Physical Address
Plot 123 Kampala, Uganda
Kampala, Uganda – August 9, 2024
Scores of student protesters were taken into custody yesterday as they attempted to present a petition to Uganda’s parliament, opposing a contentious multi-billion-dollar oil development initiative, according to police officials and legal representatives.
The students were demonstrating against a massive undertaking led by French energy conglomerate TotalEnergies, which entails extracting oil in Uganda and transporting it to Tanzania for export. Environmental advocates have raised concerns about the project’s devastating impact on local ecosystems and communities, particularly given that drilling is occurring within Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda’s largest protected area.
Uganda’s police spokesman for the Kampala metropolitan area, Luke Owoyesigire, confirmed that 47 individuals were apprehended and transported to two police stations in the capital. Two of them were arrested at parliament and charged with “inciting unrest,” while the others, who were en route to the site, have yet to be charged.
A legal representative for the students, Samuel Wanda, verified the multiple detentions, stating that the march aimed to submit a petition to parliament but police intercepted the protesters along the way. The demonstrators were urging international financiers to withhold funding for the oil project, citing environmental degradation and harm to local communities, and instead invest in renewable energy sources.
The oil project, a joint venture between TotalEnergies and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), seeks to extract an estimated 6.5 billion barrels of crude from Lake Albert. The oil will be transported via the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, a 1,443-kilometer heated pipeline stretching from northwestern Uganda to Tanzania’s Indian Ocean port of Tanga.
TotalEnergies holds a 62-percent stake in the pipeline, with Ugandan and Tanzanian state-owned oil companies holding 15 percent each and CNOOC eight percent. Uganda’s first oil is expected to flow in 2025, nearly two decades after the reserves were discovered, and the project has been touted by President Yoweri Museveni as an economic windfall for the landlocked country.
However, critics argue that the project’s environmental and social costs outweigh its economic benefits. TotalEnergies claims that those displaced by the project have received fair compensation and measures have been implemented to protect the environment, but activists and local communities remain skeptical.
