A Major Oil Pipeline Project Strikes Deep at the Heart of Africa.
Despite the global plunge in oil prices, a major pipeline that would carry oil 900 miles across East Africa is moving ahead. International experts warn that the $20 billion project will displace thousands of small farmers and put key wildlife habitat and coastal waters at risk.
Imagine a tropical version of the Alaskan oil pipeline. Only longer. And passing through critical elephant, lion, and chimpanzee habitats and 12 forest reserves, skirting Africa’s largest lake, and crossing more than 200 rivers and thousands of farms before reaching the Indian Ocean — where its version of the Exxon Valdez disaster would pour crude oil into some of Africa’s most biodiverse mangroves and coral reefs.
Such a project is ready for construction, to bring to the world oil from new oil fields in the heart of Africa. It is the East African Crude Oil Pipeline.
The middle of a global pandemic, during which oil demand is in freefall and prices at rock bottom, might seem an odd moment to boost the world’s oil production. But the petrochemicals industry is always looking for new reserves to replace those being exhausted. And two oil fields discovered on the shores of Lake Albert, which straddles the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, are currently among the biggest and cheapest new reserves available. They contain an estimated 6 billion barrels, roughly half the size of Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay field.
Construction work has begun at the Kingfisher and Tilenga oil fields, where the China National Offshore Oil Corporation and French giant Total intend to sink 500 wells. They have already spent an estimated $4 billion on infrastructure, and made enemies among local communities by grabbing land and providing paltry compensation.
NGOs estimate the carbon footprint of the oil from the pipeline, once burned, will be roughly that of Denmark.
But the wells still need a pipeline to get the oil to the outside world. To do that, the companies plan the world’s longest heated oil pipeline, stretching 900 miles from Lake Albert to Tanzania’s Indian Ocean port of Tanga. The pipeline will carry 216,000 barrels of crude oil a day, and will require heating to 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit), because the oil is low in sulphur and will otherwise solidify in the pipe. NGOs estimate the carbon footprint of the oil, once burned, will be roughly that of Denmark, and thousands of farmers will lose their land.
The companies claim they have resolved local environmental and social issues for the oil fields and pipeline, and that environmental and social impact assessments have given the $20 billion project a clean bill of health. Total, which is heading up the pipeline project, claims it consulted 58,000 people, and chose a route to “minimize the number of residents relocated.”
But local NGOs and international experts in environmental and social impact assessments disagree. They say that the environmental risks of the pipeline and production facilities are huge, and that consultations with communities amount to little more than what Oxfam-Uganda’s Gerald Byarugaba calls “box-ticking.”