Controversy About the Recent EU Parliament Resolution Against Uganda
On Thursday, 15 September, the European Parliament voted an emergency resolution denouncing the repercussions of the mega oil projects planned in Uganda and Tanzania, particularly targeting those of the French oil giant TotalEnergies.
The multinational intends to exploit the substantial reserves of oil sleeping under Lake Albert in Western Uganda, which implies the drilling of more than four hundred wells from December 2022 including 132 in the protected natural area of Murchinson Falls. The output of those wells is expected to be approximately 190,000 barrels per day. This production will be exported to the port of Tanga in Tanzania through a 1,445-kilometre-long underground pipeline heated at more than 50°C. Called the East African Crude Pipeline (EACOP), it will be the longest heated pipeline in the world. TotalEnergies has committed to investing approximately $3.8 billion in this project scheduled to start in 2025. When fully operational, it will emit up to 34 million tons of carbon emissions per year, more than thirty times the current annual amount of carbon air pollution of Uganda and Tanzania combined.
According to a report published by the International Energy Agency in 2021, all new oil and gas extraction plans must be abandoned immediately to limit global warming to 1.5°C from pre-industrial times. This massive oil project thus constitutes a direct threat to human prosperity. At the local scale, it also endangers various sensitive environments. The Murchinson Falls National Park is Uganda’s largest protected natural area, where many vulnerable species such as giraffes and elephants are currently thriving. The deforestation needed to install the project’s infrastructure will significantly alter their natural habitat, which could be irremediably damaged in case of an oil spill. According to the World Wildlife Fund, EACOP will significantly deteriorate as much as 800 square miles of sensitive wildlife habitats as well as a 250-mile stretch of the Lake Victoria basin, on which more than 30 million people depend for their water and food supplies.
Additionally, approximately 18,000 households will have to cede their properties to enable the project’s completion, an effort for which they will only receive a meagre compensation that does not include the value of improvements made since a 2018 assessment. According to local activists, those expropriations will significantly impoverish farmers living along the route of the pipeline. Most of those who have already been expropriated have resorted to planting subsistence crops such as maize instead of cash crops that need more time to mature like bananas and coffee, effectively making them more vulnerable to food insecurity. Residents attempting to resist this process have suffered acts of intimidation and manipulation and been forced to abandon their lands for derisory cash compensation.
The European Parliament’s resolution recommends halting the drilling in protected areas and the postponement of construction work related to EACOP for one year. This delay would be used to contemplate alternative routes for the pipeline to minimise its environmental impact, and “consider other projects based on renewable energies.” The Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) also urged the Ugandan and Tanzanian regimes to stop committing human rights violations linked to these oil projects and to fairly indemnify people adversely affected by them. Although non-binding, this resolution has intensified the already significant pressure exerted on TotalEnergies to waive its exploitation rights on the project. The controversy surrounding EACOP is so huge that twenty banks and 13 insurers, including Allianz Group, HSBC and BNP Paribas, have already announced that they would not support the plan.
In Uganda, the resolution was met with outrage. Ugandan lawmakers loudly condemned this motion which they believe reflects the “highest level of neo-colonialism and imperialism against the sovereignty of Uganda and Tanzania”, in the words of their Deputy Speaker Mr Thomas Tayebwa. In his statement, he accused MEPs of “economic racism” and qualified their resolution as an attempt to sabotage Uganda’s economic development. He also underlined the hypocrisy of European legislators on the climate argument, as EU member states continue to use and even exploit fossil energies to ensure their energy security, stating in his communication to the Ugandan House of Parliament: “Fifty-three licences have recently been issued in the North Sea and Germany has revived its coal plants. In addition, western countries are seeking to import gas from African countries. All this is in a bid to ensure energy security in their respective states. Is energy security a preserve for only the European Union? Does Uganda not have the same right?”
In addition to raising these interrogations regarding individual countries’ responsibility for climate change, the motion appears to reflect the EU’s animosity toward the Kampala regime. It is the second time in less than two years that MEPs vote a resolution against Uganda. Following the widespread violence and human rights abuses committed in the weeks prior to the 2021 Ugandan General Election, the European Parliament had unanimously voted to instruct the European Commission to sanction responsible individuals and organisations by invoking the Magnitsky Act. This anti-EACOP resolution may be another manifestation of Brussels’ desire to punish the Kampala regime’s violent repression, which is implied by the aforementioned emphasis on the human rights abuses linked to the oil projects in the text of the motion.
The recent revelations concerning TotalEnergies’ alleged contribution to the war in Ukraine constitute another possible political motivation behind the resolution. Last month, the NGO Global Witness and the French newspaper Le Mondedisclosed that the French multinational produces gas condensate that is subsequently transformed into kerosene and used by the Russian air force to bomb Ukrainian cities. Although TotalEnergies, which is the only western company still operating on Russian soil,denies them, these accusations have sparked shock and anger in Brussels. As the EU is mobilising funds and deploying exceptional measures to support Ukraine, this explicit denunciation of TotalEnergies’ engagement in an environmentally and socially dangerous project could represent a form of retaliation.