Kampala, Uganda | – The Ugandan government has extended the deadline for investors seeking to submit bids for oil exploration licences for six blocks in the Albertine Graben region in the country’s first competitive bidding round.
The deadline has been extended from the end of May to end of June for the blocks in Western and Northern Uganda, says Fred Kabagambe Kaliisa, the Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Energy.
He told the New Vision over the weekend that the ministry had received 10 applications so far from international oil companies which had bought the request for qualification documents but it wanted to see more firms participating the bidding.
Explaining developments in the oil and gas sector, he said six other companies had shown interest in getting exploration licences but had not yet bought the request for qualification documents.
Kaliisa added that the bid closing deadline had coincided with two international oil conferences in the United States and Britain and the Ministry planned to use the conferences to publicise the available licenses to attract more bidders.
The government in February announced the country’s first open competitive licensing round for petroleum exploration licences in the Albertine Graben where there is an estimate of 6.5 billion barrels of oil in place and 500 billion cubic feet of gas.
