The climate-wrecking East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) is already wreaking havoc on wildlife in a biodiverse national park.
A new report has exposed how key fossil fuel infrastructure associated with the project is impacting the park’s iconic species. To make matters worse, oil drilling activities are driving conflict between wildlife and communities residing in the park.
EACOP: a biodiversity disaster waiting to happen
The EACOP project involves a 930-mile long pipeline that will transport oil from Uganda to a port in Tanzania. French fossil fuel firm TotalEnergies, China National Offshore Oil Corporation Ltd (CNOOC), and Uganda’s state oil company are partnering on the pipeline.
In August 2023, the company started operations in Murchison Falls National Park, in the Lake Albert region. There, the EACOP joint venture companies have discovered oil fields containing approximately 1.7bn barrels of recoverable oil. These are the Tilenga and Kingfisher oilfields on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo – and the project involves drilling hundreds of wells across the area.
This is where EACOP then comes in. The companies are developing the pipeline to deliver the extracted crude to Tanzania for international export.
However, the national park is home to 76 mammal species and 451 different species of bird – all at risk from the oil drilling and construction activities.
So as the Canary previously highlighted, the fossil fuel operations have enormous ramifications for biodiversity. In particular, a 2022 report expressed how EACOP would impact nearly 2,000 square kilometres of protected wildlife habitats. On top of this, it would damage a further 500 kilometres of wildlife corridors, used by
Of course, this would include the wildlife living in Murchison Falls National Park. Now, nearly a year since companies began operations, the impacts are already plain to see.
Displacing elephants and harming communities
The Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO) has released a new report investigating the impacts of the project on wildlife across the park.
The study assessed the impact or risks presented by development of the key fossil fuel infrastructure to biodiversity conservation in the park. These included: oil rigs, wellpads, oil roads, and the Victoria Nile Pipeline Crossing.
The latter pipeline is supposed to be constructed under the Victoria Nile, and it will affect the Murchison Falls-Albert Delta Ramsar site, a wetland site vital for bird life. This has been proposed for UNESCO World Heritage status.
Satellite imagery of the projects in the report revealed how at least two of the ten wellpads are less than a kilometre from this protected wetland site.
What’s more the fossil fuel infrastructure is showing signs of displacing the local elephant population. Notably the report emphasised the impact this was also having on local communities:
Oil host communities that live around the park report that elephants are moving from MFNP and are invading communities. The elephants destroy croplands and as many as five people were killed by the elephants between 2023 and April 2024
In effect, the oil drilling activities have distressed elephants and driven them into local villages.
On top of this, light pollution from the project is also affection local communities and threatening nocturnal wildlife. Locals have reported that light from the Tilenga drilling rig can be seen as far as 13.9km away.
Conservationists and other contributors to the report raised concerns of the impacts this could have on the feeding pattern and behaviour of leopards, lions, birds and other species, stating that:
These could migrate from the park, or suffer worse impacts such as death.
Murchison Falls National Park is ‘dying’
Overall, the report concluded that the perfect storm of the climate crisis, poaching, and fossil fuel projects are destroying Murchison Falls National Park.
Crucially, the report expressed how study participants observed that:
while MFNP was famous for sighting of huge populations of wildlife such as hippos, crocodiles, elephants, giraffes, buffaloes and others before the COVID-19 pandemic, intense flooding of River Nile in the park between 2020 and 2021 and before oil activities picked up in the park, much smaller populations can be sighted today.
As a result, one respondent stated that:
Murchison Falls National Park is dying
Given the impacts EACOP and its associated oil projects have already unleashed, AFIEGO concluded:
TotalEnergies and the Ugandan government should stop oil exploitation activities in MFNP to reduce the pressures faced by biodiversty in the park so as to promote conservation
Alongside this, it called for TotalEnergies to compensate oil host communities whose livelihoods the project has decimated.
The StopEACOP campaign has echoed these demands. Commenting on the report, it said that:
There is little time left for Murchison Falls National Park. We should not sit still while this natural wonder is sacrificed for short-term gains and benefit a few people at the expense of the majority of Ugandans. We must all unite and secure this irreplaceable ecosystem for our descendants.
Significantly, StopEACOP also railed against Standard Bank’s recent decision to finance the project. It stated that:
This research by AFIEGO is quite timely because Standard Bank was recently reported as having agreed to fund this controversial project, which it had postponed for years in the name of doing due diligence. How did their due diligence miss these impacts? We urge them and other financial institutions to read this research, reconsider funding this project, and save the iconic Murchison Falls National Park. The fate of Uganda’s wildlife and the millions earning a livelihood from wildlife conservation efforts and fishing hangs in the balance.
Of course, none of this is surprising. Local people, climate activists, scientists, and conservation organisations have been warning this would happen all along. So now, the EACOP fossil fuel project is destroying a fragile area of biodiversity, harming communities, and fueling the climate crisis. AFIEGO’s report bears witness to this – and only proves why communities and activists are right to keep up the fight.
Featured image via the Canary
