In 2000, the International Finance Corporation and the World Bank provided over $300 million in loans for a project to develop oil fields in southern Chad and construct a 1070 km pipeline to transport oil to the coast of Cameroon for export. The $4.2 billion Chad-Cameroon Oil Development and Pipeline Project is the largest private sector investment in sub-Saharan Africa.
Pipeline construction was completed and oil began to flow in July 2003, a year ahead of schedule. Chad received its first oil revenues in November 2003, and its 2004 budget was the first to incorporate projected oil revenues. Well before its approval in 2000, the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline project faced criticism from local and international organizations who questioned the World Bank Group's support for oil exploitation because of Chad’s history of human rights abuses, corruption and poor governance, and warned against the environmental degradation and social strains that the enormous project would cause.
Largely because of international pressure to address these concerns, the World Bank financed three government capacity-building projects intended to accompany the oil development in Chad and Cameroon, and conditioned its support for the project on the passage of an oil revenue management law in Chad.
The two-speed nature of the project was widely criticized, however, as construction far outpaced capacity-building components. Since construction began, local and international groups on the ground monitoring the project's impacts documented incidences of non-compliance with both social and environmental standards. Among the problems with the project, they cited violations of indigenous peoples' rights in Cameroon, inadequate compensation to affected communities, increases in public health problems, labor violations, and the failure to monitor or mitigate impacts of oil exploration outside the Doba Basin. Studies by international NGOs and scholars and the World Bank Inspection Panel Investigation Report on the Chadian portion of the project questioned the terms of the production-sharing and loan agreements, with some finding that they are notably unfavorable to Chad.
While Chad’s 1999 revenue management law stipulated the creation of an oversight committee to control uses of oil money, in practice the committee’s effectiveness has been limited by a lack of capacity and personnel, as well as apparent opposition from the government. Chadian civil society organizations have expressed their dismay that the petroleum revenues have produced few if any tangible impacts on poverty alleviation and community development.
Two complaints were filed with the World Bank Inspection Panel regarding violations of the World Bank’s own policies and procedures, one in Chad and the other in Cameroon. A report of the Chadian investigation was released in July of 2002, and the Cameroonian investigation report was published in August 2003.
Monitoring Bodies
Largely as a result of civil society pressure during project preparation, the World Bank Group took extraordinary measures to establish two independent monitoring bodies to reinforce the social and environmental oversight of the project: the International Advisory Group and the External Compliance Monitoring Group.
International Advisory Group
Following substantial civil society pressure, the World Bank required the creation of an International Advisory Group (IAG) as a condition of its financial support, to monitor the implementation of the pipeline project. This group reports directly to World Bank President Wolfowitz. The Terms of Reference (TOR) for the IAG is available on the Bank’s website in English / en français. For more information on the group’s mandate and its activities, see the IAG website (www.gic-iag.org/).
The IAG is comprised of the following members:
- Christiane LeBlanc
Secretariat of the IAG
5 Place Ville Marie, Suite 200
Montreal, Quebec, CANADA
H3B 2G2
Tel. +1 (514) 864-5515
Fax +1 (514) 397-1651
www.gic-iag.org
- Mamadou Lamine Loum
IAG Chair; Former Prime Minister of Senegal
- Jacques Gérin
IAG Executive Secretary; International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)
- Abdou El Mazide Ndiaye
African Network for Integrated Development
- Jane Guyer
John Hopkins University, USA
- Dick de Zeeuw
Netherlands Commission for Environmental Impact
The latest reports from the IAG’s visits to Chad and Cameroon are available on the IAG website (http://www.gic-iag.org/edocs.htm). ).
Additional information can be found on the World Bank’s IAG site
Civil Society Analysis of the IAG
External Compliance Monitoring Group (ECMG)
- ECMG is responsible for providing an independent assessment of the compliance of the project Consortium with obligations under the Environmental Management Plan and the relevant Environmental Commitments in the IFC and World Bank project documents. Information on the ECMG and copies of its reports are available on the World Bank Group Chad-Cameroon Project site
Chadian oil revenue oversight committee (College de Controle et Surveillance des Ressources Petroliers)
- Information and copies of this group’s reports can be found on the CCSRP website (http://www.ccsrp.td) (website in French)