French energy giant Total has been sued by 6 NGO’s over an illegal oil field project in Uganda. According to the NGO, Total Oil have failed to avert disastrous impacts for local residents and biodiversity.
The groups hope the court in Nanterre, outside Paris, will force Total to conform with a 2017 law requiring it to elaborate a vigilance plan to prevent serious infringements of health and human rights as well as environmental damage.
According to the French law passed in the wake of the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh in 2013, when more than a thousand people were killed in the collapse of poorly maintained building housing garment companies working for US brands.
Total plans to drill 419 wells near Lake Albert in western Uganda for the Tilenga project, which could produce some 200,000 barrels of crude a day. The wells will be in the Murchison Falls national park, and already many communities have been displaced from their lands
“Many communities survive on rearing animals, growing food, and these areas are where we have most of our national parks… the activities of Total have been really in conflict and in violation of most of those activities,” added Dickens Kamugisha, head of the Africa Institute for Energy Governance based in Kampala.
In total, four French NGOs and two based in Uganda filed the suit.
“We believe that the justice system in France is much more strong and independent” than Ugandan courts, he said.
The Tilenga project was launched after the 2006 discovery of a field that could hold over 1.5 billion barrels of crude, a boon for Uganda, which hopes to export oil via a pipeline to Tanzania. See the other day, Uhuru gave Museveni a percel of Land in Naivasha to create a port that will feed SGR with Uganda cargos.
The Naivasha SGR is a train nowhere that Kenyans will be forced to pay. This are the crooks some of you woke up very early to vote!
