According to an EIB press release in 2001, the 4.2 billion dollar Chad-Cameroon pipeline project was all about securing “a real breakthrough for Chad, one of the least developed countries in the world.”

Judge for yourself the merits of that prediction with today’s news that the World Bank has pulled out of the project citing the Chadian government’s failure to honour an agreement to use some oil revenues for poverty reduction.

The EIB has provided the project with 144 million euro financing, and its intentions remain unclear. Having “aligned” itself with the World Bank when Paul Wolfowitz oversaw the bank’s pioneering initiative in Chad disastrously and predictably unravel in early 2006, the EIB suspended co-operation on any new public sector projects in Chad. But expect the EIB to keep its head down here: it will be busy considering whether the project’s “social and environmental concerns have been met” (in the language of a European Parliament resolution from 2000 – strange language at that, you almost know what they mean). As Korinna Horta of Environmental Defense Fund writes of the project, however, in Counter Balance’s Citizens’ Guide to the European Investment Bank:

“It has fuelled violence, impoverished people in the oil fields, and along the pipeline route it has exacerbated pressures on indigenous peoples and created new environmental problems. At the same time, with about 118 million barrels of oil produced by September 30, 2005, ExxonMobil, the leader of the oil consortium and the world’s largest oil company, has registered record profits.”

Well over half of the EIB’s lending for the project went to the oil consortium.

More EIB involvement in dirty energy projects in Africa looks likely following the announcement this week of a one billion dollar EU aid package to expand Africa’s energy sector. Oil and gas pipelines between African countries feature heavily (along with “transparency”) in this Africa-EU partnership, as does the Europe-bound nine billion euro Trans-Sahara Gas Pipeline. Exactly what the bank “promoting EU climate change and energy objectives” is being lined up for in all of this will be something to watch.