BULIISA, UGANDA: The construction of the Central Processing Facility, the heart of the Tilenga project in Buliisa district is set to kick off.
TotalEnergies commenced site preparation of the industrial area that will host the Central Processing Facility in May this year in Kasenyi village, Ngwedo sub-county, and expects to have it completed in August. The work is being undertaken by Mota-Engil Uganda.
The industrial area covering about 700 acres of land will also host other facilities including the construction camps, drill support base, and construction support base.
Solomon Balemezi, a civil and structural engineer at TotalEnergies says that the contractor has already hit 68 percent works on enabling infrastructural works which include clearing bushes on the land, fencing, compacting, and leveling the ground, drainages, and access road construction.
Balemezi says the contractor is currently conducting earthworks and ground leveling on other sections of the site for the Central Processing Facility while in other sections, the erection of the foundation bases is already ongoing.
He says that whereas full-scale work is yet to commence at the Central Processing facility, construction works on other facilities in the industrial area is ongoing.
For instance, works on the construction camp which will accommodate 4,000 workers are currently ongoing and being undertaken by the main contractor McDermott.
The Central processing facility will house facilities that will be used in the processing of crude oil by removing impurities such as sand and water, and separating useful and dangerous gases.
The facility is expected to process a total of 190,000 barrels of oil per day. Crude oil processed from the Central Processing Facility will be transported from the oil wells through a network of flow lines measuring about 160 kilometers.
TotalEnergies is expected to drill a total of 31 well pads comprising ten in the North Nile within the Murchison Falls National Park and 21 in the South Nile Buliisa region.
Charles Wawire, civil works and structural engineer in charge of works outside the industrial area says already site preparations for four priority well-pads have commenced. The site preparation includes earthworks and concrete work for hosting the oil rig which is being undertaken by Mota-Engil.
He notes that two of the well-pads will be drilled in Jobi-Rii 5 and Jobi-Rii 4 in the South Nile and two others in Gunya1 and Ngiri3 in the North Nile to meet the time frame of having oil by 2025.
622 project-affected persons were displaced from the area to pave way for the establishment of the industrial area. According to Cornelius Samuel Ojok, the Site land coordinator Tilenga Project, all the project-affected persons have been compensated.
Total Energies is optimistic it will beat all odds to have the first oil extracted by the 2025 timeline.
In April last year, the governments of Ugandan and Tanzania along with the two oil giants Total Energies and CNOOC signed agreements to kick off the construction of the East African Crude Oil pipeline that will help to transport crude oil from western Uganda to Tanzania.
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