- Info
Oil spill in cameroon - who pays the price
CED/Friends of the Earth Cameroon have reported on a recent oil spill off the Kribi coast , and demand some answers from the oil consortium responsible, the Cameroonian government and the World Bank.
kribispill
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A recent oil spill at the marine terminal
of the Chad-Cameroon pipeline is being
played down
by COTCO
consortium.
The US$3.7 billion Chad-Cameroon pipeline
project is the biggest private investment in
sub-Saharan Africa today, as well as one of
the most
controversial
.
The spill, which took place on 15 January
2007 at 3am, was not
detected
until after
daybreak (at 7AM). Oil continued to leak out
until it was contained 5 her 5 hours later,
at 11 am.
Despite COTCO claims that the amount of
oil spilled was negligible, CED and Réseau
Lutte Contre la Faim (Action against Hunger)
believes that, regardless of the quantity,
the incident highlights a number of critical
weaknesses
:
1. problems with communication:
The consortium's communication practices
are
flawed
and the
government's are non-existent. Local
communities were only contacted four days
after the spill
2. Technological deficiencies:
The spill happened at 3am and wasn't
detected
until 7am.
3. The response is not reassuring with
regard to capacity to manage a
catastrophe/accident
4. Involvement of administration and
communities:
This incident exposes the weakness of the
CPSP and its lack of access to information
independent of that provided by the
Consortium. The absence of a national oil
spill
response plan
doubtless contributed to limiting the
involvement of the administration and
communities in monitoring the incident.
Demands:
To COTCO:
To bring to light the
causes
, scope and nature of
the incident, and to make it public.
To organize a
public
meeting
at Kribi to disseminate
information.
To the government of Cameroon:
Rapid adoption of a national oil spill
response plan
(CPSP should
publish a schedule reflecting timeline for
the adoption of the plan)
To the World Bank:
To proceed to a rapid and independent
evaluation
of the management
of the incident, in order to draw lessons
from the experience. This evaluation should
give way to a public debate about the
capacity of existing measures to deal with
potential catastrophic incidents.
Friends of the Earth International has
been campaigning on this issue for a
number
of years
.
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