As Uganda carries out the drilling of oil in the Albertine graben, oil contracts between the government and oil companies still remain a secret. Tullow oil and Heritage oil companies explored 15 wells in the lake Albertine basin of Uganda with 100% success rate and according to Aidan Heavy, the Chief Executive Director of Tullow Oil Company the reserves in the area now stand at 600 million barrels of oil equivalent.
The government has however refused to disclose the production sharing agreements they signed way back in 2001 with the oil companies for public scrutiny and debate saying there are confidentiality clauses barring parties from disclosing it. It is stated by the World Resources Institute, “Unless citizens find out what their governments are doing and how they spend their funds, governments have little incentive to improve performance, deliver on the promises or even provide basic services of adequate levels”.
The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development asserted that the country would receive 70% of all the revenue generated during the oil production period. The assertions cannot be verified independently because up to date when the drilling is taking place, the agreements have not been released to the public. The government is too secretive and does not want the citizens to know what is taking place in the extractive oil industry which is predicting oil curse in the near future.
On June 17, members of East African Legislative Assembly (EALA), a regional body responsible for the governance of natural resources in East Africa went to Kaiso-Tonya Hoima district together with Civil Society Organisations like Africa Institute for Energy Governance, and the members of the media to visit oil areas under Tullow oil company but were denied access to the Tullow drilling sites by the Petroleum Exploration Production Department.
The denial of accessibility to the Tullow drilling oil sites indicated lack of transparency and accountability in the extractive oil industry. This did not only indicate lack of transparency and accountability in the extractive industry of Uganda but also the violation of human rights according to the constitution of Uganda.
According to article 41 of the 1995 constitution of Uganda, citizens have a right to information in the hands of the government unless an exception is shown. In this respect therefore, there was no justifiable reason whatsoever to guarantee the government powers to mistreat and deny citizens a right to visit Tullow’s sites to get first hand information.
A law maker heading the national energy committee in the Ugandan Parliament, Stephen Birahwa, told the Dow Jones newswires on June 19 that he had looked at the oil contracts and that they are in the best interests of Uganda. “I have looked at the oil contracts myself and they are in the best interests of Ugandans,” he said. But Ugandans strongly believe that the oil contracts are not in their interests and that is why it is hard for the government to release them.
Failure to disclose the revenue and production sharing agreements creates suspicion, however good the projects are, says Frank Muramuzi, the Executive Director of the National Association for professional Environmentalists. There is a need to disclose the agreements since the government has always claimed that the oil deals contain the basic terms for Ugandans.
According to the Uganda’s largest opposition party, the Forum for the Democratic change, it would petition Transparency International to compel the government to release the production sharing agreements to the republic of Uganda.
The Ugandan activists have also petitioned the Uganda High Court to compel the government to make to public the contents of the agreement in line with the Ugandan constitution and laws regarding access to information. The Access to information Act 2005 obliges the government to respect the citizens ‘right to information and the government is under an obligation to put in place mechanisms for purposes of facilitating full enjoyment of the right to information by citizens.
Article 2 of the constitution provides that “the constitution is the supreme law of Uganda and if any other law is found inconsistent with any of the provisions of the constitution, that law shall be void to the level of inconsistency. Therefore the government had no right of stopping the EALA MPs and the CSOs to enter the drilling sites because this shows that the government has a reason of not releasing the Production Sharing Agreements. There is a saying in Runyankore which says that “byafa ndimu”meaning that my things perished when am around. This is really not good for someone’s things to perish when she or he is around and he or she does not save them. It is our right as Ugandans to fight for our rights of which access to information about oil is among the violated rights. Let us prevent the oil curse in Uganda using the laws since the government seems to be so stubborn.
Uganda is ranked the third most corrupt country in the world according to the latest transparency survey report by Transparency International. Uganda is losing US$300m per year through corruption which is facilitated by high levels of secrecy that have become the norm in all government transactions.
In behaving like this, the hope of Ugandans that the government of Uganda will ever implement the 2008 Oil and Gas policy, and particularly the implementation of the objective VI of the policy which requires the government to participate in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative in Uganda’s oil industry is diminished.
The government’s failure to adhere to the national constitution, the Access to the information Act, indicates that all the oil processes will not be transparent and without transparency, we must begin to mourn for the future of our country because the opposite of transparency is oil curse.
Sarah Akankwasa is a Programme Assistant at the Africa Institute for Energy Governance.
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