The hugely successful drilling campaign in Uganda conducted by Tullow has helped to launch the country into the league of the top-50 oil producing nations in the world, says Brian Glover, the company's business unit manager in the country.

Speaking to AllAfrica.com, the manager said that while it is not comparable to Angola or Nigeria in terms of reserves, Uganda has the potential to outscore Gabon in daily output.

Looking ahead to the prospects the discoveries will create, Mr Glover said that the Ugandan workforce will receive a substantial and welcome boost with large-scale training and development programmes.

"We are in an early stage and I expect the number of employees to go up. But for our company, about 75 per cent of our employees are Ugandans. Overall, the industry will employ about 150,000 employees," he told the publication.

Tullow has this week offered its latest trading and operations update ahead of its audited half-year results. It explained that development planning and commercialisation initiatives are now underway and yielding positive results.

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