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Africa News afrol News
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Africa News afrol News
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afrol.com, 26 October - Last week, the Cameroonian President, Paul Biya, and the Chadian President, General Idriss Deby, formally opened the billion dollar project, the construction of the Chad-Cameroon pipeline, in an ceremony in the coastal resort of Kribi. This also opens Chad's access to foreign exchange and social development. The project has been special from the start. Chad, being landlocked and ravaged by internal conflicts, has had to make fundamental changes to obtain the needed international capital to exploit its rich oil resources. Petroleum was discovered in southern Chad 30 years ago, and the country has been waiting anxiously ever since for the right combination of international prices and private interest to develop the resource. - This pipeline provides Chad with a unique opportunity to lift itself out of its extreme poverty, the World Bank assessed. The additional revenues could remove the bottlenecks that constrain growth and create opportunity for the next generation of Chadians. It has already served in bringing reconciliation to several of the traditionally conflicting parties of Chad. Political instability has been one of the main factors behind Chad's long stay "in the waiting room" of financing. The Government has had an active policy in contributing to reconciliation and political stability. Pressure from the financial markets has also contributed to a bettered human rights situation in Chad and secures that the oil revenues will be used for social gains. In fact, the Government has already taken unusual steps to target most of the oil revenues to poverty reduction and to ensure public oversight of the use of these resources. On December 30, 1998, Chad's Parliament approved a law that sets out the Government's poverty reduction objectives and details arrangements for the use of the revenues. Under the law, 10 percent of the royalties and revenues will be held in trust for future generations, 80 percent of the remaining funds will be devoted to education, health and social services, rural development, infrastructure, and environmental and water resource management, and 5 percent will be earmarked for regional development in the oil-producing area (over and above its share of national spending). Also the environmental side of the project finally was taken seriously. The World Bank, which contributes with a mere 2,5% of the financing, had demanded this before giving its approbation. Thus, significant changes were made to the proposed right-of-way. As a result, the project will have only a minor net effect on the natural and human environments. The pipeline will be buried, rather than above-ground. For most of the route, it follows existing infrastructure. No one will need to be resettled along the 1,070 km route - although a maximum of 150 families (probably many fewer) may be displaced where the oil itself will be produced. It must be noted that Chad was especially open to all these suggestions and/or demands. In contrast to dictatorial Equatorial Guinea, located less than 100 km south of the Kribi terminal, the high prices of oil production and transport give small margins for revenue. No demands were therefore made to Equatorial Guinea before investing in the highly profitable offshore oil adventure in that country, and so far, nothing of the revenue has reached the population, nor has the catastrophic human rights situation been improved. The fact the Chad-Cameroon pipeline is the single largest investment ever in sub-Saharan Africa, made the situation very different in Chad. The Chad-Cameroon pipeline project will cost some estimated US$ 3.7 billion. The financing is used to develop the oil fields at Doba in southern Chad and construct the 1070 km pipeline to offshore oil-loading facilities in Kribi, a popular holiday resort on Cameroon's Atlantic coast. According to Michel Gallet the director general of Cotco, the company that will construct the pipeline, effective construction work will begin early next year and is expected to last for three years, the BBC today reported. The huge project will generate thousands of jobs and boost businesses and infrastructure in both Cameroon and Chad.
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