by Lesley Wroughton, Reuters

The World Bank has told an Exxon Mobil-led consortium to take corrective action to fully compensate farmers in southern Chad who lost land and their livelihoods as the U.S. company expands its search for oil in the Doba basin.

The bank's private-sector lender, the International Finance Corp., has insisted Exxon (XOM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) reassess its compensation plans after an independent survey found that expanded drilling is destroying already-scarce land that families live off.

Exxon operates the Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline development project, including Chevron Corp. (CVX.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Malaysia's state-run Petronas (PETR.UL: Quote, Profile, Research), which the IFC agreed to help finance on condition profits from the oil benefited the poor.

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Posted by pichu at March 22, 2007 3:54 PM