Chad-CameroonPetroleumDevProject

James

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.

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.

US Treasury quietly released a guidance note for multilateral development banks (MDBs) on developing countries and coal-fired power generation. The guidance emphasises that MDBs should build demand for no- or low-carbon energy sources. It also provides step-by-step procedures it wants MDBs to follow in order to ensure full consideration of no- or low-carbon options before approving fossil fuel power generation or retrofit projects. However nine executive directors (EDs), representing a number of middle- and low-income countries, have sent an angry letter to World Bank president Robert Zoellick, protesting against the US trying to use its influence as the Bank's biggest shareholder to direct Bank operations.

Stephen Kretzmann of NGO Oil Change International says, "this letter is a defence of multilateralism and UN authority, and an attack on US unilateralism. It appears to be a reaction to the process at Copenhagen and the US insistence on the centrality of the Bank."

Raman Mehta from ActionAid India, adds that “the developing countries are not asking for the right to pollute. They are defending their right to access energy. If the US wishes to accelerate the deployment of clean energy in developing countries, let it also pay its fair share of the incremental costs of moving away from coal.”