Oil to be found on Congolese side of Uganda's Lake Albert? (Tullow Oil)

SO far 800 million barrels of oil have been confirmed in Uganda, with an estimated total value of $50b. Ibrahim Kasita and Els De Temmerman interviewed Aidan Heavey, founder and chief executive officer of Tullow Oil, about the challenges and opportunities of the oil find for Uganda and East Africa. Full story at Uganda Watch. Excerpt:

You have just completed drilling the Ngassa-2 well on the shores of Lake Albert. How much oil do you estimate is under the lake?

Ngassa-2 is a huge structure. It runs out for about 150km2. We just drilled from the shoreline into the top of the structure and that gives an indication of what is there. We don't know exactly how much is there. It needs extra wells drilled out into the lake to establish the exact amount. But the range we are looking at is 100 million to 400 million barrels. That is only on the Ugandan side of the lake.

So there could be as much oil on the Congolese side?

We have no information at all on Congo in terms of seismic data or what the prospects are.

But from your experience, when there is oil on one side of the lake, is there also oil on the other side?

Absolutely. there should be oil on the Congo side. 

Would it make sense for the oil wells in Southern Sudan to be connected to Uganda?

It might make sense if you had a central hub for distribution in Uganda and have other countries linked to that central hub. That would be a cost-effective way of doing it. It would be great to have the cooperation between all the countries in the region through a central hub. That is one option. That would require the various governments talking to each other and putting together a central hub. If that is the way the governments want to go, we will work with that.

See Wikipedia info on Lake Albert and map Rivers and lakes of Uganda