Buganda Kingdom seeks share of oil wealth

Uganda’s traditional and powerful Buganda Kingdom has floated the idea of a 1% share of the oil wealth being reserved for “cultural institutions”, a term that refers to traditional leadership structures.
Buganda MPs are considering seeking an amendment to the Public Finance Bill, which currently allows for 93% of the revenues to be reserved for central government and 7% to accrue to oil producing districts.

 

The Buganda Kingdom - led by Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II (b. 1955) who is the current king or Kabaka of Buganda - covers 18 counties. Hoima County lies to its west. Although the king has few formal powers, it has historically been a key centre of power in Uganda since pre-colonial times.

 

For more news and expert analysis about East Africa, please see East Africa Politics & Security.

© 2014 Menas Associates

First oil discovered offshore East Africa

Pancontinental Oil and Gas (18.75%) announced on 17 June that its L10A joint venture - with BG Group (50% operator) and Thailand's PTTEP (31.25%) - has confirmed that the recently completed offshore Sunbird-1 well has intersected an oil column. This is the first-ever oil discovered off the East African coast.

The gross oil column is assessed to be 14m thick beneath a gross gas column of 29.6m in a reefal limestone reservoir in the Sunbird Miocene Pinnacle Reef in area L10A. BG Group is now continuing to analyse the well data and will recommend a future exploration programme using the well results.

Pancontinental’s CEO Barry Rushworth said, “The Sunbird-1 oil is the historic first-ever oil discovery offshore Kenya,” and “We believe that this is a play-opening discovery in Kenya’s Lamu Basin. Because of the Sunbird discovery, we expect to see a significant increase in industry interest offshore Kenya."

For more news and expert analysis about East Africa, please see East Africa Politics & Security.

© 2014 Menas Associates

Port of Aden suffers from lack of investment

Another issue that causes concern in the south is what is perceived as the regime's failure to honour a commitment made at the time of unity that Aden should be the commercial capital of Yemen. Older residents recall the glory days of the early 1960s when it was the second port in the world. It has subsequently been devastated by the closure of the Suez Canal for eight years after 1967, the ideologically-driven polices under the PDRY, a near civil war in 1986 and an actual one in 1994 and what might be described as benign neglect since then, punctuated by attempts by outside investors to do something to improve the port.

There are now complaints that the current operator of the container-handling facilities in the port – Dubai Port World (DPW) - is planning to divert traffic from Aden to its facilities in Djibouti or to the UAE, where new and modern ports are being developed. The DPW web site notes that Aden “is a key domestic cargo gateway for Yemen and is strategically located to capture significantly growing regional transhipment volumes. Its position on the main east-west trade route, only four miles away from the international marine shipping lane, makes it an ideal hub port for transhipment services to East Africa, the Red Sea, the Subcontinent and the Gulf region”.

A group of MPs is to investigate claims that DPW is discriminating against Aden through its fee structure. Whether or not this is true, there is an obvious disparity in the facilities available in Aden compared with competing ports. Aden needs investment.

For more news and expert analysis about Yemen, please see Yemen Focus.

© 2010 Menas Associates