The Race For New Opportunities in the East African Crude Oil Pipeline(EACOP) Project Has Well and Truly Begun

The pipeline project that will pump crude oil from Uganda Oil wells to Tanga port in Tanzania is on everyone ‘s radar. This is because of the vast opportunities the project create across the different sector of the economy.

It’s widely known that from the pre-construction through operation or the finishing phase, opportunities abound for different sets of businesses. Both local and foreign businesses in Tanzania and Uganda Economy. 

The project will demand different kinds of works and will provide different kinds of opportunities at different times or phases.

How do you tap into the opportunities? Do you just sit back and hope you get called to participate? Or you start knocking on office doors of oil and gas companies’ managers and hope they have a stake in the EACOP project?

That is why I am here.

Technically speaking, building the East African crude oil pipeline will require highly specialized skills, technology, and expertise. Much of this is not within its immediate capacity, with virtually little experience in oil and gas.

To be perfectly honest, these are capacities East Africa will instead have to build over time. It is encouraging that even early plans of the project management were seeking to incorporate training and development.

Despite the current limitation, opportunities are immense for local businesses to participate in the commercial aspects of the pipeline projects. And play an immediate role in supporting the oil and gas sector.

Opportunities for local businesses in the projects range from providing goods and supportive services to training and development facilitation as well as conference and industry events coordination.

Tapping into the EACOP project opportunities will require quick thinking, careful planning, and strategic action.

Local businesses looking to participates in this project should evaluate their capabilities, services, or products to identify how these can be modified or the best fist in the pipeline projects.

Also, local businesses should interact with operators, understand their needs, and embrace partnership opportunities with active oil and gas companies in Tanzania and Uganda.

This partnership is a good entry in the sector, To become successful they should make sure that their services and capabilities are meeting with international safety and standards
On the other hand, The project has attracted interest in many foreign service companies.

Leveraging their expertise and experience foreign companies are crucial for boosting local content in the oil and gas projects in Tanzania and East Africa.

Going alone is not the best option for foreign service companies looking to play an immediate and significant role in this project.

Forming a joint venture with a local partner is the best local market access. The foreign firms will get an entry in the local market and local business will learn the rope of the industry with no time if they want to benefits knowledge, expertise and technology transfer from the international firms
Before looking for this partnership, foreign businesses should study the market needs.

They should identify the projects’ and clients’ requirements and ongoing market forces and competition landscape. They should define what is the best entry strategy? They can research the market on their own or by retaining the service of consultants.

It is not enough to understand opportunities abounding the projects. To win works foreign and local businesses should understand the specific clients’ requirements, gather project data. You should understand regulation impacting the local industry.

With pipeline project expected to start on March 2021, both local and international businesses have short time to master it . But collaboration will be vital for their success.