World Bank approves pipeline funding

The board of the World Bank Group has agreed to support the Chad-Cameroon pipeline project despite opposition to it within both Chad and Cameroon.

The World Bank, in a news release on Tuesday, called the project "an unprecedented framework to transform oil wealth into direct benefits for the poor, the vulnerable and the environment." It will develop the oil fields at Doba in southern Chad and construct a 1,070-km pipleine to off-shore loading facilities on Cameroon's Atlantic coast, the news release said.

However, Chadian opposition parties and insurgents linked in a coalition called la Coordination des mouvements armes et partis politiques de l'opposition, strongly condemned the World Bank's decision to fund the project in the face of government corruption, embezzlement of public funds and drug trafficking, AFP reported on Wednesday.

Almost all the funding for the project, expected to cost some US $3.7 billion, will be private. The World Bank Group's contribution will amount to some US $93 million (US $53.4 million for Cameroon and US $39.5 million for Chad) to finance their governments' equity share in the project. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) will also lend US $100 million to joint venture companies linked to the project, the news release said.