Shs11b centre to secure petroleum data
The centre will be central in collecting data about all oil-related projects. Photo / File
What you need to know:
- The centre will offer support in securing and storage of vast quantities of data expected from drilling, refinery and the East African Crude Oil Pipeline projects.
The Petroleum Authority of Uganda (PAU) has invested $3m (Shs11.3b) in a tier three data centre that will secure real time information from oil fields as drilling starts next month.
The centre will offer support in securing and storage of vast quantities of data expected from drilling activities from more than 450 development oil wells in the Kingfisher and Tilenga development projects and from the refinery and the East African Crude Oil Pipeline projects.
Mr Ernest Rubondo, the PAU chief executive officer, said the centre situated in Entebbe, Wakiso District forms part of the broader National Petroleum Data Repository Infrastructure.
Mr Rubondo also noted that government will invest in a Real-Time Monitoring Centre, a disaster recovery facility, and a seismic data transcription facility at a cost of Shs133b.
The monitoring centre will enable PAU to receive data and information from drilling, production, and crude oil transportation operations in the country and abroad.
“The design of the monitoring centre has been completed, and its development is expected to commence,” Mr Rubondo said, adding that the design of a disaster recovery solution is expected to commence soon while development is planned to be concluded next year.
Rubondo was speaking at the seventh Petroleum Data Management Conference, which commenced on Tuesday in Kampala with seven other African countries to share knowledge on the history, present and future of oil data.
The conference themed; ‘Seven Years of Cooperation in Petroleum Data Management: Looking to the Future’, will discuss issues pertaining to digitisation of data, energy transition, licensing rounds and sharing experiences on petroleum data management.
Countries at the conference include Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Somalia, Sudan, Zanzibar and Uganda which will benchmark on experts’ experience from the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate.
Mr Gunnar Sjogren, a project director from Norway, said the country has been a key partner to Uganda since 2005 in building human resource and technical capacity in petroleum data management under Norway’s ‘Oil for Development programme’.
Mr Rubondo noted that some of the data will include oil that has been collected from underground.
