East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) Ltd. Conducts orbital trainings in Uganda.

EACOP together with its tier One Contractor for Line Pipe- Chu Kong Petroleum and Natural Gas Steel Pipe Holdings Limited (PCK) through their National Content implementing partner in Uganda, Avanti Energy Services Limited (Avanti ESL) have carried out orbital welding trainings at Uganda Industrial Research Institute. The trainings are part of Panyu Chu Kong (PCK) Steel Pipe Co. Ltd’s commitments to National Content and more specifically technology transfer.

The East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) Ltd. is a project company set up to develop, build and operate a pipeline system which will transport crude oil from Kabaale in Uganda to the port of Tanga in Tanzania. Given the nature of the project, there are several national and international contractors and suppliers who will support different aspects/scopes on the construction of the pipeline and others who will also supply bespoke equipment for the pipeline.

Orbital welding is a specialized, automated welding technique where a welding torch or electrode rotates mechanically around a stationary workpiece (like a pipe or tube) to create a continuous, high-quality weld. The welding parameters are preset, and these settings can be stored and reused, making this a highly repeatable and more precise process. This is the nature of welding that will also be adopted on the EACOP pipeline. There are no orbital welding machines in Uganda for training and most welder certifications focus on manual welding techniques. Having identified this gap and as part of their commitment to National Content, PCK/Avanti brought a ‘Pipeline All-Position Automatic Welding Machine’ (Model BH-PAW-150) in-country and expert trainer from Canada to deliver a three-week training on the same machine. The training was attended by twenty eight (28) Technicians and Trainers (4 of whom are women) at Uganda Industrial Research Institute (UIRI) to ensure the cascading down of knowledge transfer and expertise. The training involved classroom sessions, with most of the sessions being practical sessions.

In addition to the training sessions at UIRI, PCK/AVANTI have onboarded two graduate trainees to gain work experience at PCK’s manufacturing plant in China and have carried out trainings in HSE and pipeline maintenance for Small Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) and local institutions as part of the Industry Enhancement (IEC) and Train the Trainer (TtT) initiatives.