Until this year, Robert Kazini had never given much thought to whether he was fishing in Congolese or Ugandan waters; it didn’t matter.
Nor did it matter much to Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) — until prospectors found oil here.
Now, with crude nearing $100 a barrel and both countries dreaming of billions of petrodollars that could flow from Lake Albert, an ugly and at times deadly dispute over their border is jeopardising the livelihoods of locals like Kazini.
”This border is our big problem,” said the 35-year-old, winding up a wide net into his wood-plank boat. ”Congolese soldiers have started arresting us, saying we are in their waters. It’s not safe to fish anymore.”
The 160km-long lake — wrenched into existence many millennia ago by the tow of tectonic plates forming Africa’s Great Rift Valley — has in the last two years become a new frontier in the hunt for African oil.
Production on the continent is still dominated by West Africa, but recent finds in East Africa’s have triggered a new rush for exploration rights.
London-based Tullow Oil has three blocks in the Albertine basin spanning Uganda and the DRC, two in partnership with Canada’s Heritage Oil. Eight wells have been drilled, all yielding crude.
The companies estimate reserves in this area could be more than a billion barrels, based on drilling and seismic data. That is a huge figure for any oilfield and on a par with the biggest recent discoveries in Nigeria, the continent’s top producer.
Colonial confusion
How the two countries will agree on the border remains to be seen. Like many colonial-era frontiers, it was drawn up by European powers with inaccurate maps and scant regard for geographical features or local people.
Louis Oketi (69) remembers colonial officers from Belgium or Britain arriving to explain where the border lay.
First, it ran though the Congolese town of Beni, then later they moved it back miles to the Semliki River flowing out of southern Lake Albert, he said.
”The colonialists are responsible for this dispute. They never specified their borders properly. One day it was there,” he says, gesturing towards a blue expanse of mountains over the lake. ”Then they’d move it somewhere else.”
But with oil prices at their current highs, where the border is drawn could make millions of dollars of difference.
To local fisherman, Lake Albert is a lifeline providing food and income, but the dispute over control of its prospective oil fields is putting that at risk, they say.
Harassment by Congolese soldiers policing the disputed border — Ugandan authorities also arrest Congolese fishermen in this tit-for-tat row — have made their trade unviable.
The deep waters around Rukwanzi Island support some of the best fishing in the lake, but the island is now the main flashpoint of the dispute — and fishermen must avoid it unless they want to be arrested and lose their equipment.
”I don’t see oil helping us,” said trader Madina Kemigisa as she gutted a large spinney fish, stone-hammering a knife into the cartilage of its shark-like head.
”Since these border problems, my fishermen can’t get to where the fish are — they get arrested or attacked. We are living in fear.”
A typical day’s catch used to be 100 fish, now it’s less than a third of that, she said.
Tit-for-tat
A silent stand-off over the border burst into violence in August, when Congolese troops opened fire on an oil boat carrying out seismic studies for Heritage.
A British contractor was shot dead in the ensuing battle between Ugandan and Congolese forces and Heritage guards.
DRC President Joseph Kabila and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni met in Tanzania in September to discuss the dispute, and each agreed to pull back troops.
But another shootout between them at the end of September, apparently triggered when the United Nations impounded a Heritage boat for straying into Congolese waters, killed six civilians.
The companies remain undeterred. Tullow is in the process of drilling a further well and has more planned for next year.
”We’re concerned about insecurity on the lake but … the two governments appear to be making major efforts to get an agreement,” said Tullow Uganda’s production and operations manager Peter Jarvis.
Security officials say Uganda and the DRC have honoured a deal to pull troops off Rukwanzi Island and replace them with police to conduct joint patrols until the dispute is resolved.
”The agreement was that Rukwanzi be demilitarised,” Uganda’s police chief Kale Kayihura told Reuters at the lakeshore, as police officers donned bright orange life-jackets in preparation for a boat trip to the disputed isle.
”To deploy police, rather than military, is a sign of confidence building and a de-escalation of the conflict,” he said. – Reuters