TotalEnergies is in talks with a Chinese company to supply line pipe for its challenging East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) project after its initial plan to award a major contract to a Russian supplier fell through because of sanctions.

In late April, Upstream reported that supply chain chaos and the crisis in Ukraine had hit the EACOP project hard, causing costs to escalate from $3.5 billion to $5 billion and threatening the schedule.