Exxon-Led Group Gears Up for Work on Chad Oil Pipeline
8/27/99
*******************************
RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Exxon-Led Group Gears Up for Work on Chad Oil Pipeline
Source: Reuters Limited
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: August 27, 1999
Byline: Tansa Musa
YAOUNDE, CAMEROON - The partners in a $3.5 billion pipeline project
to carry export crude oil from Chad through Cameroon have met to
finalise plans for the start of construction work, officials said.
They said the governments of Chad and Cameroon and the consortium led
by U.S. Exxon Corp also signed a transportation accord at the meeting
in Yaounde, Cameroon,last week. Details of the accord were not
available.
But a statement by the General Manager of Cameroon's National Hydro-
carbons Corp Adolphe Moudiki, said the accord would ease the way for
a deal with creditors, notably the World Bank.
Both Chad and Cameroon are due to hold talks next month with the
World Bank, whose financial support is key to the project to build a
1,050 km (650 mile) pipeline linking oil fields in the land-locked
Chad to an export facility in neighbouring Cameroon.
Officials say the talks will deal with environmental issues that have
dogged the project and which will determine the bank's financing of
the equity shares of Cameroon and Chad.
Chad and Cameroon will hold stakes of $35 million and $55 million
respectively in the Chad/Cameroon Oil Transportation Co (COTCO).
Adolphe said that at the Yaounde meeting, the Cameroon government
approved an environmental impact study of the project.
Cameroon was also working on a plan to classify its ecologically rich
northern and eastern areas of Campo Ma'an and Mbam-Djerem into
national parks to assure: their protection.
Possible environmental damage to these areas has been the subject of
a relentless mania campaign by ecology activists abroad trying to
stop the pipeline project.
In the coming weeks, partners of COTCO will finalise the general plan
for the fight against accidental pollution and present it to the
public for scrutiny, the statement added.
A team of Cameroonian experts is due to travel to Washington on
August 26 to September 10 to finalise with the World Bank an
enviromental plan for the project and the bank's financing role.
The World Bank has delayed approval of loans supporting the export
pipeline, which would be the biggest investment in Chad, because of
environmental considerations.
A consortium of oil companies, led by U.S. Exxon Corp, the operator,
and including Shell and Elf Aquitaine had originally planned to begin
construction of the pipeline this year.
Production is scheduled to start in the last quarter of 2001 or the
first quarter of 2002 from 300 projected wells in the southern Doba
Basin's three fields - Bolobo, Kome and Miandoun.
Output is forecast to reach 225,000 barrels per day at its peak, with
the crude pumped to the Cameroonian port of Kribi.