Daily Times

Climate change campaigners targeted the UK headquarters of oil giant TotalEnergies with paint Tuesday, protesting the French firm’s alleged human rights violations in the construction of a contentious oil pipeline in Uganda. Supporters of the Just Stop Oil activist organisation sprayed black paint in the lobby of the company’s headquarters in London’s Canary Wharf district, while others daubed orange paint outside, the protest group said. Dozens of students from a pressure group opposed to the building of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) also massed outside the building during the stunt to show support, it added.

London’s Metropolitan police said officers had arrested 27 people “for a combination of suspicion of criminal damage and aggravated trespass”. TotalEnergies said in a statement that it “fully respects the right to demonstrate and freedom of expression, but deplores all forms of violence, whether verbal, physical or material”. “TotalEnergies promotes transparent and constructive dialogue with all its stakeholders,” it added.

The French company is the largest shareholder in the controversial east African venture, which is set to carry crude oil to the Tanzanian coast through several Ugandan protected nature reserves. Communities in the region claim the energy firm and other EACOP backers have caused serious harm to their rights to land and food in building the 1,500-kilometre (930-mile) pipeline. Critics have also called the project a “carbon bomb” which would release over 379 million tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere.