Good afternoon,
Your Excellency President Déby,
Honorable Heads of States,
Honorable Representative of the Head of State of the Republic of Cameroon,
The President of the National Assembly in the Republic of Chad,
Ministers of Chad,
The World Bank Representatives,
Members of the Diplomatic Corps,
Distinguished Guests,
And Ladies and Gentlemen.
Thank you all for joining us here today at this celebration. Today we
celebrate an enormous feat. The Chad/Cameroon oil development ranks among the
largest industrial projects ever undertaken on African soil. His completion is
a tribute to the 35,000 workers who contributed to the project, the large
majority of whom were citizens of Chad and Cameroon. We thank each of you for
your hard work, your sacrifice and your diligence.
I would like to thank our partners, ExxonMobil and Petronas of Malaysia. We at
ChevronTexaco are proud of our reputation for developing lasting partnerships.
And we could have not chosen better allies than ExxonMobil and Petronas. They
met the challenges of developing the Chad/Cameroon project while at the same
time working to develop and protect the indigenous people and their cultural
heritage as well as protecting biodiversity. They succeeded in laying a
660-mile pipeline and bringing the project in as promised nearly a year ahead
of time.
I have always felt that a promise that does not result in performance is a
performance that lacks promise. From its beginning, the Chad/Cameroon pipeline
project has been a series of promises kept by performance. The project
promised community participation. It performed by holding more than 1800
public meetings attended by tens of thousands of people from Chad and
Cameroon. The project promised jobs and training. It performed by providing
peak performance from nearly 10,000 employees from Chad and Cameroon, as well
as training welders, electricians, mechanics and other skilled labour. The
project promised economic benefit, it performed with more than $700 million in
local content spending, spending that flowed into the local businesses almost
equally divided between Chad and Cameroon. Finally the project promised
long-term growth for Chad and Cameroon beyond construction. That will demand
our finest performance in the years ahead.
I would like to suggest that indirectly at least, the project holds another
important promise. That is the promise of partnership. The Chad/Cameroon
development project ties together two nations in one of Africa’s most
ambitious examples of regional integration. The promise, greater economic
gains than either nation could have achieved alone. The performance, it is up
to all of us here, the partnering oil companies, the World Bank, the
governments of Chad and Cameroon, to make certain this promise is kept.
Today I hope you will all join me in keeping the promise of our future
performance. Speaking for ChevronTexaco, we will make every effort to perform
in the ways that benefit the people of Chad and Cameroon.
Thank you for your attendance and sharing ours today.
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