Petroleum industry in Chad
Chad maintains sizable reserves of crude oil which, alongside agriculture, makes up the largest share of the landlocked former French colony's export revenue.
[3] This further intensified an already ongoing civil war between the government led by Goukouni Oueddei who became head of state of Chad in 1979, and Hissène Habré, the French and U.S.-backed former defense minister.
[7] In 2016, a Chadian court levied a $74 billion fine on Exxon, an amount seven times the size of Chad's economy, for allegedly failing to pay royalties.
[9] In 2023, the Chadian government nationalized all the assets and rights including hydrocarbon permits and exploration and production authorisations that belonged to a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil.
[12] Construction of a pipeline from Chad to Cameroon began in October 2000 with a ceremony in the village of Komé which included representatives from the Chadian and Cameroonian governments, the three oil companies in the consortium, and the World Bank.
Numerous international observers and non-governmental organizations (NGO) opposed the loan, pointing to Chad's human rights record and rampant corruption.
[14] The 660-mile (1,090 km) long pipeline was completed in 2003 and connected three oil fields in southern Chad with a floating production storage and offloading vessel located in the Atlantic, off the coast of Cameroon, near the town of Kribi.
[16][17] However, in Cameroon, where the majority of the pipeline is located, NGOs have cited several oil spills as being harmful to local communities and have lambasted government officials for not doing more to prevent them.
[18] In 2008, the World Bank ended its involvement in the pipeline after Chad finished repaying its loan, specifying the government's failure to redirect revenue from the project to the earlier agreed upon goals of reducing poverty and developing infrastructure.
[20] Oil production in Chad has led a significant windfall of money for the country's government, much of which has disappeared due to corruption or been used to purchase military weapons and fund conflict.
In 2006, after the World Bank froze Chad's oil revenue account over the country's failure to use the money for development, Déby told a French newspaper, "We are going to buy weapons.
[22] A great deal of Chadian petroleum revenue has also been siphoned off through corruption, notably to members of Déby's Zaghawa clan, and his supporters through bloated infrastructure projects and other development plans.
[26] Located in the lowlands in eastern Chad and parts of the Central African Republic, the Salamat Basin is a less significant oil-producing area that is classified as a transtensional formation.
