MEPs ask the French multinational to postpone the launch of the immense eacop oil pipeline in order to protect human rights and the environment.
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“Human rights violations”, “acts of intimidation”, “judicial harassment”, “immense risks and implications” on local communities, the environment and the climate. Thursday, September 15, gathered in plenary session, The European Parliament voted, by a large majority, an emergency resolution , denouncing the consequences of mega petroleum projects in Uganda and Tanzania, and especially those of the total French multinationalgia , Tilenga and Eacop.
With the first, the oil group intends to exploit the black gold which sleeps under Lake Albert, in the west of Uganda. More than four hundred wells must be drilled from December, including 132 in the natural area protected from Murchinson Falls. The production of Tilenga (190,000 barrels per day) as well as that of another area operated by the Chinese oil giant CNOOC will be exported to Tanzania by an buried 1,445 kilometers long, baptized East African Crude Oil Pipeline ( Eacop). It will be the longest heated pipeline (more than 50 ° C) in the world. In total, these two projects represent an investment of $ 10 billion and the production is planned in 2025 for a period of twenty-five years.
The European Parliament requests the stopping of boreholes in “protected and sensitive” areas, as well as the postponement of eacop work, for a year, to “study the feasibility of an alternative route” allowing to preserve the environment and “consider other projects based on renewable energies”. MEPs also request the cessation of human rights violations, and in particular the “immediate” liberation of human rights defenders arrested “arbitrary”. And they call to compensate “quickly, in a fair and sufficient manner” the persons expropriated or deprived of access to their land by the Eacop project.
The text of the resolution, not binding but within political scope, takes up the conclusions of different independent expertise. It describes a danger to the environment and for water resources, with inevitable “oil spills”, with risks in particular for the offshore installations of Eacop, which will be built “in an area very exposed to the risk of tsunami “. He also recalls that the two projects could issue up to 34 million tonnes of co 2 per year, more than thirty times the current annual emissions from Uganda and Tanzania combined.
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