Oil production in Chad: a failed 'model project'
Chad has been producing oil for ten years. The project had been heralded as an international model project to combat poverty. But ordinary people see nothing of the petrodollars and many have lost their livelihoods.
High hopes
In the 1970s a consortium was founded, headed by Esso, to extract the oil reserves in the Doba Basin area in southern Chad. The region is the third poorest in the country. Also, a pipeline was to be built running westwards to Cameroon and the Atlantic so the oil could be exported. Local residents were only sporadically involved in the planning process.
Presidential pressure
In the early 1990s, the plans started to take shape. President Idriss Deby stepped up the pressure for oil exploration. Opponents of the project were ridiculed. In 1998 Deby made a concession to critics, saying that part of the revenue would be invested in a fund for future generations. The local population would also benefit directly from the petrodollars.
The model project begins
Chad's oil exploitation legislation convinces the World Bank. Despite reservations by environmentalists and human rights groups, the Bank declares the oil exploitation to be a model project to combat poverty, and approves funds. Three years later the first oil is flowing. Today there are 804 boreholes, more than twice as many as originally planned. Some pipelines run through villages.
HIV infection rate soars
Together with the Chadian authorities, the oil consortium headed by Esso launched an HIV/AIDS awareness program. Many Chadians came to the region in search of jobs - bringing the deadly virus with them. The previously isolated region now has the country's highest HIV infection rate. There are no programs for the care of the sick.
Hopes of better health care
At first the population believed the government's promises about fighting poverty. They had great hopes that oil production would boost the region's development. Health care was poor, the few hospitals lacked equipment. All that would change, people believed.
Reality sets in
Ten years later life for the inhabitants of the Doba Basin has not improved. Chad may boast new oil revenues of some 8 billion dollars (6 billion euros) but it occupies position 184 on the UN Development Index of 186 states. The World Bank has ended its financial support because Chad has not kept its promises. This hospital has to attend to the needs of 33 villages. It has no clean water.
Water shortage, poor compensation
Where cattle once grazed, drought now reigns. The villages are surrounded by pipelines and production plants. Local people can no longer use the soil and the land lies fallow. The fields are worn out, wood for burning and fruit are in short supply. Many families had to stop keeping their herds of cattle. They complain that the compensation they received was insufficient.
Broken promises
August Djinodji (center) is the village elder in Maikeri. Aged 99, he can well remember the promises that were made in the 1970s. Today he is disillusioned. "We are like dead people whose arms and legs have been bound together and our corpses laid in coffins. I am old enough to go to my grave, but the children are not. Help them get away from here!"
Prisoners in their own village
Among the few people who own a car are those who work for private security firms. Because the government urgently needs the petrodollars, it makes sure the extraction plants are well guarded. Local people no longer go out in the evening. There is no electric light. Although more electricity is produced at the plants than in the rest of the country, the villagers have no access to it.
Better than nothing?
Some villages have been given pieces of land like this as compensation for the land they lost - or a container to serve as a school. With temperatures of more than 40 C (104 F) in the shade, the corrugated iron heats up unbearably. But the children go there anyway. In the words of their teacher "If you don't have a horse, then a donkey will do."
Oil wealth out of reach
Although there is black gold worth millions of euros beneath the ground, the inhabitants of the Doba Basin have to make do with petrol in bottles. Life expectancy in Chad is about 50 years, 80 percent of the population live below the poverty line. The wealth in their land does not belong to them.