(Posted 01st August 2024)
Courtesy of African Elephant News / Stenews and Musinguzi Blanshe, Mongabay
Oil drilling by French oil and gas giant TotalEnergies is disturbing wildlife in Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda’s largest and most-visited protected area. This is according to a briefing by environmental advocacy group Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO), which warns that noise pollution is driving animals out of the park, leading to increased conflict with nearby communities.
AFIEGO says that between the start of drilling operations last year and April 2024, five people have been killed by elephants moving outside the park into the neighboring district of Buliisa. It also reports that people living around the park have threatened retaliatory killings of wild animals.
Since the start of drilling, TotalEnergies has requested permission to deploy a second rig in the park. Dickens Kamugisha, executive director of AFIEGO, told Mongabay he was surprised the company would seek to expand its operations. “Total had promised minimal activities in the park,” he said. “Why is it now saying we want to conduct more activities?”
John Makombo, director of conservation at the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), the government agency that manages parks, rejected AFIEGO’s briefing as “rumormongering,” saying the NGO has no capacity to assess impacts on the park. “Get proper scientific studies,” he told Mongabay. “When AFIEGO people tell you that elephants are being pushed away by oil and you’re there you don’t want to do research, you write rumors.”
AFIEGO reached its conclusions about the development of the Tilenga field by mapping TotalEnergies’ activities in the park using satellite images and then assessing the impacts of the new oil infrastructure on wildlife by interviewing biodiversity experts, tour guides, civil society actors, and residents of nearby communities between April and June 2024.
Uganda discovered oil in the Albertine Graben, in the western part of the country along its border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, in 2005. A consortium led by TotalEnergies is drilling for oil in the park as well as on the shores of Lake Albert, which produces more than 40% of Uganda’s annual fish catch, providing food and livelihoods for millions of people.
Drilling infrastructure in the park includes a rig, well pads, roads, electricity lines, and pipelines that will transport oil to the central processing facility. Bright light from the drilling rig is visible up to 14 kilometers (nearly 9 miles) away. AFIEGO says this is causing significant disruption to the nocturnal life of animals like leopards and hyenas, which hunt in the dark.
The Daily Monitor, a national newspaper, reported that officials at the Petroleum Authority of Uganda (PAU), a regulatory agency, were alarmed by the company’s “non adherence” to guidelines supposed to ensure mutual coexistence of oil activities and the environment.
TotalEnergies Uganda declined to comment on the AFIEGO briefing, but in its public statements the company has committed “to leave Murchison Falls National Park (MFNP) and the surrounding landscape in better condition than if the project had not taken place.” It described actions it’s taking to support management of the park overall, including funding for snare removal and additional patrols, training and new equipment for park rangers, and anti-poaching campaigns in surrounding communities.
It also said the oil field will be developed in line with environmental and social performance standards set out by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Ugandan law. For example, TotalEnergies said it had reduced the number of well pads from 79 to 25, of which just 10 are located inside the park’s boundaries.
But AFIEGO’s briefing challenges the substance behind these claims.
“Two of the ten wellpads that are being developed to enable oil extraction in Murchison Falls National Park are too close to the Murchison Falls-Albert Delta Ramsar site, a wetland of international importance that is important for conservation of endangered bird species such as the shoebill,” the briefing reads. AFIEGO further says pollution from construction of the Victoria Nile Pipeline Crossing near the same wetland threatens to destroy fish spawning grounds and damage habitat for vulnerable and endangered species including shoebill storks and gray-crowned cranes.
Alongside the siting of infrastructure on or near critical habitat, the description of disturbances caused by noise and light pollution, and the reports gathered from local communities of heightened conflict with displaced wildlife call the company’s compliance with IFC guidelines into question. The standards refer to avoiding harmful impacts on the health and safety of affected communities throughout the project’s life, and restricting the conversion or degradation of natural habitat — permitted only when there are no viable alternatives and in consultation with affected communities.
The guidelines also require biodiversity monitoring and evaluation. It’s not clear such a program is in place for the Tilenga project, however. A UWA team visited the park on July 11, but a brief statement on social media didn’t mention if the team took note of impacts of construction on wildlife. “Out of the 10 oil wells discovered inside the park, drilling is complete at JBR 05 and drilling is going on at JBR 04 that will cross the pipeline on the Nile River bed using horizontal directional drilling,” the team reported.
AFIEGO is urging government to cease all oil exploitation activities in the park, but not all interested parties share the NGO’s assessment of impacts. Herbert Byaruhanga, a tour operator who regularly takes visitors to the park, says he hasn’t observed changes in the number or presence of animals. “I have read a report on the effect of animal distribution, but the tourism zones are still being visited. Therefore, we may not be able to detect if there is any negative impact.”
AFIEGO’s Kamugisha told Mongabay he fears the long-term impacts of oil production in the park could see the government degazetting some sections of the park. “Government can say, this area is no longer a wildlife reserve area,” he said.
