"Standard Bank, Africa’s biggest lender, and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) of Japan are reportedly about to finance a 1,443-kilometer crude oil pipeline through Uganda and Tanzania. If built, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) would be the longest heated crude oil pipeline in the world and is expected to cause large-scale displacement of communities and pose grave risks to protected environments, water sources and wetlands in both Uganda and Tanzania.
The pipeline is a threat to the employment status and livelihoods of tens of thousands of people, and will likely lead to rights violations for communities along its route, including from resettlement. It will cross the Lake Victoria basin, where an oil spill could prove disastrous for the millions of people that rely on the lake’s watershed for drinking water and food production. And it threatens to open critical ecosystems including Murchison Falls National Park, a habitat for elephants, chimpanzees and much other wildlife, to oil extraction."
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