Amidst the backdrop of what is being seen as a belated sense of urgency over climate change evinced at the COP27 Summit now winding down in Egypt, some poor countries, unsurprisingly, continue to dig their heels in, over a belated lobby in the west for further ‘emergency’ cuts in the recovery and use of fossil fuels, ostensibly, as a mechanism to reduce global warming.
Certainly, two East African countries, Uganda and Tanzania, with their own immediate economic needs to consider and now altogether preoccupied with the construction of a pipeline from which oil from Uganda can flow into Tanzania, appear to remain indifferent to the high-profile lobby.
While the very idea of the pipeline at this time has not gone down well with the COP27 Forum, Uganda and Tanzania would appear to have their eyes fixed on counterpart African countries like Nigeria and Angola which, having long begun to take advantage of their own significant oil finds, have been using the returns therefrom to strengthen their economies.
In their pursuit of the trans-border pipeline, Uganda and Tanzania have ignored a warning last year from the International Energy Agency (IEA) to the effect that pressing ahead with the pipeline would be a flagrant violation of the mounting cautions that the continued recovery and use of crude oil, globally, runs the risk of the world not meeting its already tight global warming deadlines. While the belated concern has arisen out of the now increasingly propagated argument that an ‘eleventh hour’ has now been arrived at insofar as the unchecked use of fossil fuels as the primary source of energy is concerned, Tanzania, which is reportedly eagerly anticipating the activation of the pipeline appears dead set on pushing ahead with the project never mind the ‘line’ that is being peddled that it will make a bad situation worse insofar as already tight global warming deadlines are concerned.
Tanzania’s eagerness to have the pipeline materialise as quickly as possible is reflected in the haste with which it has relocated once well-entrenched communities to accommodate the anticipated path of the pipeline. In the process, the authorities in Dodoma, the country’s capital, have reportedly had to deal with the protestations of well entrenched residential areas where signs bearing the name of the Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation have now been erected.
The big international players in the deal reportedly include the French energy giant Total and the Chinese state-run Chinese oil company, CNOOC.
What is known as the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) has triggered the critical intervention of the European Union (EU) on the grounds of what it says are reported human rights abuses as well as climate and environmental concerns, though the prevailing view in both African countries is that the EU’s intervention is a ‘proxy’ for the west’s anxieties over climate change. Unsurprisingly, there is no sign that Uganda and Tanzania, focussed as they are on their own poverty-related preoccupations, are taking the EU seriously.
The posture of Uganda and Tanzania in response to the pushback from the west is reportedly shared by other advocates of Africa’s development who contend that the continent has the right to use its fossil fuel resources to develop its various economies and to raise the standard of living of their many historically impoverished communities. Additionally, they point out that up until now Africa is only emitting 3% of climate-warming gases compared to 17% by the EU.
‘First oil’ through the Uganda-Tanzania pipeline is expected to flow in three years. At its peak a minimum of 230,000 barrels will be pumped daily.
The French company EACOP which reportedly has a 62% stake in the project has reportedly said that it will have “one of the company’s lowest carbon dioxide emission levels.”
