Uganda's First Oil Delayed Again — New Target is June 2027

Uganda's oil dream is still dreaming. The country's Petroleum Authority has confirmed that first oil from the Albertine basin's Kingfisher and Tilenga fields has been delayed once more — this time to June 2027 — due to a combination of pipeline completion challenges, financing gaps and procurement delays in the Tanzania pipeline route.

The 1,443-kilometre East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), which will carry Ugandan oil to Tanzania's Tanga port for export, remains the central bottleneck. TotalEnergies, the French energy major leading the project, confirmed that civil works on the Tanzanian section are running approximately eight months behind schedule due to land compensation disputes in three regions.

For Kenya, the delay has mixed implications. The Northern Corridor trade route — which initially hoped to capture a share of oil logistics through Mombasa — has largely been bypassed by the EACOP decision to route through Tanzania, a competitive loss that Nairobi has not fully absorbed. But Uganda's oil coming to market, whenever it does, will expand East Africa's overall energy supply and potentially strengthen the region's bargaining power in global commodity markets.

Environmental and human rights groups continue to challenge the EACOP in European courts, arguing that the pipeline route displaces communities and threatens sensitive ecosystems including sections of the Murchison Falls National Park corridor. TotalEnergies has defended its community compensation programme but acknowledges that resettlement timelines have slipped.

Kenya's own offshore exploration continues with Italian company ENI active on Block L10A off the Lamu coast. While no commercial discoveries have been confirmed, seismic data released in August has been characterised by industry analysts as "encouraging" — a deliberately cautious word in a sector where optimism has historically been expensive.