It's now official. The oil find in blocks 1 and 3A in the Albertine region are gone to leading Italian multi-national company, Eni S.p.A. Heritage Oil Plc, hitherto operators of the wells, yesterday confirmed media reports it had sold its stakes here at $1.5 billion (Shs2.8 trillion). In a statement, Heritage says a final deal could be sealed by March next year subject to approval of transaction terms and conditions by the Uganda government. Superficially, this pops up as a great feat.

Why? Eni S.p.A has a rich profile in oil and gas, electricity generation and sale, petrochemicals, oilfield services construction and engineering industries. The downside to the deal, though, is that Tullow Oil Company that was also looking to Eni for financial relief has, technically, been knocked out.

Firstly, companies clamouring to exploit Ugandan oil must have sufficient resources to build required infrastructure; refineries and pipelines being the core. And government wants this fixed quick, certainly before expected but behind-the-schedule 2011 real production timeline. This way our oil won't be shipped as crude. President Museveni has argued, rather logically, that doing so would be mortgaging our wealth to international processors. We could not agree more. Trouble is how such a deal was clinched without knowledge of the line Minister Eng. Hilary Onek. He told this newspaper on Sunday that he was "unaware" of the transaction understood to have been in the offing for several months.

Like most well-intentioned but badly executed deals in this country, the facts are always hidden to evade, unjustifiably so, public scrutiny. Two staff of this newspaper are in court, painstakingly seeking disclosure of the Prospecting and Production Sharing Agreements that the government signed with foreign oil firms. We should not be going to court to compel what is public information availed to us.

Only those with dubious intent do business in hiding, more so involving a public endowment. It is in the interest of Epi to depart with the norm and allow transparency to be the flagship of its dealings with stakeholders here. Assume the announced takeover isn't yet defiled by a devil in the negotiation detail; we vouch our welcome on the premise that the Italians will deliver prudently. We strongly demand that the government invests the expected windfall from oil to benefit all citizens.