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Chad-Cameroon Pipeline

Social closure in the Chad-Cameroon pipeline project: right to damage repairs or right to profit?

By Honore Ndoumbe Nkotto, coordinator of FOCARFE
Cameroonian NGO of environment protection and sustainable development
Po Box 3494 Yaounde/Messa; e-mail: focarfe@yahoo.com

May 19, 2005

The Chad-Cameroon oil and pipeline project, worked out and implemented since year 2000 by the consortium Exxon-Chevron-Petronas, with the World Bank support, consists of the exploitation of 300 wells in 3 oil fields in Chad, and transport of oil through an underground pipeline of 1071 kms length with 891 crossing Cameroon. In that country, the pipeline crosses directly 242 villages, distributed within 5 provinces and 12 divisions.

One year after the beginning of oil exploitation, numerous claims from the populations continue to arise. The social closure is a process initiated by the consortium, for the treatment of pending claims in the villages, due to pipeline construction operations in the crossed villages or affected areas. This with the aim for the consortium to put itself out of accusations of having ignored the population claims, legitimate or not.

Individual, community and regional compensations

In almost all the villages, claims are raised for individual, regional or community compensations, in an extremely wide variety: grinding machines given but not working, drill holes promised but not done, soccer fields not build or not completed, wells with poor quality of water or not completed, drugs given in insufficient number as compare to the compensation amount announced, blocks pressing machines of poor quality, classrooms constructions not completed, or poorly constructed, or with no benches as agreed, poorly constructed community houses, etc.

Involuntary displacement and resettlement of populations

In 2003, 243 households were already displaced in Chad contrary to the 60 or a bit more estimated by the consortium, their number being likely to increase with fields operations in Kome and Bolobo. In Cameroon, the consortium announced there will be no displacement. The truth is that several houses were reconstructed elsewhere because the formal ones were destroyed due to the pipeline construction, and also that several households plots are actually crossed by the pipeline or have it very closed to them “due to the effort done to avoid displacement”.

Displaced households of Chad complain about the precarious and bad state of reconstructed houses given to them in the context of resettlement, because of the poor quality of materials used for construction. The increased cost of life is also mentioned by a good number of them, as well as other problems such as difficulties in accessing to their farms, restrictions in available cultivation land. Several households experienced the tragedy of multiple displacements (3 to 4), consequently loosing their means of production which are mainly their land, situation which led to land renting practises, or rural proletariat whereby landless farmers can only propose their services to the land awning farmers.

Employment and business opportunities

Populations disillusion was as high as the hopes raised in them prior to the project implementation. A good number of pertinent claims can and must be solved: these are acquired and recognised rights, such as productivity bonus, year end bonus, risk bonus, equipment allowance, construction allowance, evening meal compensation, house allowance. An evaluation exercise undertaken in Chad on 468 ex-employees produced amount of 3 billions CFA (4.5 millions euros) of dues not paid to the people.

Another important aspect in employment issue is that of deficient treatment of employees who had accidents during work or professional diseases. The result is that number of them remained with a physical handicap because they are unable, after the only partial assistance received from their employer to continue their treatments: removal of splints, body training, etc. Moreover, number of employees witnessed salary cuts for affiliation in social insurance. But they were declared unknown there, situation which was detrimental to the workers victims of accidents and who tried to rely on the Social Insurance for their health care.

Several cases were mentioned of unilateral and ahead of date breaking of contracts with business women, restaurants owners, by the consortium sub-contractors (Willbros), situation particularly worrying for those women who were asked to provide relatively high quality of equipment and services as a prerequisite to any contract possibility. They were led to contract debts to be able to fulfil the conditions, and due to the premature contract ending, they couldn’t repay their debts, not to talk of vanished profits.

Water resources protection

The pipeline was laid close to numerous wells used by people, and dug by themselves or through other projects before the pipeline event. Those wells detrimentally received refuse from construction works unsafely disposed by the row, or were poorly protected from pollution, for example by using sand bags as physical obstacles to the intrusion of undesired materials. The result was unfailingly a degradation in the quality of the water, and withdrawal of people from drinking it. The Consortium when questioned often try to hide behind a so called difficulty in demonstrating that the degradation was a result of the sole pipeline construction activity.

Several streams or rivers were the theatre of various civil works announced as temporary during the pipeline construction: barriers, embankments, various sizes rocks introduced in waters, slopes created, levelling, etc. In certain cases, after the burying of the pipes under the water, those undesired works were left as such, causing permanent troubles which were said to be temporary: flooding of plots, cocoa farms and others, change in water speed which in certain places led to drowning for local people, increased difficulties in canoes movements due to the physical barriers created by the rocks or stones present in waters, fishermen injured while trying to push their canoes on the sliding rocks, etc.

Sacred and archaeological sites

In a number of villages, destruction of sacred sites were long time mentioned, as well as sacred forests destruction, sacred trees partially or entirely cut, sacred animals disturbed in their dwelling places and which in some cases left, sacred ponds full of fish destroyed. The Constructor is unwilling to consider theses important elements of the local culture, and remain inflexible for the population demands for restoring rites, meanwhile he is the main actor in disrupting cultural stands of the people concerned.. For the few cases accepted , amounts allocated to the local people were generally insignificant (generally lower than 80 euros) and unilaterally decided by the consortium, without any kind of consent process.

The issue of fishermen operating in the pipeline terminal coastal area

An intensive small scale fishing activity is carried out in the floating terminal area by numerous fishermen. Their nets are regularly teared by the pipeline construction items implanted in sea water (beacons, buoys, etc), and the nets re-imbursement process is not adequate, being tedious and time consuming for those fishermen who generally possess one single net, and strongly depend on it for quasi-daily fishing, or anyway, fishing as frequently as needed.

Also, the Constructor brought in the condition of evident proofs that the nets got damaged on the pipeline construction items, but doesn’t accept to study the question with the people concerned, simply rejecting in an unilateral and arbitrary way, the various re-imbursement demands received on the pretext of lack sufficient evidence.

The rights of Chadian and Cameroonian farmers trampled underfoot:

Conclusions and general recommendations

Several rights were jeered at: right to human dignity, to a healthy environment, to public participation, to feeding, to informed consent, lack of respect for national sovereignty, etc.

Ahead of the pipeline project, local populations had established food crops farms, or cash crops plantations often with the technical and financial support of parastatal development structures, which brought improved seedlings, fertilizers, pesticides, various kinds of agricultural assistance, etc. Those populations used to practise fishing in the ponds or rivers now traversed by the pipeline, and they were equally drinking the water coming from there.

Several streams or rivers who use to facilitate people movements and goods transactions have now become traps where the local peoples get drawn, loose their fishing nets, get injured when trying to push their canoes obstructed by the consortium construction items, etc.

One can note some sort of total loose of influence of the World Bank vis-à-vis the Consortium, when considering the recommendations – however timid- issued by the Bank field teams, and which have almost no impact on the Consortium’s behaviour.

No reactions from the South governments concerned were felt, leading to a strong impression of a Constructor operating in a total impunity context, but rather in a complicity one, in a logic of right given for violations, and acceptance (by the States) of all the consortium decisions despite the glaring violations of its contractual obligations. The social closure implementation process in the field is being prostituted exactly in the same logic as previous operations conducted by the consortium or its sub- contractors.

With regard to the present implementation process in the field and the stakes , the following recommendations must be made and implemented for a social closure worth that name:

- That the final decisions of the Consortium be duly motivated and justified to the plaintiffs, on the basis of the environmental management plan recommendations;
- That decisions taken on issues non explicitly developed in the EMP, and contested by the affected populations, be negotiated and consensus achieved;
- That the terms of all sorts of contracts of the Consortium with various individuals or communities be scrupulously respected, and the violations regularised;
- That encounters be organised to confront the field data collected, and also organise join field visits to end the divergences in appreciation or reports;
- That a forum of the various actors concerned or interested by the social closure be organised in each of the two states, to review the social closure operation.