World Bank Plans Talks on Chad Oil Pipeline
9/17/98
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Title: World Bank Plans Talks on Chad Oil Pipeline
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint
Date: 9/17/98
Byline: Tansa Musa
YAOUNDE - The World Bank will hold talks this month with Chad, Cameroon
and a consortium planning an oil pipeline between the two to discuss the
environmental impact of the project, according to a senior Bank official.
Robert Lacey, the Bank's resident representative in Cameroon, told Reuters
that the project to pump Chadian oil to the sea offered a unique
opportunity to cut poverty in the landlocked country and generate revenue
for Cameroon.
But he said help from the Bank, which is under pressure from
environmentalists to boycott the project, dependend on respect of strict
guidelines on the impact on the environment and protection or compensation
for communities and individuals.
"We are currently engaged in discussions with the consortium and with the
two governments concerning these and other dimensions of the project," he
said, adding that he hoped the Washington talks would move things forward.
"We hope that that will permit us to come to closure, at least on the
largest part of these issues," he said, adding that the consortium had
given detailed responses to Bank questions.
U.S.-based Exxon heads a consortium also consisting of Royal Dutch Shell
and France's Elf Aquitaine behind a $3.5 billion project to pump and pipe
Chadian oil to the sea.
The project includes a 1,050 km (650-mile) pipeline from southern Chad to
Cameroon's port of Kribi.
Production from as early as 2001 will make the landlocked former French
colony a member of an exclusive club of African oil producers which
includes Nigeria, Angola, Libya, Congo and Gabon.
The World Bank is considering helping Chad and Cameroon with their equity
contribution in the pipeline - $70 million for Cameroon and $45 milion for
Chad - roughly 10 percent of the pipeline project cost.
But Lacey said the Bank had classified the project Category A, its highest
in terms of environmental risk.
"It is necessary that the project be determined to meet the Bank's
stringent Category A requirements before it is submitted to our senior
management and subsequently to our Board of Directors for their approval,"
he added.
Lacey said that the same consideration applied to protecting and
compensating communities and individuals "whose livelihood and/or quality
of life may be adversely affected by the construction and/or operation of
the project."
Cameroonian non-governmental organisations meeting in the capital Yaounde
in August expressed concern about the project and called for an indigenous
regional development plan taking into account the interests of both
pygmies and Bantu farmers along the pipeline route.
Other concerns surround potential impacts on farmer migrations, livestock
grazing and ecologically sensitive areas.
(C) Reuters Limited 1998.