Government gets first payment for oil exports

The government of Chad has received its first US $6.5 million payment for oil exports since crude began flowing down a 1,070 km long pipeline to the coast of Cameroon in July, the World Bank said. The money was deposited in a special escrow account at Citibank in London where the government can only access it pay for socially useful projects, mainly in the areas of health, education and rural development, it said in a statement on Wednesday. All withdrawals from the escrow account must be sanctioned by a special oversight committee, consisting of representatives of the government, the supreme court, parliamentand civil society. This watchdog mechanism was put in place by Chad's parliament in 1999 at the behest of the World Bank to prevent the poor country's oil revenues from being squandered on military spending or being siphoned off into private pockets. According to Transparency International, Chad is one of the most corrupt countries in Africa. It is also one of the poorest, ranking 165th out of 175 countries listed in the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Index. The Bank of Central African States estimates that Chad has a gross domestic product per capita of about $270. The oil revenue management law specifies that 10 percent of net government revenues from the new Doba oilfield in southern Chad must be paid into a Future Generations Fund. Most of the remainder is earmarked for health, education, social and infrastructural projects and rural development. Only 13 percent of the money is allocated to the Treasury's current account for other projects of the government's own choosing. The World Bank said the US 3.7 billion oil development project in Chad, which is led by the US oil major ExxonMobil, should generate US $2 billion in revenue for the country over the next 25 years. The Doba oilfield is expected to reach full production of 225,000 barrels per day by the end of March 2004, but ExxonMobil and its partners ChevronTexaco and Petronas of Malaysia are continuing to search for more commercially exploitable oil deposits elswhere in the country.