" Uganda: Oil Pipeline Project Impoverishes Thousands: Land, Livelihoods Lost for Fossil Fuel Project Disastrous for Climate" 10 July 2023

The French fossil-fuel giant TotalEnergies’ planned oil pipeline in East Africa has devastated thousands of people’s livelihoods in Uganda and will exacerbate the global climate crisis, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. If completed, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) project will have dozens of well pads, hundreds of kilometers of roads, camps and other infrastructure, and a 1,443-kilometer pipeline connecting oilfields in western Uganda with the port of Tanga in eastern Tanzania. The 47-page report, “‘Our Trust is Broken’: Loss of Land and Livelihoods for Oil Development in Uganda,” documents the land acquisition process for one of the largest fossil fuel infrastructure projects under construction anywhere in the world. The development in the oilfield, which will ultimately displace over 100,000 people, is well underway. Although 90 percent of people who will lose land to the project have received compensation from TotalEnergies EP Uganda, the project has suffered from multiyear delays in paying compensation and inadequate compensation. The Ugandan National Oil Company (UNOC) and Total responses to Human Rights Watch are attached to the article. The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre has previously reached out to CNOOC and EACOP, but the companies did not respond.