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This article addresses the question of how petroleum wealth shapes the development of nations. It also asks if ‘weak states’ are perceived as more attractive and whether international oil companies can defend themselves more easily in such ‘weak’ states. While research has already sought to provide answers to these questions, there are certain limitations to previous approaches. In particular, insufficient attention has been paid to domestic politics and the role of states in the Global South is often analysed from a deterministic perspective. In addition, little work has been done on the political and economic dynamics that were having an impact before the resources of these states were exploited. This article aims to fill this gap by asking whether the creation of a national state enterprise in the fossil fuel industry is an indicator of the existence of state capitalism. The term state capitalism refers to a configuration of capitalism in which the state plays an essential role as a promoter, supervisor and owner of capital. The case of Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC) is considered of particular interest in order to develop our understanding of the content and scale of state capitalism. It is already significant that Uganda could be considered as corresponding to this configuration of capitalism, as it is perceived to be a “fragile state” with little economic interventionism. The research was designed to include semi-structured interviews and an analysis of parliamentary debates and leaked diplomatic documents from Wikileaks and the Panama Papers. The article is structured in two sections. The first section outlines the interaction between the oil sector and the Ugandan regime, introduces the theoretical framework and explains the research design. In the second section, the development of UNOC since its foundation in 2014 is detailed and two key dimensions of its trajectory are highlighted. The first is its capital structure and the second is the desire expressed by its managers and Ugandan political leaders to move its production model to that of a vertically integrated oil company.