By Africanews.
The European Parliament adopted a resolution condemning the planned East African Crude Oil Pipeline this month dealing another blow to the controversial project, which numerous banks and insurers have declined to back.
The pipeline, spearheaded by French oil giant Total, would carry oil harvested from beneath Lake Albert and Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda 900 miles to the port of Tanga in Tanzania. The new resolution calls for “Ugandan and Tanzanian authorities, as well as the project promoters and stakeholders, to protect the environment and to put an end to the extractive activities in protected and sensitive ecosystems, including the shores of Lake Albert.” The resolution also “urges TotalEnergies to take one year before launching the project to study the feasibility of an alternative route.”
Environmentalists say the pipeline, which would pass near Lake Victoria, threatens to contaminate water supplies and harm wildlife, and they warn the project would displace more than 100,000 people. Oil pumped through pipeline would also yield 34 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions yearly, more than the total emissions of Uganda and Tanzania put together, critics say.
The East African Crude Oil Pipeline will stretch 900 miles from Lake Albert in Uganda to the Tanzanian port of Tanga on the Indian Ocean.
Twenty banks and 13 insurers including Allianz Group, Swiss Re, HSBC, and BNP Paribas, have said they would not support the pipeline. But several others including Santander, BBVA, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs have yet to voice their opposition, advocates say.
“The pressure is growing daily against Total and this project at all levels of society and throughout the world,” Clémence Dubois, France team lead at 350.org, said in a statement praising the new resolution. “No banks or financers who currently fund Total can ignore their responsibility, and they should be prepared to meet increasing pressure too, until they stop financing climate bombs like this around the world.”
Uganda criticized a resolution by the European Union’s Parliament calling for a halt to extractive activities in protected ecosystems in an oil pipeline project. The Deputy Speaker of the Ugandan National assembly Hon Thomas Tayebwa slammed a “deliberate misrepresentation of key facts” in the resolution.
By 2025, Uganda will have its oil coming out of the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline as planned. The comments of leader Yoweri Museveni reaffirmed his determination to have the project completed.
His reaction came following a resolution by the European Union’s Parliament urging the international community “to exert maximum pressure on Ugandan and Tanzanian authorities, as well as the project promoters and stakeholders,” to stop oil activities around Lake Albert.
Uganda is estimated to have recoverable oil reserves of at least 1.4 billion barrels. In February, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation and TotalEnergies said that the total investment would be more than $10 billion. They have partnered with the Uganda National Oil Company, and the Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation
The national assembly issued a statement asserting Uganda’s sovereignty and condemning the EU parliament’s resolution. “The resolution is based on misinformation and deliberate misrepresentation of key facts on environment and human rights protection. It represents the highest level on neo-colonialism and imperialism against the sovereignty of Uganda and Tanzania”, Thomas Tayebwa, the Deputy speaker of the assembly said.
Kampala says oil wealth can lift millions. When environmental Ngos like Friends of the Earth evaluated that over 120,000 people will lose land to make way for the project.
Unfair compensation
Compensation was also an issue. If Ugandan civil society had already voiced that disclosed compensation was not fair, the resolution doubled down. Saying that some landowners “had their homes destroyed to facilitate the construction of access roads or the processing plant, others have had all or part of their land requisitioned and have lost the free use of their properties and thus their means of subsistence. This has happened without prior payment of fair and adequate compensation. As if this is not bad enough where the compensation is paid it is often far too low to allow farmers whose land has been expropriated to buy comparable land on which to continue farming “. It, therefore, called for the authorities to “compensate promptly, fairly, and adequately, as provided for in the Ugandan Constitution and as promised by the companies” , “those evicted or denied access to their land” and “people who lost property and land”.
The text also expressed its “grave concern about the human rights violations in Uganda and Tanzania linked to investments in fossil-fuel projects, including the wrongful imprisonment of human rights defenders, the arbitrary suspension of NGOs, arbitrary prison sentences”.
Mr Museveni said TotalEnergies had assured him that the pipeline, which would link oil fields in western Uganda to the Indian Ocean port of Tanga in Tanzania, would proceed but warned on Twitter that “if the French energy group was to choose to listen to the EU Parliament, Uganda shall find another partner.”
