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Central Africa: Uganda, DRC Start Border Oil Talks
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The Monitor (Kampala)
14 December 2007
Posted to the web 13 December 2007
Frank Nyakairu
Kaisotonya/L. Albert
DOZENS of officials from Uganda and DR Congo are meeting in Kampala to find solutions to a border row over Lake Albert suspected to be sitting on major oil wells.
A major conference started in Kampala yesterday and is expected to culminate into an initial working agreement later today.
"As a follow-up this conference is trying to kick start the process of border demarcation and a joint working mechanism in exploring oil in the area," Mr Honey Malinga the Deputy Commissioner in the Department Petroleum exploitations and production.
The Minister flew 20 Congolese Officials who toured Ngassa Camp on the shores of Lake Albert on Wednesday. Another official Mr Fred Kabamba assured the Congolese officials that Uganda had not yet started offshore oil operations.
"We have nine areas where we think there is oil but none of these is on the water. All are on Ugandan soil," Mr Kabanda told officials.
The Congolese delegations were taken through all the operations of Tullow Oil at Ngassa in Hoima District. Lake Albert, which lies on the floor of the western arm of the Great African Rift Valley, straddles part of the Uganda-Congo border in an area where two companies, Heritage of Canada and Tullow of the UK, are prospecting for oil.
The diplomatic row, many fear will throw the two neighbours a decade back when Uganda invaded the DR Congo in a bid to fight the rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces, but instead took part in a five-year civil war the dragged in six more countries killing estimated two million Congolese and imparing relations between the two neighbors. Those relations had been improving over the past three years.
The DR Congo Commissioner for Ituri District Rwabona Mugabe said his government wants joint operations.
"The Ugandans should wait and let us start explorations and production at once," said Mr Rwabona.
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At the talks in Munyonyo in Kampala, technocrats were by last evening expected to come up with a proper working paper.
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