The East African Crude Oil Pipeline, when completed in late in 2025, will extend 900-miles from the Lake Albert oil fields in Uganda to the port of Tanga, Tanzania, on the Indian Ocean. Since its initial groundbreaking in 2017, the project known as EACOP, has run into fierce opposition from people living along its path, as well as from climate justice activists and wildlife protectors.

Opponents point out that the pipeline will make it impossible to meet carbon reduction goals, exacerbate climate crisis-fueled destructive weather and imperil some of Africa’s most iconic and endangered species. According to Human Rights Watch, the pipeline has already displaced more than 100,000 people in the two countries. The Ugandan government has been cracking down violently on protests against the pipeline, as local people resist being displaced and claim that compensation for taking their lands is totally inadequate.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Nico Udu-Gama, U.S Partnerships coordinator with 350.org, a global grassroots climate organization. Here, he explains why his group and others have made the fight to stop the East African Crude Oil Pipeline a top priority, and the consequences for people and the environment if the pipeline is completed.

NICO UDU-GAMA: The pipeline is jointly owned by four entities. One is Total Energies from France, which owns about 62 percent of the shares and then the Uganda National Oil Company and the Tanzanian National Oil Company respectively owned 15 percent each. And then the Chinese National Oil Offshore Corporation owns 8 percent. They have been over the past several years because the campaign has been pressuring a lot of especially western banks to back off of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline. Many of the western banks and insurance companies have openly said they won’t fund the project. And so the date keeps getting pushed back when the project has full financing. But every quarter we hear from the EACOP, like Total and the EACOP project that they’re close to full financing. So it’s, you know, every quarter we hear it. But we keep pushing back.

MELINDA TUHUS: The oil is in Uganda. It is gonna be traversing Uganda into Tanzania and like 70 percent of the pipeline would actually be built in Tanzania. Is that right?

NICO UDU-GAMA: I think because the landmass, yes. I think the oil though as I understand a lot of neighboring countries to Uganda are also like South Sudan, and, and the DRC have also said that their oil could be exploited and sent through the pipeline as well. So it’s a very multinational issue.

MELINDA TUHUS: Well, you said it’s a top priority. Why is that so?

NICO UDU-GAMA: Yeah, so 350 has traditionally done a lot of “keep it in the ground” campaigns. And this one, it was because of our at 350 Africa team working with folks in the area, in the communities and the size, this was one of the projects that the organization felt like we need to really push on a global level. So we have had 350 teams in Japan, in Europe, here in the United Statesworking as well as 350 Africa — all been working on this campaign, because we feel like it is such a huge pipeline and from what scientists have said, if it were completed and if the oil were to be pumped out, it would represent a huge carbon bomb, that we just simply cannot afford another one, another carbon bomb. You know, there’s many going off right now, but just this is one more thing.

And besides repression has also increased in Uganda and Tanzania. Recently there was, we’ve been seeing more and more repression in Uganda. Activists being arrested. Activists being attacked. So that raises for us even more the importance of having to push back against the pipeline because we understand the links that they’re displacing people, the communities in Africa to take out their oil and then to use it in the west. So the people in Africa are not only hit with displacement and the effects of the carbon bomb, we all affected by the effects of the carbon bomb. And, its repeating the cycle of colonial extractivism that’s happening.

MELINDA TUHUS: Pretty much by definition, the governments of Uganda and Tanzania are behind this.

NICO UDU-GAMA: The Tanzanian and Ugandan governments are really counting on a lot of international finance to make this project happen. Originally, the Ugandan National Oil company said that they wanted to build a refinery, that the first thing was to focus on building a national refinery. That’s how they sold this pipeline to the people by saying like, this oil will actually be used internally first before it’s exported. But now as the pipeline has been delayed and as the cost has gone up, what I’ve understood is that there has been less and less talk about the refinery from official Ugandan government voices, and they’re focusing only on the pipeline. So it’s becoming more and more clear that the intention was always to extract the oil for international profit. I think it’s very important for us to know that the issues of human rights violations around the pipeline are very interconnected with international support of these governments.

For instance, the Ugandan president, (Yoweri) Museveni has been in power for over 40 years and is supported by the United States militarily. A lot of those weapons and trainings are being used against the people who are being displaced by the pipeline. So we’re seeing a very big connection between how our governments in the West are supporting governments in other countries to repress their own people in order for us, in order for Western corporations to be able to extract the oil and use it for our own needs, even though we need to be moving to a renewable energy. And it’s really like the thing to highlight is the colonial nature of this project. You know, the people in Africa have been denouncing companies like Total for many years about how they’re coming into their communities, taking the oil, leaving them with the destruction and then profiting off of that. And that’s one thing that we need to kind of highlight is this stopping the colonial nature of extractivism.