Tanzania approved the construction of the pipeline on Tuesday, a few weeks after Uganda did the same the previous month. Peter Mulisa, Uganda National Oil Corporation’s chief legal and corporate affairs officer, says this will enable nations to start transporting machinery to locations.
According to Wendy Brown, General Manager of Eacop Tanzania, there is permission to start building.
Climate activists have criticized Eacop, which is planned to run 1,443km from Lake Albert in western Uganda to the port of Tonga in Tanzania, alleging it risks uprooting thousands of people and damaging key ecosystems in the two East African nations.
On February 22, people around the world joined members of the Stop Eacop coalition to pressure Standard Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC), and Standard Chartered to stop sponsoring Eacop.
Activists argue that the project violates the Equator Principles, a set of criteria adopted by these specific lenders to assess, determine and manage social and environmental risk for project financing.
“Standard Bank (South Africa) and SMBC (Japan) are financial advisers to the project’s operators and will reportedly help arrange a multi-billion dollar loan to build Eacop, while Standard Chartered (UK) has expressed interest in financing the project” 350.org, a New York-based climate-focused nonprofit, said in a statement Wednesday.
In addition to Kampala, London, Paris and New York, EcoPe exhibitions were held in 18 other cities, including Tokyo, Johannesburg, Frankfurt, Brussels, Sendai, Hoima, Nagoya, Toronto, Fukuoka, Goma, Cape Town, Amsterdam. Copenhagen and Vancouver.
Uganda, on the other hand, has defended the country’s oil projects, saying environmental activists only partially understand the global energy revolution.
“Their cause will eventually be ignored” Mr. Peter Mulisa said.
“The global answer is to go back to using coal-fired power plants while climate activists focus on smaller projects in Africa.
There is no denying climate change, but we are facing energy poverty here. he added.
