert Mao, says he knows nothing about what is going on in Amuru. Asked to comment on the presence of the PGB at the oilfields, Mr Mao said: “I have been hearing about the PGB deployment at Pakuba but I have not been there to confirm the reports.”
While at Pakuba, about two km from where the actual drilling is taking place, Sunday Monitor saw a long perimeter electric-like wire fence. Inside the fence flies a black and white windsock-like flag similar to the kind used on airstips.
Then a huge military tent sits right opposite the fence where the PGB is based. Over 20 other army tents could be seen in the vicinity of a battle tank.
The fence encloses freshly completed permanent houses and about six unipots. But some two km close to the Nile runs another fence and a Caltex fuel oil tanker packed by the side.
Saracen has their base at this point and has erected several small wooden cottages fitted with air conditioners and tents are doted within the fence.
The LC1 chairperson for Purongo, Mr Francis Bongomin, said they are in the dark about the goings-on. “People don’t know what is going on there. For us we only see trucks carrying pipe,” he said.
While the community including their leaders both at the district and in Parliament have been in the dark, Mr Oryema said: “We hope that with the new cabinet reshuffle there will be changes in the way the issue of oil in Amuru is being handled. That is what we are hoping for.”
Mr Hilary Onek, formerly the Minister of Agriculture is now the new Minister of Energy and Natural Resources. He comes from Lamwo County, Kitgum District in Acholi sub-region and there is hope he might bring some transparency to the Amuru affair.
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