Ugandais due to sign oil production licenses with France's Total and Britain's Tullow Oil by the end of the year as it seeks to start commercial production.

The Ministry of Energy is over seeing the building of an oil refinery and a pipeline in the next three years to start oil production by 2018.

This was said recently when President Yoweri Museveni was meeting with Javier Rielo Total's Exploration and Production Africa Division Vice President East Africa over the development of a crude oil pipeline ahead of production in 2018.

The meeting was attended by the Minister for Energy and Mineral development Eng. Irene Muloni and the Permanent Secretary Ministry of Energy Kabagambe Kalisa.

With China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), the only holder of an oil production license for the Kingfisher Discovery Area, expectations were high in 2014 that it was likely to be the year for Uganda to issue more production licenses to other firms.

In January 2014, all the three oil exploration firms Tullow, CNOOC and Total tendered in bids for production licenses for 10 of the 21 oil prospected areas.