Summary
·
The court
on Tuesday ruled the case was "inadmissible", saying the plaintiffs
did not correctly follow court procedures against the French energy giant
Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris, France.
Paris. A French court on Tuesday dismissed a landmark case against TotalEnergies for a massive oil project in Uganda and Tanzania after several NGOs filed a suit to suspend the controversial project.
The six NGOs argued the development
of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) failed to adhere to a "duty
of vigilance", a 2017 law that compels companies to avoid grave harm to
human rights, health, safety and the environment.
The court on Tuesday ruled the case
was "inadmissible", saying the plaintiffs did not correctly follow
court procedures against the French energy giant.
It said the plaintiffs submitted
accounts to the court in December that were "substantially different"
from those that were presented to TotalEnergies in a formal notice in 2019 when
the case was initiated.
The suit was brought by two French
and four Ugandan NGOs, which accused TotalEnergies of taking land from more
than 100,000 people without adequate compensation.
They also said the company drilled
wells in the biodiversity-rich Murchison Falls National Park on the shores of
Lake Albert.
The lake, a natural border between
Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, lies atop an estimated 6.5 billion
barrels of crude, of which about 1.4 billion barrels are currently considered
recoverable.
The 1,443-kilometre (900-mile)
pipeline will transport crude from vast oilfields being developed in Lake
Albert in northwestern Uganda to a Tanzanian port on the Indian Ocean.
The $10 billion oilfields and
pipeline project is being jointly developed by TotalEnergies and the China
National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), along with the state-owned Uganda
National Oil Company.
Several legal proceedings for
failure to comply with the "duty of vigilance" are under way against
other French companies, including Casino, Suez, Yves Rocher and BNP Paribas.
Tuesday's ruling is the first
instance of the "duty of vigilance" being tested in a courtroom.
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