bank - Arabica Robusta on Diigo

22 Dec 09

13 Dec 09

Dreams dashed « Pipe(line) Dreams

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12 Dec 09

Institute for Policy Studies: Africa and the Economic Crisis

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The current crisis, however, has dictated a more central role for African governments in regulating their economies, preventing capital flight, and creative taxation, so that Africa's resources benefit her people. Africa's focus must be on creating decent jobs by supporting small- and medium-sized enterprises that add productive value to Africa's vast natural resources.
The current crisis, however, has dictated a more central role for African governments in regulating their economies, preventing capital flight, and creative taxation, so that Africa's resources benefit her people. Africa's focus must be on creating decent jobs by supporting small- and medium-sized enterprises that add productive value to Africa's vast natural resources.
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- The current crisis, however, has dictated a more central role for African governments in regulating their economies, preventing capital flight, and creative taxation, so that Africa's resources benefit her people. Africa's focus must be on creating decent jobs by supporting small- and medium-sized enterprises that add productive value to Africa's vast natural resources.
- The current crisis, however, has dictated a more central role for African governments in regulating their economies, preventing capital flight, and creative taxation, so that Africa's resources benefit her people. Africa's focus must be on creating decent jobs by supporting small- and medium-sized enterprises that add productive value to Africa's vast natural resources.
- a multi-stakeholder forum convened in Tunis at the end of November that brought together leading economists, government officials, and civil society representatives.
- The forum was the first high-profile event of the newly formed Coalition for Dialogue on Africa (CoDA), chaired by Botswana's former President, Festus Mogae.
- CoDA is driven by African institutions and carves out greater space for civil society to set the agenda. At the forum, Professor Fantu Cheru of the Nordic Africa Institute urged support for "knowledge production on the continent." The establishment of CoDA is a big step in that direction.
- We must, as the Tunis Forum convener Abdoulaye Bathily, Senegalese academic and former minister of environment, urges "redefine Africa's development paradigm, and above all, support the emergence of new practices and citizen actions in Africa's public space."

Pambazuka - A failure but the oil keeps flowing

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08 Dec 09

Chevron in the News « Pipe(line) Dreams

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06 Dec 09

BBC NEWS | Africa | Chad pipeline threatens villages

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05 Dec 09

Pipe(line) Dreams

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A Humanitarian Disaster in the Making Along the Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline -- Who's Watching? | World | AlterNet

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t r u t h o u t | A Humanitarian Disaster in the Making Along the Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline - Who's Watching?

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The World Bank’s public sector lending arms (the IDA and IBRD) announced their withdrawal from the project in 2008 stating “Chad failed to comply with key requirements” of their participation, though the World Bank’s private sector lending arm (the IFC) had no problem staying on board to reap the benefits of its $200 million commercial loan.
Exxon and the project planners claimed that compensations would be paid to displaced people, but that “self resettlement” would take place naturally whereby villagers would find/purchase new land for farming from a “village land pool.” A recent Chadian report notes that this has not happened; many farmers have not found land or enough land. Agricultural production is continually declining and will ultimately penalize the entire country.
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- Villagers often live precariously close to oil wells which turn round the clock. Increased banditry in the zone led the former governor of the Logone Oriental Province to instruct local police to “arrest or shoot on sight” anyone circulating through the zone after 6 pm. Now people living in the zone are literally surrounded by oil infrastructure and prisoners in their own homes. Almost every facet of their lives is governed by Exxon, the de facto local government.
- On October 11 of this year, Keiro discovered an oil spill while returning home from his farm. He alerted Exxon employees who immediately cordoned off the area and “cleaned” it up before any outside observers could see the damage. The oil spill ruined Keiro’s fallow land, and so they decided to compensate him with a special gift: an empty Esso (Exxon’s operator) backpack.
  
  This was allegedly the fifth oil spill related to the project, yet was not reported by a single media outlet in or outside of Chad. If a journalist from the Associated Press made just one phone call to Exxon in Houston, Keiro likely would receive thousands of dollars of compensation within a week.
- As for the 5% of oil revenues promised to residents of the oil-producing zone -- it’s all being spent on so-called “Presidential Projects.” These are high-profile large infrastructure projects that Deby has gifted to the regional capital of Doba, more than a thirty-minute drive from the villages hit hardest by oil production. These projects, which include an already crumbling football stadium, are intended to win support for Deby’s party in the 2010 local elections and 2011 presidential election
- The greatest impact of oil in Chad has been felt not by the caged-in villages of the Doba Basin, but rather in the North and East of country where hundreds of millions of dollars of oil money has been used to purchase weapons for a war that has killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands
- Despite receiving minimal “transit revenues” from Chad’s oil, the pipeline’s social and environmental impacts are just a harsh for Cameroonians living along the pipeline route. 248 villages are directly impacted by the pipe and dozens more by roads, operations centers, and employee living bases all built expressly for the project. Unlike in neighboring Chad, no oil revenues have been set aside for development spending in the affected villages. The Cameroonian government claims it only receives $25 million per year and some of that money returns to impacted villages via increased social spending in the national budget. But the truth is no one knows where the $25 million is spent (or if that’s the true amount) and there is no accountability for the use of the revenues.
- Mongotsoe Akam is a quiet and awkward grandfather living in the small village of Ebaka in Cameroon’s East Province. He has been a farmer his whole life and seems content to continue living the traditional village life. During the pipeline’s construction, multiple subcontractors of the oil consortium were constantly buzzing around his home and farm. They were looking for laterite, a type of rock used to surface the unpaved roads the consortium built to transport materials and heavy machinery. Mr. Mongotsoe showed them the exact location of his laterite and negotiated a price for its extraction. Not only was he never paid for the use of his laterite, but he also was never compensated for the $50,000 worth of crops that were bulldozed to access the quarry.
- ” In September, 2009 the oil consortium finally offered to settle with Mongotsoe for a mere $600. When the old man refused, an Exxon employee told two Cameroonian NGOs that Mongotsoe was trying to swindle the company since he knows they have tons of money.
- The Chief of Dompta signed a contract with Exxon for the construction of a health clinic as “community compensation.” When the health clinic wasn’t built, he wrote to the oil consortium demanding they follow through on their written agreement. One of Exxon’s directors cordially replied that the health center would be built and the village could use health clinics in neighboring villages until then. Dompta’s chief died in 2007 and was replaced by his son as tradition requires. The new Dompta chief claims Exxon built a health center in Dompla (notice the difference in spelling), a village about 30 kilometers away and even proudly posted a sign that read “Dompta Health Clinic.” We will never know if this is a cruel joke or corporate idiocy because no one from the oil consortium has yet to comment on the issue. For the people of Dompta, it doesn’t really matter.
- . Traditional Kribians wake up around 5 am and ready their wooden canoes for the day’s fishing expedition. As each day passes, they paddle farther and farther to catch fewer and fewer fish. That’s because one of the principal fishing reefs was dynamited to make way for the Chad-Cameroon pipeline, which is buried under 11 kilometers of seabed.
- The World Bank asked the government of Cameroon and Exxon to jointly publish an official “Oil Spill Response Plan” before the project became operational in 2003. The plan was “inaugurated” at Yaounde’s ritzy Hilton Hotel on November 3^rd, 2009. A member of a prominent Cameroonian NGO which has been monitoring the project was barred from the event because “he didn’t have accreditation.”
- The ultimate goal of international campaigning is to “leave African oil in the soil” and build stronger governance beforehand since the extractive industries almost never contribute to development. However, powerful interests are making that objective difficult. Thus the fight will for now be concentrated on policy improvements.

ChadCamReport.pdf (application/pdf Object)

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Chad and Cameroon - Petroleum Development and Pipeline Project, Vol. 1 of 1

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bank cameroon chad corporations development industry international multinational petroleum world

Independent Evaluation - Lessons from an Evaluation of the Chad-Cameroon Oil Development and Pipeline Program

Compare this latest evaluation with the December 2006 World Bank report: http://go.worldbank.org/NK5U64X7U0 That report also concentrated on the failings of the government and suggested that the design was satisfactory.

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21 Nov 09

World Bank announces landmark policy | Banking/Finance | Peacefmonline.com

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The new policy represents a fundamental shift in the Bank's approach to disclosure of information - moving from an approach that spells out what documents it can disclose to one under which the Bank will disclose any information in its possession that is not on a list of exceptions. The policy statement will be finalized in December 2009 and become effective on July 1, 2010. A progress report will be presented to the Board by the end of 2011.
The new policy represents a fundamental shift in the Bank's approach to disclosure of information - moving from an approach that spells out what documents it can disclose to one under which the Bank will disclose any information in its possession that is not on a list of exceptions. The policy statement will be finalized in December 2009 and become effective on July 1, 2010. A progress report will be presented to the Board by the end of 2011.
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- The new policy represents a fundamental shift in the Bank's approach to disclosure of information - moving from an approach that spells out what documents it can disclose to one under which the Bank will disclose any information in its possession that is not on a list of exceptions. The policy statement will be finalized in December 2009 and become effective on July 1, 2010. A progress report will be presented to the Board by the end of 2011.