TotalEnergies has scoffed at European Parliament (EU) for passing a resolution on East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) based on unfounded allegations of Human rights violations and sundry.
On September 15, 2022, EU Parliament passed a resolution calling on TotalEnergies to take one year before launching the 1445-kilometer EACOP project to study the feasibility of an alternative route to better safeguard protected and sensitive ecosystems and the water resources of Uganda and Tanzania.
According to the resolution EU parliament claimed that the project will generate up to 34 million tonnes of carbon emissions per year yet the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned in a 2021 report that limiting global warming to 1.5°C to prevent climate change’s most destructive impacts would require new oil and gas development to stop immediately.
They also said nearly 118,000 people are affected by the oil projects. Their homes were destroyed to facilitate the construction of access roads; their land was requisitioned without prior payment of fair and adequate compensation. The compensation paid is often far too low to allow farmers whose land has been expropriated to buy comparable land on which to continue farming.
“EU Parliament asks the authorities in Uganda and Tanzania to ensure human rights advocates, journalists, and civil society groups are free to carry out their work in at-risk communities and called for all arbitrarily arrested human rights defenders to be released immediately,” they said.
In a letter to the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, Patrick Pouyanné, CEO and chairman of TotalEnergies said TotalEnergies declined to be represented at the hearing organized by the Human Rights sub-commission which took place on October 10, 2022.
“If, as one might expect within the framework of contradictory debate respecting the fundamental principles of the institutions of our democracies, TotalEnergies had been consulted prior to the passing of this resolution, the Company could have informed the Parliament the inaccuracy of many elements which are based on serious and unfounded allegations. Unfortunately, it is now too late for this contradictory debate to take place as the European Parliament adopted this resolution without even hearing the Company,” he said.
He said TotalEnergies all partners are committed to putting environmental and biodiversity issues as well as the rights of the communities concerned at the centre of the project, in accordance with the most stringent international standards (IFC).
“This project is a major development for Uganda and Tanzania, and we are doing our utmost to ensure that it is exemplary in terms of transparency, shared prosperity, economic and social progress, sustainable development and protecting the environment and human rights,” he said.
“It is very much regretted that the Company and, by extension, its 105,000 employees should be publicly accused in this way by your institution, without being approached at any point for a prior adversarial discussion. I cannot help but feel that your Assembly should reach its opinions on subjects that it is free to select completely independently. It seems to me that, in this case, the adversarial principle on which the rule of law is based has not been respected in any way whatsoever. And I consider that the Parliament’s adoption of resolutions containing factual inexactitudes, and statements based on unfounded allegations, some serious, to be most damaging,” the letter reads in part.
He said 723 households, numbering some 5,000 people, will be rehomed nearby in higher quality housing; other people affected because they own or farmland covered by the project have naturally been taken into account in the compensation procedure.
“The fact that the Subcommittee on Human Rights decided to extend an invitation to me after the fact, to express myself when the decision had already been taken, for a duration of “eight minutes”, does not in any way correct the situation created by this deliberation, because the adversarial principle can scarcely apply retroactively. You will understand that I do not intend to accept the invitation under these circumstances,” he said.
