East African nation, Uganda, has always been known for its rich coffee, wildlife and rare mountain gorillas, but never crude oil.
Two decades ago, the Museveni-led state had no business dealing in oil production. However, the nation confirmed its first commercial reserves in the Albertine Graben back in 2006.
What followed was two decades of false starts. Landlocked, poor and with no history of how to navigate an oil-based economy, Uganda was never an obvious candidate to become a petrostate. Yet, two decades later, it now stands close to becoming East Africa’s first big oil exporter.
The company that made that possible almost single-handedly was no other than French oil major, Totalenergies.
With six Western banks including Barclays refusing to finance the region’s flagship pipeline that would make oil production possible, TotalEnergies simply put in more of its own money instead. The firm now owns 62% of that pipeline, and its Tilenga oilfield alone represents a $10 billion investment.
Uganda’s oil basin holds roughly 6.5 billion barrels, of which about 1.4 billion are considered recoverable — modest by the standards of Saudi Arabia or Nigeria, but transformative for an economy whose entire GDP is under $60 billion.
Few other oil majors would have stuck around this long, in a project this contested, for a prize this uncertain.
Building an oil nation from scratch
First, getting Ugandan oil out of the ground has meant building an entire industry, not just wells.
Two fields will feed the system: TotalEnergies’ 190,000-barrel-a-day Tilenga and a smaller field run by China’s CNOOC, Kingfisher, targeted at 40,000 barrels a day.
Total’s chief executive, Patrick Pouyanné, told analysts last August the company still aims to bring Tilenga into production by the end of this year, reaching peak output by mid-2027.
Combined, the two fields should eventually produce 240,000-260,000 barrels a day — enough to place Uganda among Africa’s mid-sized producers, roughly on a par with Gabon. None of that oil moves without the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, a 1,443km, electrically heated line running to the Tanzanian port of Tanga — the longest heated pipeline on Earth.
By late 2025 Uganda’s petroleum regulator confirmed that all the pipes for the $5 billion project had been delivered along the route, with construction roughly 75% complete and at least $3.3 billion already invested.
Paying for it has been harder than building it: with Western banks unwilling to lend, Uganda’s energy minister flew to Beijing in search of Chinese financing, while the French major agreed to inject a further $400 million of its own equity.
Navigating political and local tension
However, money is not the only obstacle for Total.
Land acquisition for the pipeline and oilfields has touched well over 100,000 people across some 400 villages in Uganda and Tanzania combined, and disputes over compensation persist even as officials insist that more than 99% of claims are now settled. Courts in Uganda, France and the East African Court of Justice have all heard challenges brought by residents and campaign groups, who accuse TotalEnergies of inadequate consultation.
French judges have also separately ordered the company to hand over internal project documents in a related human-rights case. Total maintains its land-acquisition process follows international standards, but even its own staff concede the difficulty.
A company land official even admitted that undocumented inheritance and unmapped boundaries “resulted in recurring boundary disputes” requiring repeated surveys and legal support.
Villagers in oil districts, meanwhile, describe land ownership as a lingering source of anxiety, regardless of what the official tally of resolved cases says.
Even sceptics of the project’s costs tend to admit that TotalEnergies’ persistence has been unusual.
Miremba Akello, an energy consultant based in Kampala, calls it the biggest investment risk any oil major has taken on the continent.
“No one believes that the French oil major could pull off such a feat and follow through despite obvious setbacks from the start,” she says.
“Apart from state-owned oil firms and other local firms, most big firms wouldn’t touch Uganda with a long stick when it comes to the oil sector. But TotalEnergies has shown that even an empty field can be turned into a green pasture with enough commitment.”
Standing beside Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, when the project’s final investment decision was signed in April 2021, Mr Pouyanné called Tilenga and the pipeline “major projects for Total” that “will create significant in-country value for both Uganda and Tanzania.”
If first oil does arrive on schedule next year, a company that most of its rivals judged too risky to follow will have built, largely on its own, an entire oil nation.
That verdict may prove premature for now. Pipelines have a habit of running late, oil prices have a habit of falling just when producers need them high, and the compensation disputes trailing the project show no sign of disappearing once the first tanker sails from Tanga.
But for a country that has waited two decades and counting, even a bumpy start to production would count as vindication — and for TotalEnergies, a returns profile that its own rivals judged not worth the trouble.
