Opinion: It is funny how some Ugandans are opposing the EACOP project

Michael Woira

A few weeks ago, I happened to be in the Albertine to visit a friend who has been in the region for now 3 years.

Norman has been in the Albertine for quite some time and it has become his second home because it's where he is working and is now even married to a beautiful Munyoro woman.

In our engagement, he told me how he never expected to be in a place far away from his village of origin in Busoga but because of the nature of his work and course that he did on campus, he had to be in the oil region to practice what he studied.

I have for long observed that this oil that we have in the Albertine is a very great opportunity for our country because many people are already employed before even the actual drilling has started and this just shows signs that there are more opportunities ahead.

Norman told me that he is working with over 400 people at just one site where he is based and he says that the number of people working in the Albertine must be above 1000 and these are in different sites, some at the TotalEnergies' Tilenga project, UNOC site that has the Kabaale International Airport under construction and others at Kingfisher site.

Sometimes I think we are wrong as Ugandans to criticize or believe the lies and propaganda by a faction of naysayers who keep talking ill about the oil projects that we have in our country.

Just recently I saw one of the recent 2021 presidential candidates of the ghetto writing very funny stuff about the oil project in the Albertine. I think that even when we are hungry for support and funding, our thinking and reasoning should be to avoid making mistakes that can lead to the loss of jobs for thousands of people.

The Whiteman’s parliament sat last month and made some resolutions and to my surprise, I saw some Ugandans jubilating and congratulating them for the vague resolutions that aim at stopping a project that is employing thousands of our brothers and sisters.

You might be having no relative or friend working in the Albertine but it's better to know that there are many families whose breadwinners are employed by TotalEnergies and Kingfisher plus many other contractors and subcontractors.

I understand a lot has been reached by the government to make sure that we have our first oil by 2025 and some of the issues include the signing of the Inter‐Governmental Agreement between Uganda and Tanzania for the development of a crude oil export pipeline in May 2017.

In 2018, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline and Tilenga projects agreements were signed in November 2017, February 2018 & May 2018.

In 2020, Tilenga, Kingfisher, and EACOP projects in April 2019, March, and December 2020 were issued with certificates of the Environment and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) approving the projects to continue because they are compliant and in line with the environmental laws of this country.

I visited Murchison falls National park where one of the oil wells is and the engineers at the site told me that the noise from the Whiteman is just baseless because the TilengaProject facilities have been designed to represent a footprint of below 0.05% of the National park area & a carbon footprint of less than 10kgco2/boe scope 1+2.

The engineers also said that since the Tilenga Project is a large onshore project undertaken in a sensitive environment, a robust impact mitigation framework has been deployed and indeed the project has not by any means stopped tourism and wildlife from flourishing.

Moving around the Albertine and looking at the various developments in the areas where these projects are shows how these oil drilling companies are taking all the necessary steps to ensure that they adequately restore and improve the living standards of the Project-affected persons.

As the government is putting up the necessary infrastructures like standard roads and airports, bridges, electricity, ICT, water, and corporate social responsibility projects in the oil region, the oil and gas companies are also making sure that the livelihood of the affected people is improved through several projects.

I managed to also meet some of the project affected persons who got resettled and are now living in well-built standard houses with four rooms, solar, a water tank, a nice kitchen, and VIP latrines and all these are very happy living a better life because, on addition to being resettled to the new areas, many of them also got some additional cash that they are using to do commercial agriculture and some of them have now started different businesses.

The revamped Avogera Health Centre III is also helping hundreds of people in the areas of Buliisa because TotalEnergies equipped it with beds, constructions, and several drugs. The people in these areas are not complaining and I am surprised those that are not even close to these areas are busy on social media making a lot of noise.

For all my fellow Ugandans especially those who are for development, let's keep supporting the government and its initiatives and also remember that over 161,700 jobs are to be created of which 14000 will be direct, 42,700 indirect, and 105 will be induced.

Lastly, I think the responsible departments should continue providing information and sensitizing our people on the oil sector and what it offers.

Additionally, we need to continue making people aware of the opportunities that exist within and beyond the sector.

Michael Woira is a patriotic Ugandan