Uganda's energy and minerals minister Irene Muloni said that once the East African nation starts pumping crude out from Lake Albert oil fields along the western border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda will seek to join OPEC.
After consultations with other existing member states, including Equatorial Guinea, Ugandan government took the decision to join OPEC said Muloni at the oil and gas conference in Kampala.
"We will join OPEC once we start producing our own oil, to reap the benefits from being a member of the organization, these include stability of prices," she said. "We remain on course to deliver first oil in 2020."
According to government estimates, Uganda is hoping to start pumping as much as 200,000 b/d of crude in 2020 from its Lake Albert field, which could peak at 230,000 b/d in 2023,
The construction of an export pipeline via Tanzania is crucial for this to work, however, most market watchers believe the 2020 start-up target is optimistic.
Earlier this year, Equatorial Guinea's oil minister Gabriel Mbaga Obiang Lima told S&P Global Platts that he had asked Cameroon and Uganda to consider joining OPEC's existing African contingent, as well as East African oil exporter South Sudan.
Fluctuating oil prices have in recent years been a key concern to the development of Uganda's crude fields, where $8 Billion has been invested in the oil fields by China's CNOOC, France's Total and UK's Tullow Oil.
In total, the partners are developing some 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the Lake Albert Basin. The export pipeline via Tanzania is expected to bring over 200,000 b/d of crude to the market from the project.