The 900-Mile EACOP East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline Is a Bad Deal for My Country — and the World

(New York Times, Kampala, 8 April 2022) Vanessa Nakate, Ugandan climate justice activist, notes that this week, the panel of climate experts convened by the UN delivered a clear message: To stand a chance of curbing dangerous climate change, we can’t afford to build more fossil fuel infrastructure. We must also rapidly phase out the fossil fuels we’re using. In moments like this, the media rarely focuses on African countries like mine, Uganda. When it does, it covers the impacts — the devastation we are already experiencing and the catastrophes that loom. They are right to: Mozambique has been battered in recent years by cyclones intensified by climate change. Drought in Kenya linked to climate change has left millions hungry. In Uganda, we are now more frequently hit by extreme flash floods that destroy lives and livelihoods. Africa isn’t only a victim of the climate crisis, but also a place where infrastructure decisions made in the coming years will shape how it unfolds. TotalEnergies, a French energy company, this year announced a $10 billion investment decision, which involves a nearly 900-mile oil pipeline from Kabaale, Uganda, to a peninsula near Tanga, Tanzania. From there, the oil would be exported to the international market. Despite local opposition, TotalEnergies and a partner, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, have pushed ahead. The project might have a difficult time securing additional financing, as many banks have already ruled out the project. The multinational insurance company Munich Re has also vowed not to insure it, at least in part because of the harm it would do to the climate. An estimated 14,000 households will lose land, according to Oxfam International, with thousands of people set to be economically or physically displaced. There are reports that compensation payments offered to some communities are completely insufficient. In other news, Ugandan NGOs have written to German and Italian ECAs asking them to not finance EACOP, noting that if constructed the pipeline will be the longest electrically heated crude oil pipeline in the world, will transport 216,000 barrels of crude oil per day at peak production, will displace over 86,000 people from 5,172 hectares of land in Uganda and Tanzania, affect nearly 2,000 sq.km of protected areas, a quarter of which are habitats for endangered species, threaten the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Lakes Albert and Victoria fishers in Uganda and the DRC and result in the production of over 34.3 million metric tonnes of carbon per year, roughly 7 times Ugana's annual emissions when the oil is burnt.