Germany’s Talanx reportedly latest European carrier to exclude east African pipeline

German insurance group Talanx, parent of HDI Global and Hannover Re, is the latest leading German and European carrier to confirm that it will not underwrite the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), under pressure from environmental campaign groups. The 1,443km crude oil export pipeline is planned to transport crude oil from Kabaale, Hoima in Uganda to the Chongoleani peninsula near Tanga port in Tanzania. TotalEnergies, the French multinational energy group, holds a majority stake in the project, which it boasts will involve some $3.5bn investment in the region and raise foreign direct investment in Uganda and Tanzania by 60% during the construction phase, creating jobs and boosting local communities. The minority partner is China National Offshore Oil Company. Environmental campaign groups have worked hard to put a stop to the project because they claim it will destroy vast natural habitats and local communities. The groups have focused their efforts on insurers and reinsurers in the hope that the project will grind to a halt if adequate coverage cannot be secured. Talanx’s Hannover Re actually placed the huge project on its exclusion list last year, according to StopEACOP Coalition, the umbrella group leading the opposition. “We refrain from providing reinsurance coverage for EACOP due to non-compliance with our ESG expectations. EACOP has been put on an exclusion list about a year ago and our facultative underwriters have been informed accordingly,” said Hannover Re, according to StopEACOP Coalition reporting on its website. The coalition was delighted to confirm this week that Talanx Group has also told it that none of its subsidiaries, including HDI Global and HDI Specialty, will back the project. The campaign group stated that Talanx's group strategy and sustainability manager, Dr Jan-Philippe Lüdtke, wrote in an email to a member of the StopEACOP campaign: “I can now confirm that there is and will be no involvement in EACOP by Talanx or any of its subsidiaries.” StopEACOP said there are now 13 leading European and international insurers and reinsurers, including Europe’s Munich Re, Allianz, Zurich, AXA, Swiss Re and SCOR, which have pulled support from the project. The group also claimed that last week, Argo Group, Axis Capital and RSA Group also confirmed that they would not be involved in underwriting EACOP. “More and more (re)insurers are learning about the many problems that EACOP is bringing to the people of Uganda and Tanzania, and the health, social and climate impacts that the pipeline will leave in its wake, and they are wisely distancing themselves from the project. It is time for other (re)insurance companies to follow suit and refuse to be accomplices to such dreadful projects that are premised to only benefit the oil companies Total and China National Offshore Oil Company, at the expense of everyone else,” stated Samuel Okulony, chief executive officer of the Uganda-based Environment Governance Institute. “The EACOP project is a climate bomb. Its direction depends on the decisions (re)insurers make today. They have the power to save humanity, to rescue the thousands of people being displaced in Africa, to save the source of the longest river in the world, to save biodiversity that is on the verge of extinction, which includes elephants, chimpanzees, giraffes, birds, insects, reptiles, forests, game reserves, rivers and waterfalls that people pay to visit in Africa. All these and more are at their mercy,” stated Hilda Flavia Nakabuye, climate activist and founder of Fridays For Future-Uganda. She added: “Now is the time for humanity to shift to a new level of understanding where we must coexist with nature. We need (re)insurers to be on the right side of history, to stand for the people and the planet, and not the profits. We ask the (re)insurers to withhold their support from the EACOP project and ask TotalEnergies to invest in clean, renewable energy.”

Germany’s Talanx reportedly latest European carrier to exclude east African pipeline

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