Museveni names new UNOC board members
Mathias Katamba, board chair. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- Mathias Katamba and five other board members were last week vetted by Parliament.
- The new board comes at a time when the company is internally, according to insiders, beleaguered by dog fights, workplace toxicity, and influence peddling in the recruitment of senior staff, which was fodder for news late last week.
Former dfcu Managing Director Mathias Katamba has been appointed the board chairperson of the Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC), replacing businessman Emmanuel Katongole whose four year-two terms expired last month.
In a March 5 letter to Speaker of Parliament Anitah Among, President Museveni designated Mr Katamba and five other members for vetting. Section 41 of the Petroleum (Exploration, Development, & Production) Act, which establishes UNOC, stipulates that the President appoints its board with approval of Parliament.
The Senior Presidential Press Secretary, Mr Sandor Walusimbi, said was not privy to the appointment.
A graduate of Economics from the University of Greenwich, Mr Katamba served as dfcu boss from January 2019 to January last year when he threw in the towel. Previously, he served for five years as managing director of the government’s Housing Finance Bank, and before that, as chief executive officer of Finance Trust Bank.
Rounding up the new UNOC board are; Mr Moses Kabanda, the acting commissioner for public administration in Ministry of Finance; Mr Herbert Mugizi, a principal engineer in the Ministry of Energy; Dr Ivan Lule, a chemical engineer; Ms Justine Isenyi from the Vice President’s office, and Zulaika Kasajja Mirembe, a lawyer.
The sextet was vetted last week by Parliament’s Appointments Committee chaired by Deputy Speaker Thomas Tayebwa. Parliament’s Director of Communications Chris Obore could not immediately establish the committee sitting.
The new board replaces the inaugural Katongole-led board whose tenure ran from 2015 to last month.
Resuming work
Mr Peter Muliiisa, the UNOC head of legal and corporate affairs, said last evening that the new board will resume work at the earliest after receiving the instruments of power from the president.
“Parliament passed all of them last week. Now we are waiting for their instruments, then we can arrange the handover at the earliest possible,” Mr Muliisa noted.
UNOC, wholly owned by the ministries of Energy (51 percent) and Finance (49 percent), is the statutory body mandated to manage the country’s commercial interests in the nascent oil sector, including marketing of the country’s share of petroleum received in kind, and to develop in depth expertise in the oil and gas industry.
The Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs) signed with the licensed international oil companies (IOCs) provide for the government’s participation through a carried interest of up to 15 percent.
UNOC carries this 15 percent stake upstream in each of the nine production licences for the oil fields operated by China’s Cnooc and French TotalEnergies EP in Nwoya, Buliisa, Hoima, and Kikuube districts.
UNOC role
In midstream, UNOC carries Uganda’s 15 percent stake in the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) that will transport Uganda’s waxy crude oil from Hoima to Tanzania’s Indian Ocean Port en route to the international market.
Separately, the company through its subsidiary—Uganda Refinery Holding Company Limited (URHC)—carries Uganda’s 40 percent stake in the long shot 60,000 barrels per day (bpd) refinery. In January, it was announced that the government had tapped a United Arab Emirates’ Alpha MBM Investments, backed by SKA Energy FZE and SPEC Energy DMCC, to explore prospects of designing, financing, and constructing the $4b refinery.
Downstream, the state-owned national oil company operates both the Jinja Storage Terminal, established in the 1970s by President Amin as the country’s reserves for petroleum products, and the proposed Kampala Storage Terminal (KST) in Kiringete Sub-county, Mpigi District.
The KST, also to be developed through a joint venture, will serve as reserves, especially for refined petroleum products from the refinery. UNOC estimates $300m (Shs1.1trillion) as the capital expenditure for the development of KST.
Background
The new board comes at a time when the company is internally, according to insiders, beleaguered by dog fights, workplace toxicity, and influence peddling in the recruitment of senior staff, which was fodder for news late last week.
The company issued a statement to the effect denying the claims of influence peddling in the recruitment of the said staff, saying it “remains committed to upholding the highest standards of transparency, integrity, and accountability in all its operations.”
