World Bank backs African pipeline

A controversial project to link oil fields in land-locked Chad with port facilities on the Cameroon coast is to receive major funding from the World Bank.

Environmental groups have objected to the scheme, which they say threatens wildlife in the rainforests of Cameroon.

And economists say the only beneficiaries of the funding will be international firms and politicians.

But the World Bank has agreed to put more than two-hundred-million dollars into the project which, at an estimated cost of three-point-seven-billion dollars, is one of the largest of its kind ever undertaken in sub-Saharan Africa. Most of the money will come from a consortium led by the United States oil company, Exxon Mobil.

World Bank officials say the project could provide as much as two-billion dollars for Chad and five-hundred-million dollars for Cameroon over a twenty-five-year period.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service