This is Hoima district, Western Uganda.
Welcome to the remote village of Keyhoro, where international oil
companies have known about the presence of oil since the 1920s,
and began intense exploration in 2007.
Seismic surveys have proven that, in the region, there are 2 billion
barrels of oil under the lake, if not more.
Basically what you see before you is a drilling rig,
a typical land-drilling rig.
A fairly typical land-drilling site, except we have a few environmental
considerations here that we have to take care of.
Tests conducted by the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) this year about the
lead concentrations in the lake are up 19 times the standard levels.
The cuttings we are taking from the well, we have to dispose of them
at another site away from here.
This increase is a result of toxic mud cuttings left behind
by the oil companies in the process of their exploration activities.
This has environmental groups in Uganda up in arms.
Recent tests have found lead, zinc, chromium, cadmium, nitrogen
and chloride among others inside of the waste mud.
Ingestion of any of these chemicals can prove to be fatal.
The impact of these chemicals and seismic activity on the environment,
in both the water and to the wildlife, is devastating.
A refinery may mean the end of the lush nature here.
We are drilling out directionally, we're actually under the lake here.
So we're drilling at an angle, maybe at about a 30-degree angle in the well.
We get quite a lot ... there has been quite a lot of seismic and volcanic
activity in this area, which is complicating drilling matters.
President Yoweri Museveni is caught in a standoff with Western
oil companies that want Uganda to export crude,
while he wants a refinery built in Uganda to fulfill his dream
of building an industrial economy.
When Museveni came, he was the one who processed everything, then they started.
We've been having discussions ...
... and the idea of building a refinery is now agreed on
by all the people I talked to.
A medium-sized refinery of about 150,000 barrels would cost
U.S.$2 billion.
That's money that's about half of Uganda's budget.
The refinery comes at a high price.
On the shores of Keyhoro, people live on less than a dollar a day,
whereas the magnitude of the oil discovery is half
of Uganda's gross domestic product (GDP).
Likewise, this fishing community will be ruined by the construction
of oil platforms.
On a normal land-rig operation, we would have a huge pit dug
behind the rig, and we would quite simply put all the cuttings in there,
and when we are finished we would fill that in. But here we can't do that,
because of where we are at.
It is understandable that the people are very anxious, but that anxiety
cannot rush government into coming out with statements.
So the goverment has nothing secret to hide about these oil explorations.
Needless to say, the money to be spent on the refinery
is not money spent on the local community.
The Oil Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs)
still remain confidential and hidden from the public eye
because of the environmental consequences
of drilling and refining oil.
In the Albertine Rift Basin the oil exploration and pollution
continues at the expense of the environment.
The community surrounding the oil site does not benefit from the
international interests and Museveni's persistent
aspirations for a refinery.