Oil price row closes China-built refinery in Chad
AP – Friday 01/20/2012Chad authorities on Thursday shut down a major new oil refinery amid a price row with its Chinese owners, sources said.The Djarmaya refinery, located 40 kilometres (25 miles) north of the Chadian capital Ndjamena, was inaugurated last June by President Idriss Deby Itno who described it as a “gift from China” that would offer energy independenceto his land-locked central African nation.
It is largely owned by the state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation International (CNPCI).
“The secretary-general of the trade and industry ministry has closed the Djarmaya refinery,” national radio announced.
A disagreement over the price of oil between the Chadian authorities and CNPCI, which owns 60 percent of the refinery, was at the root of the problem, a government source said.
The Chadian state holds the other 40 percent share in the refinery, which cost $60 million to build.
“There is a dialogue of the deaf between the government and the Chinese to the point where industrial units had begun to close down for lack of oil,” a member of the government told AFP.
He added that the director general of the plant was now considered “persona non grata and must leave Chad”.
The new refinery was designed to produce 20,000 barrels a day and is supplied from oil wells in the southern Bongor region through as a 311-kilometre pipeline.
Chad, which only began to produce oil in 2003, currently produces on average around 120,000 barrels per day, according to Infrastructures Minister Adoum Younoussmi.
CNPCI is a subsidiary of the state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC).
