Tanzania’s Ugandan oil coup

East African producers now have a timetable for exports. Their oil will reach the sea by 2020

EIGHT months is a long time in the East African energy sector. Last August, Uganda and Kenya finalised a route for a pipeline to take oil from reserves in landlocked Uganda to the Kenyan port of Lamu, seemingly making good on a long-standing plan. But by March, Uganda said it was considering an alternative route to Tanga on the Tanzanian coast. By April the two countries had sealed the deal. The schedule for the Tanzanian pipeline should see construction start later this year, for completion by 2020. If that happens it will mark the culmination of a long battle by the international oil companies operating in Uganda to monetise oil first discovered in the Albertine Graben section of the East