China Begins Drilling at Controversial Ugandan Oil Field

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni (C-L) alongside other local and government leaders launc
Stuart Tibaweswa / AFP

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on Tuesday held a commissioning ceremony for the first of four massive oil rigs operated by the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC).

Museveni proudly boasted that the Chinese drilling operation was initiated despite fierce opposition from the European Union, environmentalists, human rights activists, and the Ugandan political opposition.

Museveni casually dismissed environmental concerns on Tuesday and applauded France for not shutting down an oil project in a different part of Uganda, as it was urged to do by the European Parliament.

“France has not given us trouble. For the EU parliament, we told them to go to hell, but the French government did not cause us any problems,” Museveni said.

“This oil is not a problem at all,” he continued. “First of all, the carbon dioxide which comes out of these fossil fuels is not necessarily a problem if it is handled well.”

The Chinese government likewise dismissed environmental and human rights concerns as mere “excuses” to block China’s development of Uganda’s oil fields.

China’s ambassador to Uganda, Zhang Lizhong, said at the commissioning ceremony the CNOOC project would be “an important milestone in the development of Uganda’s oil industry” and “a landmark project in China-Uganda cooperation,” since it represents China’s “largest investment project in Uganda” to date.

CNOOC is drilling at the Kingfisher oil field near Lake Albert. The project will also include a 900-mile pipeline to Tanzania’s port city of Tanga. One of the major environmental concerns is that the pipeline will run uncomfortably close to Lake Victoria, risking contamination of both animal habitats and human water supplies. At least 40 million people depend on Lake Victoria for water.

Last week, a coalition of environmental and human rights groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) wrote an open letter to Congolese and Ugandan officials demanding a halt to oil drilling around Lake Albert and construction of the pipeline to Tanzania, on the grounds that many residents of the DRC depend on the lake for water and fishing.

The petitioners also warned that the high level of instability and political violence along the DRC-Uganda border would be exacerbated by oil drilling and pipeline construction and that Ugandan forces might be tempted to take action against Congolese villagers who get in the way of the projects.

The pipeline will run through seven forest reserves and two game parks and some of the new oil drilling is scheduled to occur in Murchison Falls National Park, home of the most powerful waterfall on Earth, and around that spectacular waterfall grazes the heaviest concentration of wildlife in Africa, including rare and threatened species. Heavy development of Uganda’s oil will inevitably disturb the park, as nearly 40 percent of the country’s known oil reserves lie beneath it.

Another problem is that a large number of people live on ancestral lands in the path of the pipeline. At least 100,000 people could be displaced by construction, and they would be impoverished residents who lack the resources to easily relocate.

Ugandan opposition leader and 2021 presidential candidate Bobi Wine strongly opposed the pipeline, denouncing the forced relocation of villagers as a human rights violation and warning the dictatorial Museveni, who has been in power since 1986, would become even more “dangerous” with oil riches at his command.

“We should fight so hard that Museveni does not get his violent hand on our oil. Once he gets his hand on our oil, we are screwed,” he said in October.

“Until we have a leader that is accountable to the people, until the leadership is transparent and answerable to the people, until the leadership that we have is indeed a servant leadership, our oil can wait,” Wine argued.

In September, the European Parliament called on China, Uganda, and France to pause construction of the pipeline, which would also link to the French oil project. The European Parliament asked France’s TotalEnergies to take a year to “study the feasibility of an alternative route to better safeguard protected and sensitive ecosystems.”

The call was ignored, with Museveni publicly betting that TotalEnergies would not risk being kicked out of Uganda at a time of surging European demand for energy to replace lost supplies from Russia. 

TotalEnergies insisted it has taken appropriate measures to “develop this project in a transparent, socially and environmentally friendly manner, while an enraged Museveni railed against European Union arrogance and threatened to punish Total Energies if it complied with EU demands.

“We should remember that TotalEnergies convinced me about the pipeline idea; if they choose to listen to the EU Parliament, we shall find someone else to work with,” Museveni threatened at an energy summit in October.

“Some of these EU MPs are insufferable and so wrong that they think they know everything but should calm down. This is the wrong battleground for them. I hope our partners join us firmly and advise them. For us, we’re moving forward with our programme,” he declared.

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