(Business in Cameroon) - Cameroon Oil Transportation Company (Cotco), which has been handling the Cameroonian side of the Chad-Cameroon pipeline, has successfully completed the adaptation of the pipeline for the Lom Pangar dam construction project. This was just announced by the company and the Cameroonian government. The work was completed by the Italy-based company, SICIM, after the signing of a contract on April 3, 2012 with Cotco.

Managing Director of Cotco, Christian Lenoble explained that the work involved the strengthening of two 13 km sections of the pipeline, both of which were buried on the Lom Pangar site. The adjustments should enable this portion of the pipeline “to support the over 20 metre columns of water that will be there once the dam is complete.”

The financing for the modification work was a major point of contention for three years (2008-2011) between the Cameroonian government and Cotco as the pipeline operator refused to help finance the project that was estimated to cost 49.4 billion FCFA.

“You have until noon tomorrow to work out an agreement. The hotel where we are staying has enough rooms to accommodate us until an agreement has been reached,” stated Essimi Meny, then Minister of Finance during a final round of negotiations on July 5, 2011 in Yaoundé. Bristling, the latter went on to add: “At the time the pipeline was being built, you knew that a dam would be built on this site, but did nothing to avoid this area. Now that the pipeline has to be moved, the cost has to be shared. The State cannot do it alone.”

On November 1, 2013, after negotiations, Alamine Ousmane Mey, who became Minister of Finance and Cotco went on to sign the “transactional agreement on the sharing of final cost of the Chad-Cameroon adaptation project at the Lom Pangar dam.”

The agreement stipulates that the oil company’s portion of the project pre-financed by the government must be paid “no later than two (2) months as of the administrative and financial completion of the construction and, in any event, no later than six (6) months as of the signing of the works reception records, which would be November 30, 2014.”

Brice R. Mbodiam