Cameroon

The Chad-Cameroon pipeline runs more than 660 miles to the coast. Exxonmobil.com

Berkeley, CA — The Center for Investigative Reporting is pleased to announce that documentary filmmaker Christiane Badgley will receive the second Henry Demarest Lloyd Investigative Fund grant.

Badgley will receive $5,000 in seed money to develop a film project investigating the effects of the oil pipeline constructed by Exxon/Mobil and other oil companies, with assistance from the World Bank, through the West African nations of Chad and Cameroon. She plans to follow the route of the pipeline and document its effect on the environment, on workers, local communities, and on local and national governments.

While in pre-production for the film, Badgley will produce a running video-blog of her travels, which commence this fall. The video-blog will be produced in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, which also is supporting this project. In conjunction with the film, Badgley will launch a series of interactive multimedia dialogues with African citizens along the pipeline’s route.

Badgley’s films have been broadcast on PBS and Link TV in the United States, and on French and other European television stations. She produced an early episode of Exposé, the television series on investigative reporting, which CIR developed in cooperation with the New York PBS station WNET.

The mission of the Lloyd Investigative Fund, named in honor of Henry Demarest Lloyd (1847-1903), the pioneer muckraker of late 19th century Chicago, is to support the work of investigative journalists who probe behind the walls of secrecy erected by government and powerful corporations, to inform the public of unreported news and events at home and around the globe.

Founded in 1977, the Center for Investigative Reporting is the nation's oldest nonprofit investigative reporting organization. The Lloyd Investigative Fund is one way that CIR is working to ensure that high-quality, credible journalism does not die, but flourishes.

Part two of a three part series investigating environmental, corruption, and health concerns related to the $3.7 billion oil pipeline under construction in Chad and Cameroon. The pipeline, built by an international consortium, including the World Bank, ExxonMobil, and ChevronTexaco, is expected to begin pumping oil for the U.S. market by the end of 2003. The second story in this series explores the unfulfilled promises made by the pipeline consortium to create economic development and offset environmental destruction along the pipeline route.

Part three of a three part series investigating environmental, corruption, and health concerns related to the $3.7 billion oil pipeline under construction in Chad and Cameroon. The pipeline, built by an international consortium, including the World Bank, ExxonMobil, and ChevronTexaco, is expected to begin pumping oil for the U.S. market by the end of 2003. Reporter Ken Silverstein reveals concerns that AIDS may become the pipeline's greatest legacy, despite World Bank claims that the project would bring significant resources to Chad and Cameroon. Researchers fear that the truckers, workers and prostitutes populating the pipeline route are spreading the HIV virus and will increase infection rates when they return home.

Part one of a three part series investigating environmental, health and corruption concerns related to the $3.7 billion oil pipeline constructed in Chad and Cameroon by an international consortium that includes the World Bank, Exxon Mobil, and ChevronTexaco. The pipeline will allow the United States to tap a new source of petroleum just as war, terrorism and rising anti-Americanism threaten to disrupt Middle East oil supplies. But can the largest development project ever undertaken in Africa fulfill its promises of economic development?