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The World Bank will decide next week whether to give a green light to
exploitation of one of the world’s largest untapped oil reserves. It is
considering joining oil companies to build a 1000-kilometre pipeline through the
jungles of central Africa to the oil fields of southern Chad. The pipeline could
double the size of Chad’s economy within a decade and eventually carry some 15
billion barrels of crude oil from an area the size of Germany. The Bank admits
construction work and oil spills will damage the rainforest’s ecology and the
livelihoods of forest tribes. But it says it will fund an environmental
mitigation plan and pay compensation.