East Africa's $5bn Oil Pipeline Hits 82% as Uganda Counts Down to First Exports
One of Africa's most ambitious — and most contested — infrastructure projects is entering its final stretch. The East African Crude Oil Pipeline, the 1,443-kilometre artery that will carry Ugandan crude to the Indian Ocean, has reached 82 percent completion, with its marine jetty at Tanga port even further along at 88 percent.
The timeline is now concrete: technical readiness is targeted for the end of July, and Uganda and Tanzania have confirmed that the first crude exports are scheduled for October 2026. When that first shipment leaves the Chongoleani Peninsula near Tanga, Uganda will become an oil-exporting nation — the culmination of two decades of anticipation since commercial reserves were confirmed beneath Lake Albert.
The scale of the undertaking is considerable. The $5 billion pipeline — which has attracted around $4 billion in investment — runs from Kabaale in Uganda's Hoima district across Tanzania to the coast, and will have capacity to move 246,000 barrels per day. It is majority-owned by France's TotalEnergies with 62 percent, alongside Uganda's national oil company and Tanzania's TPDC at 15 percent each, and China's CNOOC with 8 percent.
For Uganda and Tanzania, the promise is transformative: export earnings, jobs, and a new pillar for economies hungry for growth. For the project's many critics, EACOP has long been a flashpoint — environmental groups and some financiers have opposed the heated pipeline's route through sensitive ecosystems and its climate implications, and several international banks declined to fund it.
Those arguments will not end when the oil flows. But after years in which EACOP's completion was perpetually 'next year', the countdown is finally real: barring late slippage, East Africa joins the ranks of oil exporters before the year is out.
