Oil boom raises expectations, but fails to meet them

Poverty-stricken southern Chad is straining under the pressure of thousands of economic migrants who have flooded into the region looking for jobs in the country's new oil industry. The oil began flowing from landlocked Chad down a 1,100 km long pipeline to an export terminal on the coast of Cameroon in July, but the Doba oilfield was officially inaugurated by President Idriss Deby on 10 October. As he pulled a lever to let crude oil flow onto the international market, Deby told Chad's eight million people that "you can't eat oil," implicitly warning them that the bonanza would not solve Chad's many problems overnight. The country has a long record of civil wars, ethnic conflict and deeply entrenched corruption. With per capita income of just $267, it ranks as one of the poorest in the world But Deby's message came too late for thousands who have abandoned cattle herding and cotton farming to pursue the dream of oil jobs which just do not exist. Nowhere is this tension more obvious than in Komé Atan, a settlement which sprang up outside the razor-wired gates of Esso's oil processing plant. This is where the new pipeline begins its long journey through dense jungle to a floating export terminal in the Gulf of Guinea. The name Kome Atan stems from the French "attend" meaning "wait" but local residents have their own name for this bleak village - "Komé Satan," because it is crawling with prostitutes and criminals who have been drawn by the lure of easy dollars. As dusk falls just after 17.00 GMT, floodlights inside the Esso base assist the oil lamps outside the brand new brick buildings of Komé Atan which have replaced the temporary wood and thatch structures alongside the red dirt road. Music roars from inside a large bar which is painted in the yellow logo of Castel beer, imported from neighbouring Cameroon. Even at this early hour there is a large crowd of young men and women, many already drunk. Health workers say the combination of bars, prostitutes and truckers bringing supplies to the base has made Kome Atan a breeding ground for HIV/AIDS. Ellen Brown, a social anthropologist working for Esso says the US company has restricted workers' access to the temptations of the boom town by introducing a curfew and using American style school buses to take staff directly to their living quarters at the end of shifts. "You can't change human nature," she says. "So we have funded programmes such as free condoms and AIDS tests". Esso, the operating arm of US oil giant ExxonMobil, and the World Bank also backed a theatrical education project in which a deathly character called "Mr Aids" is put on trial for spreading the disease. He is found not guilty after his victims admit to not protecting themselves by using condoms. For the communities native to Chad's southern region the invasion of foreign men to drill oil wells and build pipelines has brought extra competition for jobs and disruption to the social fabric. In the small town of Belabo, 20 km from Komé, people complain that the price of food in the market has risen because of increased demand from people earning good wages in the oil industry. And in nearby Bebidjia the huge increase in traffic on the dirt road throws up clouds of dust which coat people, houses and crops with a layer of red dirt. Esso has tried watering the roads and even dumping down molasses to control dust because it is too expensive to tarmac the roads linking its different oil sites. However, the issue causing most anxiety is the lack of jobs. Local NGOs organised a day of mourning in the capital Ndjamena to coincide with Deby's official inauguration of the oil pipeline to highlight the anger of local people who have seen many non-skilled and semi-skilled positions go to foreigners. Esso admits to currently using Filipino staff on a temporary basis due to the lack of trained Chadians. A smaller protest was also held by a group called Les Chomeurs de la Zone de Doba (The Unemployed of Doba Region) who claimed that nepotism was rife in the allocation of jobs. Brown, the oil company anthropologist, dismissed this allegation, saying that a "job lottery" was deliberately used in to order to recruit villagers without bias. "When we needed unskilled workers we would go to a village and put the names of those who wanted work in a hat. Then a child or someone who couldn't read would pull out names. We employed those people and went to a different village the next time," she told IRIN. Esso said that at the peak of construction work one year ago it employed 7,600 Chadians. During the four years it has taken to build the necessary infrastructure for the US $3.7 billion oilfield and pipeline, local employees earned a total of almost $75 million in wages, it added. Refuting claims that most of the jobs offered to local people were short-term and unskilled, Esso said two-thirds of the Chadians it employed were in skilled, semi-skilled and supervisory positions. However, as construction work tails off, the oil company will only provide permanent jobs for about 500 of them. Several oil service companies such as Pride and Schlumberger have taken on and trained a small number of Chadians in engineering, computing and other highly skilled roles. One of them is Ousman Maloum, a civil engineer who studied in Nigeria where he learned to speak English. He is now working as a radio operator and translator following several months of training in Europe. "The oil industry is a very good game," he says. "In times to come I will have a professional future". But a Antoine Berilengar, a priest working for the development NGO CEFOD (Centre d'Etudes et de Formation pour Developement), said cases like that of Maloum, who has managed to cross the divide between third and first worlds, were the exception rather than the rule. "There is tension between these two worlds," he said. "Esso's world is like Houston, while people nearby are living in pitiful conditions. They see outsiders come in and they say, why? We are here, why don't we benefit from this project?" The resentment felt by local people who have failed to share fully in the benefits of oil development has sparked a separatist rebellion in Angola's oil-rich enclave of Cabinda and increasing violence by ethnic militias in Nigeria's Niger delta region The World Bank says measures have been taken to ensure that the revenue from Chad's oil does benefit the local people. However, it will take years rather than months for this to make a major difference to their lives. As President Deby declared the new oilfield open, he pledged to support the new Revenue Management Law and Oversight Committee which was put in place at the World Bank's insistence to ring-fence the money earned from oil revenues for specific development projects. A nine-member committee including, crucially, representatives from the civil society will oversee the spending of the $80 million or more which Chad will earn each year once the Doba oilfield reaches its full production of 225,000 barrels per day next year. Education, health, rural development and infrastructure have been enshrined in law as the top priorities. Currently, three oilfields in the Doba region are being exploited. The largest lies directly beneath the Komé facility. The others are at Belabo, 20 km distant and at Mioundou 30 km away. But ExxonMobil and its partners, ChevronTexaco of the US and Petronas of Malaysia, are betting on finding much more oil in other parts of the country, helped by the relatively low cost of onshore drilling. "I look at this as just the start of the oil industry in Chad" said Ron Royal, the head of Esso Chad. "In this business we are always looking for more fields. In addition to the three fields we are currently exploiting, we have discovered four or five more which are being developed now. We have further exploration planned for 2004 and 2005 where we're looking for discoveries to come on line after the ones we've already made". The first 950,000 barrel consignment of Chadian oil is already on its way to the international market and Chad's revenue from the sale is expected to arrive in a London bank account in November. Esso's Royal predicted that Chad's oil industry would still be going strong in 60 or even 100 year's time, hopefully, in a social landscape where prosperity has replaced poverty.