multinational - Arabica Robusta on Diigo

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The IFC's lessons of experience & the Chad-Cameroon oil and pipeline project (Bretton Woods Project)

Tags: chad, cameroon, petroleum, development, ifc, world, bank, ecmg, monitoring, international, multinational, corporations, industry, d'appolonia on 2008-07-20 -All Annotations (0) -About

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EITI – Extracting transparency

Despite good intentions, no country has been formally validated as EITI-compliant. The risk now is that the initiative will allow countries to ride free, using the EITI label to continue business as usual. As a result, Publish What You Pay has called on companies and governments to deliver concrete results.

The good news is that the EITI board is beginning to flex its muscles. If countries do not become validated within two years they risk losing their status. So far Chad, Trinidad and Tobago, and Bolivia have been disqualified.

Tags: chad, cameroon, petroleum, industry, eiti, world, business, council, sustainable, development, multinational, corporations, international on 2008-07-13 -All Annotations (0) -About

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The attack on Ecuador

Tags: colombia, ecuador, development, politics, imperialism, multinational, corporations, oil, industry, us, castro, latin, america on 2008-07-12 and saved by2 people -All Annotations (0) -About

Chad-Cameroon Development Project

Tags: chad, cameroon, petroleum, development, international, esso, multinational, corporations, industry, world, bank on 2008-07-09 -All Annotations (0) -About

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D'Appolonia

Tags: environment, consulting, corporation, multinational, chad, cameroon, petroleum, development, international, world, bank, appolonia, corporations, industry on 2008-07-09 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Chad-Cameroon Pipeline Case Study

Tags: chad, cameroon, petroleum, corporations, development, industry, multinational, international, bank, world on 2008-07-04 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Pambazuka News

In even the most exploitative African sites of repression and capital accumulation, sometimes corporations take a hit, and victims sometimes unite on continental lines instead of being divided-and-conquered.

Tags: africa, multinational, corporations, niger, delta, mosop, shell, petroleum, industry, nigeria, hegemony, petro-capitalism, mend, pambazuka, codesria, european, union, EPAs on 2008-06-29 -All Annotations (0) -About

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In even the most exploitative African sites of repression and capital accumulation, sometimes corporations take a hit, and victims sometimes unite on continental lines instead of being divided-and-conquered.
In early June, the British-Dutch firm Shell Oil – one of Rodney’s targets - was instructed to depart from the Ogoniland region within the Niger Delta, where in 1995 Shell officials were responsible for the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa by Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha. After decades of abuse, women protesters, local NGOs and the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) gave Shell the shove. France’s Total appears next in line, in part because of additional pressure from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.
Although it was six months ago that the European Union’s ultramanipulative trade negotiator, Peter Mandelson, cajoled 18 weak African leaderships -- including crisis-ridden Cote d’Ivoire, neoliberal Ghana and numerous frightened agro-exporting countries -- into the trap of signing interim “Economic Partnership Agreements” (EPAs), a backlash is now growing.
“We can’t continue to deal with incompetent, weak, corrupt, supine governments,” explained Dot Keet of the Alternative Information and Development Centre in Cape Town. “But these are not factors of the same order of magnitude. The domination of African countries by neocolonialism and the subordinate stance by African governments are not the same. We must be clear where the main driving force comes from: outside Africa. We have to tackle the source.”
Since 2002, the EPAs have supplanted the agenda of the gridlocked World Trade Organisation, just as bilateral trade deals with the US, China and Brazil are also now commonplace.

A united Europe deals with individual African countries in an especially pernicious way, because aside from free trade in goods, Mandelson last October hinted at other invasive EPA conditions that will decimate national sovereignty: “Our objective remains to conclude comprehensive, full economic partnership agreements. These agreements have a WTO-compatible goods agreement at their core, but also cover other issues.”

Those other “Singapore” issues (named after the site of a 1996 WTO summit) include investment protection (so future policies don’t hamper corporate profits), competition policy (to break local large firms up) and government procurement (to end programmes like South Africa’s affirmative action).
As Walter Rodney observed, “It is typical of underdeveloped economies that they do not -- or are not allowed to -- concentrate on those sectors of the economy which in turn will generate growth and raise production to a new level altogether, and there are very few ties between one sector and another so that, say, agriculture and industry could react beneficially on each other.”
African countries face unreliable provision of public utilities (electricity and water); poor public infrastructure (run down roads and railways); rapidly fluctuating exchange rates and high inflation; labour productivity problems arising from poor education, health and housing provision; vulnerable market institutions (such as immature financial systems); and poorly-functioning legal frameworks. The EU has no interest in reversing such fundamental structural economic challenges.
From early on, African civil society movements – especially the African Trade Network - called on elites to halt the negotiations.

But it has not been easy to develop a strong coalition, as Third World Network director Yao Graham concedes: “Unions have been too syndicalist, while our justice movements have been exhausted fighting structural adjustment. The local private sector has been absent. But in some regions, like West Africa, agricultural producers have been well organised and opposed to EPAs. Links to the Caribbean are weak. But we are working behind enemy lines with progressive allies in Europe, including within the Brussels parliament.”
because Mandelson is squeezing so hard, he may be single-handedly breaking the links between elites. Led by Senegalese and Malian politicians, most of the African officials at the conference agreed with the left intelligentsia that dangers now arise of: - regional disintegration (due to EU bilateral negotiations and subregional blocs) and internecine race-to-the-bottom competition:

A New Governance Hybrid: How the EITI Aligns the Public and Business Interest in Good Governance

Tags: eiti, multinational, corporation, petroleum, monitoring, transparency, resource, curse on 2008-06-08 and saved by2 people -All Annotations (0) -About

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

Ratings for the Chad and Cameroon Petroleum Development Project were as follows: outcomes were satisfactory; sustainability was unlikely; institutional development impact was moderate; the Bank performance was satisfactory; and the Borrower performance was also satisfactory. Some lessons learned included: outsourcing of Bank supervision duties constituted an innovative feature of the project and was successful; the need to manage expectations with regards to the government's oil revenue estimates is essential; developing national expertise in the different facets of the oil industry (geology, geophysics, engineering, commercial, finance and economics, environment, and so on) is a daunting task; private partners may reasonably be asked, as they were in this case, to bear a share in the cost of mitigating the risks associated with insufficient country capacity; maintaining World Bank involvement and communications are vital; and finally, sustaining compliance with the environmental management plan needs better technical assistance from the Bank.

Tags: chad, cameroon, petroleum, development, international, world, bank, multinational, corporations, industry on 2008-06-07 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Chad's Oil Riches, Meant for Poor, Are Diverted - New York Times

A $4.2 billion oil pipeline has generated $399 million for Chad since mid-2004, but the spending of the money has been seriously marred by mismanagement, graft and, most recently, the government's decision that a hefty share can be used to fight a rebellion.

Tags: bank, cameroon, chad, corporations, development, industry, world, petroleum, multinational, international, corruption, deby on 2008-06-07 -All Annotations (0) -About

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A $4.2 billion oil pipeline has generated $399 million for Chad since mid-2004, but the spending of the money has been seriously marred by mismanagement, graft and, most recently, the government's decision that a hefty share can be used to fight a rebellion.
In recent weeks, Chad seriously weakened a law that dedicated most of its oil revenue to reducing poverty and reneged on its deal with the World Bank. In response, the bank suspended all its loans to the country.
I think to stand back and say the whole thing is a dirty business and we in the World Bank don't want to have anything to do with it is very shortsighted."
"We have lived without oil in the past, and we are prepared to do it again to preserve our dignity. And there are other partners we can pursue."
Chad has demanded that the consortium led by Exxon Mobil that built the pipeline begin depositing the oil royalties directly in the country's central bank rather than an account designated in its agreement with the World Bank. Chadian officials said they were prepared to "close the faucets" of the oil pipeline if no settlement was reached.
Exxon, responding to written questions, said only that it hoped that the bank and Chad could address Chad's financial distress while preserving the poverty-reduction framework.
"This project could not survive contact with the reality of Chad," said Gilbert Maoundonodji, who runs a Chadian nonprofit group that investigates petroleum spending in the country. "It is the most corrupt country in the world."
The oversight group officially charged with monitoring the oil spending laid out a damning catalog of malfeasance and bungling last May, from overspending on office equipment to bungling or abandoning entire public works projects.
But Ms. Mekombe of the oversight committee said that even when the monitors documented problems, their recommendations were often ignored, while officials and companies cited as corrupt were never investigated by the government. "All the work we have done, all the sacrifices we have made, sometimes I think it is all for nothing," she said.
Critics say the bank moved too hastily to move the project to completion before this unstable, corrupt and autocratically-governed country was ready for it. Though aware of the risks, bank managers said they felt that other investors with no stake in poverty reduction would eventually build the pipeline anyway.

“I Was Shot by Soldiers Bought and Paid for by Chevron” @ Royal Dutch Shell plc .com

Chevron must admit it has used and paid Nigerian police and military to act as company thugs to harm and scare the local population. Chevron must give up violence as a way of doing business.

Tags: chevron, lawsuit, niger, delta, nigeria, petroleum, industry, multinational, corporation, violence on 2008-06-07 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Latest corporate research | Crocodyl

Crocodyl is a collaboration sponsored by CorpWatch, the Center for Corporate Policy and the Corporate Research Project. Our aim is to stimulate collaborative research among NGOs, journalists, activists, whistleblowers and academics from both the global South and North in order to develop publicly-available profiles of the world's most powerful corporations. The result is an evolving compendium of critical research, posted to the public domain as an aid to anyone working to hold corporations increasingly accountable.

Tags: corpwatch, activism, multinational, corporations, crocodyl on 2008-06-06 and saved by2 people -All Annotations (0) -About

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chad - cameroon pipeline — Friends of the Earth International

Tags: chad, cameroon, petroleum, international, development, industry, foei, multinational, corporations, world, bank on 2008-05-09 -All Annotations (0) -About

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Multinationals make billions in profit out of growing global food crisis - Green Living, Environment - The Independent

Cargill says that its results "reflect the cumulative effect of having invested more than $18bn in fixed and working capital over the past seven years to expand our physical facilities, service capabilities, and knowledge around the world".

The revelations are bound to increase outrage over multinational companies following last week's disclosure that Shell and BP between them recorded profits of £14bn in the first three months of the year – or £3m an hour – on the back of rising oil prices. Shell promptly attracted even greater condemnation by announcing that it was pulling out of plans to build the world's biggest wind farm off the Kent coast.

World leaders are to meet next month at a special summit on the food crisis, and it will be high on the agenda of the G8 summit of the world's richest countries in Hokkaido, Japan, in July.

Tags: multinational, agribusiness, agriculture, corporations, archerdanielsmidland, cargill, monsanto, food, security, crisis on 2008-05-04 and saved by3 people -All Annotations (0) -About

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Monsanto's Harvest of Fear: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com

Tags: monsanto, food, security, multinational, corporations, repression, gmos, roundupready on 2008-05-03 and saved by5 people -All Annotations (0) -About

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FINANCE: Oil Majors Rapped Over Secrecy, Corruption

Tags: corporations, multinational, petroleum, transparency, exxonmobil, petronas, development, industry on 2008-05-03 -All Annotations (0) -About

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World Bank Pulls out of Chad Pipeline at Oil Change

afrol News - World Bank stops financing Chad oil pipeline

The Chad-Cameroon Petroleum Development and Pipeline Project

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