Just Earth!
Chad & Cameroon
Oil Pipeline Project Threatens Local Communities and Fragile EcosystemsExxonMobil is leading a consortium of oil companies that are developing the Doba oil fields in the southern region of Chad. Other members of the consortium include Chevron Corporation (25 percent) and Petronas of Malaysia (35 percent). The 650-mile pipeline will stretch from oil wells in Southern Chad through Cameroon and end on Cameroon's Atlantic coast. The pipeline will cut through Chad's most fertile agricultural region and Cameroon's Atlantic Littoral Forest, a richly biodiverse area and home to the Indigenous Bagyeli people. Construction on the $3.7 billion oil project, Africa's single largest investment, began in October 2000 after the World Bank Group agreed in June 2000 to provide $200 million in loans and to mobilize hundreds of millions of additional dollars from commercial banks. The project is scheduled to become fully operational at the end of 2003 or early 2004. The rationale for providing development aid money to the project is that it would provide substantial monetary benefits to Chad, one of the poorest countries in the world.
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Exxon officials are accompanied by armed security guards on their way to meet local officials in Chad. (© Martin Zint) |
However, human rights and environmental activists continue to express concerns about the oil project based on the history of the countries and companies involved as well as the World Bank's failed promises in the past. The Doba oil fields in Chad are located in a region plagued by civil strife for several decades. The Chadian government has been criticized for systematic harassment and detention of local activists, journalists, and elected officials critical of the project. In March of 1998, Chadian security forces reportedly killed more than 200 unarmed civilians in the villages of Dobara and Lara in the Doba oil region. The massacre was never investigated. The people of Chad, under President Idriss Déby, continue to suffer from serious human rights violations, including the use of torture as a means of interrogation, and from a culture of impunity. The U.S. State Department's 2001 Country Report on Human Rights Practices states that Chad's human rights record "remained poor, and serious problems continued." The government continued to limit the rights of people to change their government; freedom of expression and of the press; and freedom of assembly, religion, and movement. The Chadian government also utilized extrajudicial killings and disappearances, illegal searches and wiretaps, home demolition, threat of death or grave bodily harm, rape, and arbitrary arrest and detentions against its political opponents and their neighbors and family members.
The community consultation process for the oil project in Chad took place largely in the presence of the Chadian security forces responsible for these human rights violations, creating a climate of fear and intimidation. There is wellgrounded concern that the pipeline project will exacerbate existing conflict and lead to increasing militarization of the region, particularly since the Consortium will need to provide for an increased security presence to guard the pipeline once construction is completed and the oil begins to flow.
Initial money from the oil consortium, originally slated for social development projects such as schools and hospitals, has been diverted for weapons purchases. President Déby acknowledged that $4.5 million (a portion of the $25 million signing bonus) had been used to purchase military equipment, including helicopters and jeeps used in counter-insurgency operations for yet another conflict taking place in Northern Chad. There is lingering concern that the oil revenues will not benefit local peoples in the Doba region and the most vulnerable peoples in Chad.
About 880 kilometers of the pipeline, more than three fourths of its total length, will cut across Cameroon, creating immediate and long-term threats to the country's natural resources. Environmental and human rights activists in Cameroon remain concerned about the destruction of the livelihoods of the forest-dependent Indigenous Bagyeli people as well as habitat destruction and marine pollution. Environmentalists in Cameroon have been organizing to monitor the project impacts on people and the environment. Like their Chadian colleagues, human rights and environmental defenders in Cameroon continue to face government harassment and use of force by security forces.
Under pressure from local NGOs and their international counterparts, the World Bank announced the establishment of an International Advisory Group (IAG) in February 2001. The IAG has a 10-year mandate and is tasked with advising the World Bank and the governments of Chad and Cameroon on overall progress of the project in the areas of accountability, transparency, governance, environmental management, and in meeting social goals. The government of Chad also adopted a revenue management law and established an oversight committee, which includes representatives of civil society to monitor the use of oil revenues for poverty alleviation purposes. This increase in oversight raises the possibility of an open consultation process to evaluate the impact of the oil project on local communities.
While there has been some progress, especially in the area of individual compensation cases and efforts to minimize environmental impacts associated with infrastructure development, there appears to be increasing frustration among local NGOs and their international counterparts that little progress is being made to address a number of key concerns nine months before the first oil flows through the pipeline. Some of the major problems identified by the IAG in its most recent report issued on December 11, 2002 include the lack of communication between NGOs and the consortium, problems with capacity building in Cameroon, political insecurity and impunity in Chad, and lack of resources for the oversight structures to effectively do their work. The pipeline project is scheduled to be completed and fully operational later this year. However, it is now being acknowledged even by the official World Bank monitoring groups that the promised measures to improve the lives of poor people and to protect the environment are seriously delayed or may never get off the ground. Therefore, this project cannot be portrayed as the model for public/private sector partnership for development projects in Africa, as it is being promoted by its sponsors, if these problems are not adequately addressed.
Of growing concern is the issue of new oil exploration being undertaken by the Consortium outside the Doba basin project area because of lack of transparency and accountability. After several "assurances" by both ExxonMobil and the Chad government that no exploration was taking place, the IAG reported in its last report that it received "official confirmation" the Consortium is indeed pursuing new oil exploration in the Bessai basin and Lake Chad. The Consortium has taken the position that they are under no legal obligation to apply the same environmental and social safeguard standards or revenue management plan to new oil explorations outside the Doba basin region. However, the IAG in its December 2002 report called on the government of Chad to publicly disclose the social and environmental conditions attached to the oil exploration permits issued to the Consortium and how it ensures their respect.
As the oil pipeline project gets close to completion, environmental defenders in both Chad and Cameroon have devoted themselves to monitoring the social and environmental impacts of the pipeline project and the implementation of the revenue management law in Chad.