Page 4 - AfrOil Week 50 2022

AfrOil COMMENTARY AfrOil

(Image: EACOP)

EACOP goes to court

French civil court system begins hearing lawsuit filed by six environmental

groups against TotalEnergies over alleged violation of “Duty of Vigilance” law

AT a time of considerable anxiety within the EU delight of the environmental organisations.
over energy security and energy supplies, one Friends of the Earth said in a statement that
WHAT: of the union’s member states has entered into the case was “finally” moving forward now
TotalEnergies is being something of a public debate on the ethics and that the Court of Cassation, France’s highest
sued for a failure to plan legality of a pipeline project slated for construc- judicial authority, had ruled that the matter
for and prevent human tion on an entirely different continent. should remain under the jurisdiction of the civil
rights violations and Specifically, a civil court in Paris has begun court system rather than be transferred to the
environmental harm in hearings on a lawsuit filed by six environmental commercial courts, as TotalEnergies had been
Uganda and Tanzania. groups – Survie (France), Friends of the Earth arguing. (The French major had held fast to that
(US) and four Ugandan organisations – against stance since October 2019, when the suit was
WHY: the French oil major TotalEnergies in relation to first lodged, but that avenue was closed to it by
The French major’s the Lake Albert Development Project (LADP). the Court of Cassation.)
efforts to have the
case transferred to the This scheme has an upstream component, as
commercial courts have it calls for development of the Tilenga oilfields At issue
failed. near Lake Albert in western Uganda. But it is The point of contention is the “Duty of Vigi-
more widely referred to by the name of its mid- lance” law adopted by the French government in
WHAT NEXT: stream component – the East Africa Crude Oil 2017. As Friends of the Earth explained in 2019,
The lawsuit is sure to Pipeline (EACOP), which will pump produc- that law “makes parent companies of transna-
spark debates over policy, tion from Tilenga and the nearby Kingfisher tional corporations legally accountable for the
even as it proceeds under fields, assigned to China National Offshore Oil impacts of their operations all over the world.”
conditions that do not Corp. (CNOOC), through Uganda and Tanza- Moreover, it stipulates that companies are not
resemble those prevailing nia to the Indian Ocean port of Tanga. just legally responsible for their own actions but
in 2019. The hearings began on December 8, to the for the actions of their contractors.

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