Chad fighting hits oil prospecting, not output on Home Services

Feb

Chad fighting hits oil prospecting, not output

posted by admin in Window Cleaning

%26quot;Production has continued as normal,%26quot; Oil Minister Emmanuel Nadingar said on Monday amid burned papers and broken furniture at his ministry building, which was looted following the February 2-3 assault on NDjamena by eastern rebels.
Prospecting by Chinas state oil company CNPC in the Bongor Basin southeast of NDjamena had been disrupted since expatriate workers fled during the heavy fighting in the city, he said.
%26quot;Most of their personnel are based here in NDjamena. . .they were evacuated,%26quot; Nadingar said.
Dozens of Chinese expatriate oil workers have been living at a game lodge in Waza National Park across the border in neighbouring Cameroon since the violence.
Taiwans OPIC has continued prospecting in southern Chad, which was unaffected by the week-long rebel advance across the former French colony, Nadingar said.
OPIC had secured a research contract before President Idriss Deby broke off ties with Taipei in favour of Beijing.
It is prospecting in the Doba basin, near Chads only existing production facilities which are operated by a consortium led by US oil major Exxon Mobil Corp.
The US-led consortium exports crude from landlocked Chad via a pipeline to Cameroons Atlantic coast.
Nadingar said plans to start work on a new 60,000 bpd refinery within the next month or two were likely to be delayed because of the recent fighting.
%26quot;There are contracts to finalise. That will slip a bit,%26quot; he said.
The refinery, which had been expected to take three years to build and to start operating around 2011 with an initial capacity of 20,000 bpd, is a joint venture between Chads state oil company SHT and Chinas CNPC.
As Nadingar spoke, the noise of cleaning could be heard in the ministry, along with the thump of sacks of rescued documents dropped from upstairs windows on to rough ground outside.
Like many public buildings, the four-storey oil ministry, which passes for a high-rise in dusty NDjamena, was pillaged and partially burnt after the fighting.
Tabe Eugene NGaoulam, secretary-general of the ministry, said prospecting records dating back to the 1950s had been lost.
Nadingar said some records were backed up at other government buildings and the oil companies that had carried out the geological research should be able to provide copies of the rest.
%26quot;That will take time, but we will get there,%26quot; he said.