Page 16 - DMEA Week 28 2021

DMEA PIPELINES DMEA

EACOP, TPDC, Tanzania sign

landowner compensation deal

AFRICA THE East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) the land being requisitioned for construction of
consortium, which was formed to establish an oil the pipeline in line with the laws of Tanzania and
export route running from western Uganda to the performance standards set by International
the Tanzanian coast, has signed its first tri-partite Finance Corp. (IFC), a member of the World
land compensation agreement with residents of Bank Group. The consortium will not seek to
areas along the pipeline’s designated path. access the land designated for pipeline construc-
The agreement was signed last week at an tion until it makes the compensation payments
event attended by EACOP’s Managing Direc- and issues a notice to vacate, he said.
tor Martin Tiffen, Tanzania’s Energy Minis- He also noted that the agreement signed by
ter Medard Kalemani, and James Mataragio, the consortium, the Energy Ministry and TPDC
the managing director of Tanzania Petroleum spelled out the exact type of compensation that
Development Corp. (TPDC). According to each landowner would receive. Some will receive
press reports, TPDC and the Energy Ministry both monetary compensation and a package of
were also signatories to the document, as were benefits, including replacement housing, access
the owners of the land in question. to livelihood restoration programmes and tran-
Kalemani said at the signing ceremony sitional support packages, he said.
that the agreement provided for TZS2.5bn The EACOP link will follow a 1,445-km
($1.078mn) to be paid to 391 citizens of Tanza- path from Hoima, a town in western Uganda, to
nia. This includes 44 residents of the village of Tanga, a port on Tanzania’s coast. It will handle
Sojo in Tabora region, he said, noting that mem- 216,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil from Blocks
bers of this group would receive a collective sum 1, 1A, 2 and 3A in western Uganda, which are
of TZS424.8mn ($183,182), or almost 17% of the home to the Kingfisher and Tilenga fields. These
total. fields are due to begin production in 2025 and
The minister went on to say that the docu- will eventually yield at least 260,000 bpd of
ment clearly identified the persons entitled to crude.
compensation. As a result, he said, EACOP The pipeline will be built by a consortium
should be able to make the necessary payments in which France’s Total will serve as the oper-
quickly, without any debate over the details of ator and have a 37.5% stake. The remaining
the deal. equity will be divided between China National
“I want the process to be finalised as soon Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC), with 37.5%;
as possible so that disbursement can start even Uganda National Oil Co. (UNOC), with 15%,
today,” he declared. “We have no time to waste. and TPDC, with 5%. Both Total and CNOOC
We want the project to start immediately and be are involved in developing the oilfields that will
completed in time.” provide throughput for the pipeline; the former
Tiffen, for his part, said that EACOP was company serves as operator of Tilenga, while the
committed to compensating all of the owners of latter is leading work at Kingfisher.™

P16 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 28 15•July•2021