Tanzania approved the building of the pipeline on Tuesday, a few weeks after Uganda did the same in the previous month. Peter Muliisa, Uganda National Oil Corporation’s head legal and corporate affairs officer, claims that this enables the nations to begin transporting the machinery to the locations.
East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (Eacop), a $5 billion project proposed by Uganda, has become a worldwide flashpoint as environmental activists pressure lenders to abandon the project even as Tanzanian authorities granted a building permit.
Climate activists have criticized the Eacop, which is scheduled to run 1,443 km from Lake Albert in western Uganda to the Tanzanian port of Tanga, claiming that it poses a threat to evict thousands of people and damages vital ecosystems in the two East African nations.
