Ugandan police arrested 21 environmentalists in Kampala today as they protested a controversial multi-billion-dollar oil development scheme.
The East African Crude Oil Pipeline Project (EACOP), headed by French oil giant TotalEnergies is drilling for oil in Uganda and sending the crude to Tanzania for export.
TotalEnergies and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) are drilling in Lake Albert, which has an estimated 6.5 billion barrels of crude, including about 1.4 billion barrels that are currently considered recoverable.
Environmental groups say the project is having dire consequences for local communities and the environment as drilling is taking place in Murchison Falls National Park, the largest protected area in Uganda.
Police arrested 19 men and two women in a group that had attempted to march on parliament and the Chinese embassy.
In a petition the protesters issued an “urgent appeal against the continued violations of human and environmental rights by the EACOP project”.
The petition said the oil scheme is a “threat to Uganda’s local economies” and has negative “social and cultural impacts”.
The crude will be shipped through a 1,443-kilometre (900-mile) heated pipeline from the oilfields in northwestern Uganda to Tanzania’s Indian Ocean port of Tanga.
TotalEnergies has a 62-percent stake in the pipeline, with Ugandan and Tanzanian state-owned oil companies holding 15 percent each and CNOOC eight percent.
Uganda’s first oil is expected to flow in 2025 — almost two decades after the reserves were discovered — and the project has been hailed by President Yoweri Museveni as an economic boon for the landlocked country where many live in poverty.
TotalEnergies says those displaced by the project have been fairly compensated and measures have been taken to protect the environment.
