Climate activists through their umbrella association of Fridays for Future - Uganda have urged petroleum refining company, Total to pull out from the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) project.
Uganda is in the advanced stages of building its first-ever oil pipeline fueled and financed by Total.
The proposed 1,445-kilometre crude oil pipeline, if completed will start from Hoima in Uganda to the port of Tanga inside Tanzania and this will be the longest heated crude oil pipeline in the world.
The activists held a climate strike on Friday, in partnership with other organizations and activists around the world as Total held its annual general meeting.
Speaking to Nile Post, Hilda Flavia Nakabuye, the founder of Fridays for Future - Uganda said that by funding this project, Total is unlocking a new source of carbon emissions that will either prove financially unviable or produce unacceptable climate harm.
“The EACOP project by Total is a straight pass to doom. Uganda is an agro-based and developing country that does not need fossil fuels to develop. What Uganda really needs is protecting and preserving biodiversity, renewable energy technologies which will provide clean jobs to people,” Nakabuye said.
Nakabuye added that the 34.3 million tons of emissions that will be produced each year from the pipeline will worsen the already existing climate disasters that they are already crying about.
“We too dream of clean cities, we hope for a sustainable future for us and generations to come, please don’t send us to doom but let out dreams come true. Total should put people above profitability and Stop EACOP immediately,” Nakabuye told Nile Post.
President Museveni earlier on in May witnessed the signing of the Host Government Agreement between the government of Tanzania and the oil companies going to undertake the construction of the oil pipeline from the oil fields in Hoima in Uganda to the Indian seaport of Tanga in Tanzania.
Museveni, in his words, described the signing of the Host Government Agreement between the government of Tanzania and the EACOP for the construction of the oil pipeline as a ‘historic event and a very important regional project that will not only benefit Uganda and Tanzania but will also, in the long run, serve countries in the Great Lakes region.’
Activists however said that money will be useless on a dead planet because the project adds to the risk of limiting global warming below 1 point 5.
