Petroleum Exploration and Development in a Frontier, Remote Rift Basin, the Albertine Graben of the East African Rift System

Abeinomugisha, Dozith ¹; Obita, Philips ¹
(1) Petroleum Exploration and Production, Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development, Entebbe, Uganda.

Commercial hydrocarbon quantities have now been established in the Ugandan part of the Albertine Graben. The Government of Uganda, together with the oil companies operating in the country are planning to commercialize the discoveries that have been made. This is going to form the first commercial oil production in the East African Rift system.

The East African Rift System is a major tectonic feature stretching from the Red Sea in the north to the Okavango Delta in the south. The system bifurcates south of Sudan to form the eastern arm that continues south through Kenya, and the western arm that progates through Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi to Mbeya triple junction in Tanzania where the two arms merge and propagate through Lake Malawi.

The Albertine graben,initiated during the Miocene,is approximately 500 km long by 40 km wide and is located on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Gravity, magnetic and seismic data collected and interpreted over the Graben suggest over 5,000m of sediment thickness.

The Albertine graben has been the subject of interest for petroleum exploration since the 1920s. The significant exploration activities however, commenced with aeromagnetic data acquisition over the Albertine Graben in 1983-84. Subsequent gravity and magnetic surveys by the government have been added to the database. The first oil companies to be licensed in the Graben were Ptrofina in 1990,over the entire Graben, Hardman Resources and Heritage Oil and Gas in 1997 over Exploration Areas 2 and 3 respectively. Hardman relinquished the license because of other commitments and the collapse of the oil price only to regain the license in 2001, but Heritage acquired 2D seismic data and drilled three wells on the Turaco structure from 2002 to 2003. The wells encountered natural gas but heavily contaminated with carbon dioxide. The first oil discovery was made by Hardman at Mputa structure in the Kaiso - Tonya area in 2006. Since then several exploration and appraisal wells have been drilled.

Discovered resources now stand at 2000 million barrels oil equivalent and plans are underway to commercialize these resources. While the generated revenues will greatly contribute to Uganda’s economy, the country is land locked, about 1200km from the nearest cost, Mombasa and there are no hydrocarbon development and production infrastructure in the country. These constraints have hampered early commercialization of the resources.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90135©2011 AAPG International Conference and Exhibition, Milan, Italy, 23-26 October 2011.