(Business in Cameroon) - On November 13, 2014, the Managing Director of Cameroon Oil Transportation Company (Cotco), Christian Lenoble (photo), handed over a cheque for 28 billion FCFA to the Cameroonian Finance Minister, Alamine Oumane Mey. This sum represents the Chad-Cameroon pipelinecompany’s share of the adaptation work carried out on the pipeline at the Lom Pangar dam in the East region of the country. Construction work was pre-financed to the tune of 49.4 billion FCFA by the Cameroonian government.

According to the “transactional agreement for the sharing of the final cost associated with the Chad-Cameroon pipeline’s adaptation to the Lom Pangar dam,” signed on 1^st November 2013 between the government of Cameroon and Cotco, the oil company is to reimburse its share “no later than (2) two months as of the administrative and financial completion of the construction and, in any event, at the latest six (6) months following the signing of the confirmation of work completion or 30^th November 2014.”

The construction project involved the strengthening of two 13 km sections of the pipeline and buried on the Lom Pangar dam construction site. Cotco’s Managing Director explained that the work will enable the pipeline to “withstand the over 20-metre columns that will be there once the dam has been completed.” The construction was completed in 18 months by the SICIM company which employed 400 persons on the site, 90% of whom were Cameroonian.