Better late than never: Cameroon renegotiates pipeline transit fees
After ten years of operations, Cameroon has finally managed to renegotiate the paltry transit fees it collects on the Chad-Cameroon pipeline.
Cameroon will now receive 618.02 CFA francs ($1.30) per barrel of oil, up from 194.91 CFA francs. Since 2003 Cameroon was collecting less than U.S. 45 cents per barrel, a rate that was not linked to inflation or to the price of oil. Nor was the rate subject to regular review. Even the current rate, $1.30 per barrel, is low, but it will at least be raised every five years based on the rate of inflation.
The quantity of oil coming down the pipeline will soon increase as Niger has signed an agreement to use the pipeline. China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), the operator in Niger, will also use the pipeline for its Chadian operations. Exxon Mobil has not disclosed how much CNPC will pay to use the pipeline.
Read more:
Pipeline Tchad-Cameroun: Le droit de passage passe de 194 FCFA à 618 FCFA par baril
Niger awards second oil permit to CNPC, plans exports
Chad: Oil money, hungry people
Doba field, Chad. Photo: Esso Chad
Today Chad is facing a food crisis. An alarming number of people are hungry and sick in the northern part of the country.
The Guardian ran a story recently on the dire situation, Chad’s malnourished children offer stark illustration of Sahel food crisis.
Strangely, the article doesn’t mention the fact that Chad is an oil producing nation with sizeable oil revenues.
Chad earned more than US$2 billion in 2011 from the ExxonMobil Doba fields project. As I’ve reported, by 2008 Chad had already earned more than US$8 billion from the Chad-Cameroon oil development project. China is also drilling and refining oil in Chad. I don’t have figures for Chad’s earnings from Chinese drilling, and the Chinese-built and 60% owned refinery has been mired in conflict since it opened in June 2011. But the point remains: Chad has oil revenues, but apparently there’s not enough money to deal with the food crisis.
