Ugandan farmers sue EACOP developers in London

Two Ugandan farmers have filed a claim in the High Court in London seeking damages and an injunction over the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, a 1,443-kilometre project planned to carry crude from Uganda’s Lake Albert region to Tanzania’s port of Tanga. The suit names TotalEnergies and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), the project’s lead developers, and argues that land acquisition and construction planning have harmed livelihoods while leaving affected communities without effective local remedies, according to Inter Press Service.

The filing lands at a moment when the project’s backers are trying to keep a long, state-dependent supply chain moving: Uganda needs the pipeline to monetise oil that is landlocked; Tanzania wants transit fees and associated investment; and the developers need lenders and insurers willing to finance a heated pipeline crossing wetlands, farms and protected areas. IPS reports that the plaintiffs say compensation has been delayed or inadequate and that restrictions around the pipeline corridor have reduced their ability to use their land. They are asking the London court to treat the parent companies as responsible for harms linked to subsidiaries and contractors operating on the ground.

EACOP has been contested for years by local residents and international environmental groups, but the choice of venue is the point. A London court can compel disclosure, set timetables, and impose costs in a way that district-level processes in Uganda and Tanzania often cannot. It also creates a different kind of pressure on financiers: banks and export credit agencies that might tolerate political risk can be less comfortable with litigation risk that attaches to the corporate parent. That matters for a project that has repeatedly faced delays in securing external financing, where the ability to syndicate debt and obtain insurance is as important as engineering.

The case also illustrates how large infrastructure projects in parts of Africa are built: the state grants the corridor, security and permitting; private firms bring capital and expertise; and the people who lose land or access to water are left to negotiate with layers of subcontractors. When compensation is slow, the cost is carried by households that cannot diversify away from a plot of land. When schedules slip, the cost is absorbed by taxpayers through renegotiated terms, new guarantees, or political pressure for “strategic” completion.

A court in London cannot reroute a pipeline, but it can force the companies behind it to price local harm as a balance-sheet risk rather than a public-relations problem. For two farmers in western Uganda, the dispute has travelled more than 6,000 kilometres from the pipeline route to the courtroom where the next deadline will be set.