In the Lake Albert region, in northwestern Uganda, TotalEnergies plans to extract large quantities of oil buried deep in the ground. Work has already started. Backhoe loaders are digging the soil across the savannah. At the top of the embankments of red earth designed to diminish the noise of machines, curious antelopes look on.
Uganda has an estimated oil reserve of 6.5 billion barrels, 1.4 billion of which could be commercially extracted.
When production starts, it is estimated that it will be possible to export nearly 200,000 barrels of oil per day.
To meet these targets, the project, in which Total is the majority shareholder, is divided into two parts.
The first – known as Tilenga - involves pumping and processing the oil. Thirty-one extraction zones are planned for a total of 426 wells along with a processing plant.
The second component - the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) – involves the construction of a buried pipeline of more than 1,440 kilometers. It will be the longest heated oil pipeline in the world.
Nature under threat
There is a problem, though. The oil extraction will take place partly in the Murchison Falls Park, a classified site under the protection of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
With a wide variety of fauna and flora, there are also lions, elephants, giraffes, buffaloes, and antelopes in the area. In fact, in all, there is 144 species of mammals, more than 500 species of birds, reptiles and amphibians present in the park. It is also the most visited park in Uganda.
Despite this, the company was given access to 10% of the 3,840 km² that makes up the park
Oil extraction in such a sensitive area is a major worry for conservation NGOs and some civil society groups.
“This park is intertwined with our largest forest reserve,” explains Dickens Kamugisha, the manager of Afiego, one of the organizations suing Total in France.
“One of Africa's longest rivers, the Nile, flows through the Murchison Falls. We must protect it as an essential biodiversity resource for our country.”
TotalEnergies responds, however, that it will use less than one percent of the area allocated to it.
It has committed to providing a wide range of measures to limit the consequences of its presence in the area.
It has even undertaken to “produce a net positive impact on biodiversity”, for example, by helping to increase chimpanzee populations or by reintroducing black rhinos in the area.
Horizontal drilling
Total also claims that, inside the park, there will be only 10 the drilling zones with approximately 130 wells, thanks to a technique consisting in digging horizontally.
The platform will be like a trunk of a tree whose roots spread throughout the subsoil invisibly.
“It would have been easy to drill vertically, assures Pauline Mac Ronald, Environment & Biodiversity Manager for TotalEnergies in Uganda, and therefore to multiply the drilling. But since we are in the park, we have selected a few locations where we can extract the oil with minimal impact.
The specialized American organization E-tech, which provides technical support to communities affected by major development projects, believes, however, that 10 platforms is still too many.
“In the park, we should reduce the number of platforms to one, and drill from outside the park,” says Bill Powers, the chief engineer of E-tech, something that TotalEnergies claims is technically untenable.
It stresses the fact that “locations have been designed to minimize the visual impact of the platforms”, while specific facilities including traffic corridors have also been planned to facilitate the passage of animals.
Other concerns relate to the possible impacts. A large paved road already crosses the park. Elsewhere, a contributor to the 2017 WWF report believes the pipeline could be "a gateway for the expansion of the oil sector" in the region.
Once built, other companies could be tempted to invest and carry out exploration activities, thus multiplying the risks for the environment. Indeed, the creation of an airport and a refinery for local use of oil is among the projects already planned in the region.
A pipeline in a national park
Once extracted, the crude oil will be processed in Uganda and then transported by means of the longest heated pipeline in the world.
Viscous oil must be kept at an elevated temperature in order to circulate. It will cross Uganda in this state from the northwest to the southeast, and follow the shore for the largest lake in Africa - Lake Victoria - for nearly 400 kilometers. The ecosystems in this area are also extremely fragile
According to the World Bank, 40 million people live on these outskirts. And here again, the NGOs warn: any incident could have a serious impact for the entire region.
The pipeline will then cross Tanzania for more than 1,000 kilometers to reach the Indian Ocean.
This wilderness is also famous for the richness of its landscapes and its wildlife: elephants, giraffes and other lions.
“There is absolutely no centimeter of pipeline, in the Tanzanian part, which passes through a national park or an environmental protected area,” January Makamba, the Tanzanian Minister of Energy, said.
He added: "This idea that we are irresponsible to our people and to our future generations is condescending and unacceptable."
Total, however, recognizes that the oil will pass through certain reserves, including a national park in the Burigi-Biharamulo region, in northwestern Tanzania where chimpanzees and elephants live, Richard Senkondo, an environmental activist, says.
“The construction of the pipeline will increase the pressure on these endangered species,” he said.
However, Total once again defends this route.
“The pipeline will pass through an area bordering the national park which is already highly degraded, Jennifer Nyanda, a former member of the WWF, now diversity coordinator on the EACOP project, says.
She adds, however that “all sensitive areas will be avoided”.
To demonstrate this, Total takes us further east, to the edge of the Swaga Swaga reserve, which the pipeline will also cross.
The area is already bereft of trees. The acacias have been replaced by corn and sunflower crops.
“There is no longer any trace of wild life,” Jennifer Nyanda, said. “A few years ago, there were a lot
To install the pipeline, construction machinery will clear a 30-meter-wide corridor, the equivalent of a large highway, across the country.
The pipe, currently cut into sections, will be buried, and vegetation will then be able to grow over it, with the exception of trees whose root system could damage the pipe.
This project will also contribute to the massive deforestation in Tanzania now.
"400,000 hectares of forest disappear every year and that has nothing to do with Total's activities," Jennifer Nyanda adds.
The role of tankers
At the end of the route, there is the Indian Ocean. There, the oil will be stored in the Tanga region, by the sea, near the Kenyan border. Work has already started.
Construction machinery removes vegetation. All that remains is ocher soil and, here and there, a few baobabs.
On this 72-hectare site, four reservoirs, 20 meters high and 80 meters in diameter, will be installed.
“The pipeline will service continuous production,” explains the manager of the future terminal, Mathieu Faget.
“The oil will be dumped into these tanks while the tankers dock and take it away.”
To prevent these tankers over 300 meters long from getting too close to the coast, a two-kilometer jetty will also be built near the Coelacanth Marine Park, a protected marine area.
In this region dotted with mangroves there is a lot of concern about the project.
According to environmental activist Richard Senkondo, “possible leaks would affect the whole local ecosystem, the life of fish, microorganisms. The construction of the jetty could also damage the coral reefs which are very sensitive”.
Total ensures that all precautions have been taken, from the thickness of the pipeline to vigilance against earthquakes, in an otherwise seismic zone.
However “any pipeline under construction is going to leak at some point,” Bill Powers, the chief engineer of E-tech, who has worked in the oil industry for nearly 30 years.
"That doesn't mean it's going to leak massively. But the idea that it is impossible for there to be oil leaks is wrong.”
Rashidi Machuanafega, an angler whose boat is on a sandy beach, very close to the future jetty, is also worried: “If a leak occurs, the fish will drink water with oil”.
However, his main concern is the construction of the pier. “This is where we fish the most. As soon as they start building the bridge, we local fishermen will no longer be allowed to pass through it.”
Fishing elsewhere is impossible, he explains. “With my traditional boat, I can't face the wind. That's why I always go there."
He therefore hopes to obtain authorization to fish between the "pylons" of the pier... Or else, to receive compensation”.
Displaced families
To carry out its project,Total must use land on which people live and cultivate. In all, more than 100,000 people will be affected by the project, according to the NGOs, some because they lose a simple piece of land, but others because they have to be rehoused.
TotalEnergies often prefers to speak of 19,000 households, although each of them includes several people. TotalEnergies CEO, Patrick Pouyanné spoke on 9 November last before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Assembly. He cited 769 displaced households, and not 19,000
TotalEnergies provides for the rehousing of certain families in permanent houses in the event of the destruction of the main dwelling, or financial compensation.
Jealousy Mugisha, a 50-year-old Ugandan farmer, father of seven children, saw his hut classified as a place of secondary habitat. For its destruction, he was only offered financial compensation.
“Our land has been seized and fenced off,” he says.
He claims that “the process is not fair [as it] has only been intimidation and harassment”.
But he is one of the few to have challenged this decision, because the procedures are long, complicated and expensive for the inhabitants of these poor rural communities that are also poorly educated.
The spokesperson for TotalEnergies, Cheick-Omar Diallo, stress that the company takes “into account the question of human rights” and ensures that those principals are included in any decisions.
‘Life has become more difficult’
The majority of Ugandans ended up accepting the transfer of their lands, while formulating numerous criticisms of the way in which the procedures were carried out.
Land confiscation sometimes happens too soon, some say. There have been delays in the payment of compensation and the amounts are often considered too low, especially given the soaring land prices in the region since the announcement of the project.
To this, TotalEnergies replies that it complies with transparent payment scales.
According to Jérémy Roeygens, land manager for Total in Uganda, “land values are documented by the districts. A small, medium or large banana tree has a very clear, officially identified value”.
As for issues regarding late payments and land use restrictions, the company claims to have made mark-ups and compensations.
People are bitter
Maxwell Atuhura is an activist from the oil zone: “There is nothing that Total can compensate for that is equivalent to what people lose. I am compensated for my land, but not for the loss of my livelihood.”
These sentiments are also clear in Tanzania. In the village of Poutini, near the future oil storage site, Fatou Mabdala agreed to sell his land on which mango and cashew trees grew.
“We were getting an income from this land. Now we have to buy our food. We received two million Tanzanian shillings when we should have received 6 million. But we couldn't negotiate. The owner is the government.” [One million Tanzanian shillings is worth around 400 euros, editor's note]. In this country, land belongs to the state. This peculiarity partly explains why the EACOP project chose to route its giant pipeline through Tanzania rather than Kenya - a route that would have been more direct.
"In Kenya, land is private property. It is very expensive to acquire," explains Hilary Ballonzi, a lawyer and activist based in Dar-Es-Salam.
"But in Tanzania, the government is in control. If you are able to influence it and have it on your side, it is easy to acquire land.”
This does not help the inhabitants.
“We have two types of evaluators in Tanzania,” Ballonzi says. “There is government and the private ones. People living in poverty cannot afford to hire a private appraiser.”
Total's communication operation
Much criticized for the lack of information given to local populations when the project was launched, TotalEnergies is now seeking to rectify that situation.
In the city of Arusha, in northern Tanzania, it regularly brings together representatives of so-called vulnerable ethnic groups: Barabaigs and Maasai in particular.
In December 2022, a final meeting took place in the conference room of a large hotel. On one side, the leaders of the tribes often dressed in colorful traditional clothes and leather sandals, who traveled hundreds of kilometers by bus to attend the exchanges.
In the room, translators are responsible for facilitating exchanges.
“The rains are decreasing, we are running out of water for our animals,” laments Maasai leader Rafaele Mangole. But if he suffers from the effects of climate change, he does not link them to the impact of oil activities.
"It's a natural evolution," he explains. “We experienced these changes before the arrival of the EACOP project. We're just going to have the raw material, oil, going through here. It's not going to affect us.”
Total claims that its project will emit little CO2 – about 13.5 million tonnes over 20 years.
"Emissions significantly lower than the African average,” says Cheick-Omar Diallo, TotalEnergies spokesperson for Tilenga/EACOP.
“Less than 13 kg of CO2 per barrel, when the African average is 33 kg.”
These assessments, however, are qualified by the Climate Accountability Institute. The director of this institute, Richard Heede, who carried out his own study on the EACOP project at the request of the New York University Law School, looked at the ancillary emissions generated by the project.
“The environmental and social impact studies of the EACOP only take into account the construction phase and the emissions produced during the construction operations,” he says.
“But they obscure the much larger emissions that are attributable to shipping, crude oil refining, and emissions produced by end users.”
He claims that Total’s estimations only take into account 1.8% of the total greenhouse gas emissions linked to the project.
TotalEnergies responds, for its part, that the consumption of oil by end users should not be included in the calculations for a specific project like this.
Living with hope
Despite these findings, the project has raised hopes in the population in the region that the money generated by the project might be allocated to a special fund to finance public infrastructure.
According to Fred Kabagambe Kaliisa, the Ugandan president's special adviser on oil issues, any money should be used “for the development of roads, power infrastructure, for public services and education.”
In the village of Poutini, near the future jetty, a group of people sit patiently, in the heat, in the shade of a large tree, watching the white 4x4s of the EACOP project come and go
“We heard that they pay good salaries," explains Amina.“So we wait. There are people here who have been doing it for two years. This project is good for us, but the challenge is to be part of it.”
The NGOs that fight the project are often perceived as “enrichment impediments” but it is a view of vision of things that the activist Baracka Lenga regrets it.
“We should not rejoice in making money off the back of the planet, he said “We already have a problem with the rains. River levels have dropped due to climate change. This project will aggravate this crisis. However, in rural areas, 99% of people depend on rain to cultivate. We are going to destroy their livelihood. How are they going to survive?”
