Uganda will ‘go ahead’ with TotalEnergies megaproject despite EU criticism
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said on Friday that he would go ahead with the planned oil megaproject with the French group TotalEnergies despite a European parliament resolution slamming his “human rights violations” against opponents.
The project “will continue as stipulated in the contract we have with TotalEnergies and (Chinese oil giant) CNOOC,” Museveni said on Twitter.
“TotalEnergies convinced me of the pipeline idea; if they choose to listen to the European parliament, we will find another partner to work with,” he added.
“In any case, our oil will be extracted in 2025 as planned, so the Ugandan people need not worry,” he stressed.
Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled Uganda with an iron fist since 1986, has praised the project in the past, citing in particular the economic benefits for this landlocked country where the majority of the population lives below the poverty line.
Earlier in the day, the Ugandan Parliament had sharply denounced the resolution adopted Thursday by MEPs and pinning the megaproject.
“These are projects that have been approved by the Parliament of Uganda, the parliament of a sovereign country, and anything that goes against it is an affront to the independence of this chamber and we cannot take it. lightly,” Deputy Speaker of Parliament Thomas Tayebwa said in a statement.
TotalEnergies announced in February a 10 billion dollar investment agreement with Uganda, Tanzania and CNOOC, including in particular the construction of an oil pipeline of more than 1,400 kilometers linking the fields of Lake Albert, in the west of Uganda, to the Tanzanian side.
In a non-binding resolution, the European Parliament said it was “extremely concerned about the human rights violations” committed in these two countries, citing “arrests, acts of intimidation and judicial harassment against human rights defenders and non-governmental organizations”.
Estimating that more than 100,000 people risk being displaced on the route of the pipeline, the MEPs called for an “adequate compensation system for those expropriated”.
In addition, the European Parliament is asking the TotalEnergies group to delay the project for a year in order to study “the feasibility of an alternative route to better preserve Uganda’s protected and sensitive ecosystems and water resources and Tanzania”.
Juliette Renaud, campaign manager at the NGO Friends of the Earth France, considered that this resolution sent “a strong political signal against Total’s Tilenga and EACOP projects, whose human, environmental and climatic costs are undeniable and quite simply unacceptable”.
TotalEnergies assured Thursday that it was doing “everything to make it an exemplary project in terms of transparency, shared prosperity, economic and social progress, sustainable development, environmental consideration and respect for human rights”.
Under the waters and on the shores of Lake Albert, a 160 km natural barrier separating Uganda from the Democratic Republic of Congo, lies the equivalent of 6.5 billion barrels of crude, of which around 1.4 billion are recoverable in the current state of discoveries.
Uganda’s reserves can last between 25 and 30 years with an estimated peak production of 230,000 barrels per day.
