World Bank Defends African Pipeline Project
9/30/99
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Title: World Bank Defends Pipeline Project
Source: Associated Press
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: September 30, 1999
Byline: HARRY DUNPHY, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- World Bank President James Wolfensohn is defending
as environmentally sound a proposed Exxon-led $3.5 billion pipeline
project in Africa that the bank may help fund.
He also said Thursday an anticipated $1.5 million or more in revenue
from the project would benefit the people of Chad, one of the poorest
countries in the world.
Activists led by the Environmental Defense Fund have urged the bank
to reject providing $200 million in financing for the 550-mile
pipeline which would run from Chad, a landlocked country in northwest
Africa to Cameroon's Atlantic coast.
The groups say the pipeline will destroy rain forests in Cameroon and
harm the livelihoods of people living along its route. They also say
the governments in both Chad and Cameroon are corrupt and claim that
any revenue from the project would never reach the people.
Wolfensohn said there was ``a lot of hysteria about the Chad-Cameroon
pipeline. It if had catastrophic effects on the environment we
wouldn't do it.''
He also said working with the Chadian government the bank would try
to ensure that pipeline revenues go ``to a transparently administered
fund for health, education and poverty alleviation.''
Wolfensohn said this fund could be run by the Chad government,
members of its supreme court, opposition parties and members of civil
society.
He said African representatives at the bank urged him to keep looking
at the project and not be deterred by demonstrations, particularly by
people who are not from Chad or Cameroon.
Last week a protester from the San Francisco-based Rainforest Action
network scaled the bank's headquarters in Washington and hung a large
banner with Wolfensohn's picture that read: ``Tax dollars and
corruption buy murder and destruction. Stop the oil pipeline.''
Despite the campaign against the pipeline, Wolfensohn said, he would
try to keep it looked at as a serious venture. After a bank mission
goes to the area for a last inspection trip, the board of directors
is expected to meet to decide whether to approve the project.
Exxon, the Anglo-Dutch company Shell and France's Elf Aquitaine plan
to build the pipeline to deliver 225,000 barrels of oil a day from
300 wells in southern Chad. They have said they will pull out of the
project if the bank decides not to participate in financing.