Oil Drilling Near Murchison Falls: What Travelers Should Actually Know Before Booking
It is one of the more common questions we now get from travelers researching a Murchison Falls safari, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a marketing one: yes, there is active oil development in and around Murchison Falls National Park, and yes, it is a genuine source of debate among conservationists, local communities, and the companies involved. Oil drilling near Murchison Falls is not a rumor or a fringe concern. It is a large, well-documented industrial project unfolding in the same landscape where thousands of travelers come each year to see lions, elephants, and the Nile itself. This piece lays out what is actually happening, where it sits relative to the safari circuit you would actually experience, what the concerns are, and what that means for your decision to visit.
What’s Actually Happening: Tilenga and the East African Crude Oil Pipeline
The oil development connected to Murchison Falls centers on TotalEnergies’ Tilenga project, part of a wider effort to extract crude oil from the Albertine Graben, the rift valley basin along Lake Albert that forms the park’s western boundary. A significant share of the wells associated with Tilenga sit inside the boundaries of Murchison Falls National Park itself, a fact that is at the core of most of the controversy surrounding the project. That oil is intended to travel via the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, a roughly 1,443-kilometer heated pipeline running from the Lake Albert fields through Uganda and Tanzania to the port of Tanga on the Indian Ocean. As of mid-2026, the pipeline is in its final stages of completion, with production reportedly set to begin around October 2026.
This is not a small or speculative project. It represents one of the largest single foreign investments in Uganda’s history, and it has been under development, and under public debate, for well over a decade.
A Brief Timeline: How We Got Here
Commercially viable oil reserves were first confirmed in the Albertine Graben in 2006, and the years since have involved a long sequence of exploration, licensing negotiations, environmental impact assessments, and repeated delays, many tied directly to the sensitivity of drilling inside a national park and the scale of financing required for a pipeline of this length. International campaign groups, including the StopEACOP coalition, have opposed the project since the pipeline route was finalized, raising legal challenges in Ugandan, Tanzanian, and international courts over the years, most of which have not succeeded in halting construction. Several international banks and insurers have also publicly declined to finance the project over environmental and human rights concerns, though TotalEnergies and its partners, including Uganda’s and Tanzania’s national oil companies, secured alternative financing and continued construction regardless. By mid-2026, with the pipeline reportedly weeks from being operational, the project has effectively moved past the point where its basic existence is still in question, and the debate has shifted toward how its environmental and social impacts are managed during the decades of operation ahead.
Where the Oil Operations Actually Sit
The geography matters more than the headlines usually convey. Murchison Falls National Park covers roughly 3,840 square kilometers, and the standard safari circuit, the Buligi game tracks north of the Nile, the boat cruise to the base of the falls, the hike to the top of the falls, and the delta area where the river meets Lake Albert, is concentrated in the park’s central and northern sections. The Tilenga oil wells are concentrated primarily in the park’s northern and western reaches near Lake Albert, in an area that overlaps with, but is not identical to, the core tourist routes.
In practical terms, this means most standard game drives and the Nile boat cruise do not route travelers directly past active well pads, though access roads, occasional vehicle traffic connected to the project, and some infrastructure are visible in parts of the park that were previously undeveloped bush. It is not accurate to say the oil development is invisible to visitors. It is also not accurate to say it dominates the visitor experience on a typical two or three day safari. The honest answer sits between those two extremes, and it is worth knowing that before you arrive rather than being surprised by it.
What Conservationists Are Actually Concerned About
The environmental case against drilling inside Murchison Falls is not vague. A May 2026 assessment from the research group Earth Insight found that the wider East African Crude Oil Pipeline corridor could affect 158 wetlands, 11 rivers, 44 protected areas, and seven key biodiversity areas across Uganda and Tanzania combined. Within the park specifically, concerns center on habitat fragmentation from roads and well pads, disturbance to wildlife movement corridors, and the risk that drilling and associated infrastructure pose to sensitive riverine and wetland habitat along the Nile and Lake Albert shoreline.
Those concerns are not purely theoretical. In 2026, Uganda Wildlife Authority rangers translocated 12 endangered Nubian giraffes roughly 106 kilometers from Murchison Falls to Ajai Wildlife Reserve, a move explicitly connected to giving the animals distance from the oil development zone within the park. We cover that translocation, and what it says about how the park is actively managing this tension, in our separate piece on why Murchison Falls’ giraffes were relocated to Ajai Wildlife Reserve. Environmental groups have also pointed to the relatively modest scale of Murchison Falls’ annual tourism revenue, estimated at roughly two million dollars, against the scale of oil investment, arguing that the jobs and royalties from oil extraction do not straightforwardly offset the value of tourism, fishing, and agricultural livelihoods that depend on an intact park ecosystem.
What TotalEnergies and Uganda Wildlife Authority Say They’re Doing
TotalEnergies has publicly committed to a biodiversity strategy for the Tilenga project built around minimizing surface footprint, using directional drilling to reach multiple underground well targets from a smaller number of surface pads, and restoring disturbed land where operations wind down. The company has also stated commitments around a “no net loss” biodiversity standard for the project, meaning any habitat disturbance is meant to be offset through conservation investment elsewhere. Independent environmental groups have consistently pushed back on how thoroughly those commitments are being met, particularly given the scale and sensitivity of drilling inside an active national park, and that disagreement remains genuinely unresolved rather than settled in either direction.
Uganda Wildlife Authority, for its part, has continued to expand ranger presence and monitoring across the park through this period, work covered in more detail in our guide to Murchison Falls’ conservation status and our broader look at anti-poaching efforts across Uganda. The park’s elephant and lion populations have both remained a management priority throughout the oil development period, and wildlife counts in recent years have not shown the kind of population collapse that some early opponents of the project feared, though monitoring continues and the pipeline’s operational phase, only just beginning, is where the more consequential environmental risks, including the possibility of spills, are expected to be tested for the first time.
What You’ll Actually Experience on a Murchison Falls Safari
For travelers whose primary concern is what their own trip will look and feel like, the practical experience of a Murchison Falls safari in 2026 remains largely consistent with what it has been for years. Game drives across the Buligi circuit, the Nile boat cruise toward the base of the falls, and the hike to the top of the falls all continue to operate as they always have, and the park’s core wildlife, lions, elephants, giraffes, buffalo, and its exceptional birdlife, remains visible and abundant on a typical visit. Some travelers do report noticing access roads or occasional project-related vehicle activity in specific areas, particularly toward the park’s northwestern reaches, but this is not part of the standard game-viewing routes most itineraries are built around.
We do not think it is our place to tell you the environmental debate is settled, in either direction. What we can tell you honestly is what a typical safari itinerary through the park actually involves day to day, and help you route your specific trip through the areas least affected by ongoing development if that matters to you.
The Case for Tourism as a Counterweight
One argument made consistently by conservationists, and one we think is worth taking seriously rather than dismissing as self-interested, is that sustained tourism visitation is one of the few forces capable of keeping pressure on the park’s management to protect its wildlife and habitat through this period. Park entrance fees and safari revenue fund a meaningful share of Uganda Wildlife Authority’s ranger patrols, anti-poaching operations, and habitat monitoring, the same infrastructure that would need to detect and respond to any environmental problems arising from oil operations. A park that loses tourism relevance loses a significant funding stream and a significant reason for its management and the government to prioritize its ecological health over competing interests. Choosing to visit, and to choose operators who are transparent about these issues rather than pretending they don’t exist, is a meaningful way to support the side of that balance that favors the park’s long-term survival.
Should This Change Your Decision to Visit?
That is genuinely a personal call, and we would rather you make it with accurate information than either false reassurance or exaggerated alarm. The oil development is real, it is significant, and it is a legitimate source of ongoing environmental concern that has not been fully resolved. It has not, as of 2026, transformed the day-to-day experience of a Murchison Falls safari into something unrecognizable from what travelers have valued about the park for decades, and the wildlife that draws people here remains very much present and thriving on the routes most itineraries follow. If you are the kind of traveler who wants to understand exactly what you are supporting and seeing before you book, we would rather have this conversation with you directly than leave it out of our marketing.
Have questions about how oil development in the region might affect your specific Murchison Falls itinerary? Contact us and we’ll walk you through exactly what your route will look like, honestly and in detail.
