Last Tuesday, me and my classmates were having a 'special' class. A 'Harvard Business School Case Study' class. Before the class, we were given a case study and briefed what we should do before the class. You see, we were given a case study about Exxon-Mobil's dilemma over its oil pipeline project in Chad and Cameroon and we were asked to make a decision whether Exxon-Mobil should or should not proceed the project.

The scenario: Back in 1990s, Chad was and is still one of the poorest countries in the world. So does Cameroon. There were oil fields in southern part of Chad and a lot of foreign oil companies had been interested to 'develop' oil-drilling operations in there. Eventually, ExxonMobil, Shell and Elf got the rights to drill the oil but environmentalist were all over them because the project would harm the environment. Shell and Elf bailed out from the project and tadaa...! Exxon-Mobil was on their own. The pressure from the persistent environmentalists' were mounting. Should they proceed with the project or not? Go.

Prior coming to that class, I did my fair share of readings. I was like "Woa..gila babi jahat ExxonMobil ni..". Tak sedar ke projek ni merosakkan alam sekitar, bla bla bla..But then I realized something. And to my surprise I never thought it would change my perspective in this case.

Chad is a landlocked country, which means it doesn't have any international port, which means it has a great disadvantages in economy because they can't have international trades. With civil wars spreading like a wildfire across the country, doing business in Chad is almost impossible. The infrastructures in Chad is so poor that it has only 165 miles paved road.

Having oil fields is almost like the next best thing ever happened to Chad. Finally, they have something worth to be exported. Being a poor country in an open, capitalist-minded economy, they need miracles like this to turn their fate around. It is estimated that they would be able to increase their GDP by 45-50% per year. With this, the quality life of Chadian would improved; with exception to the government's corruption practice of course.

As for environmental issues that were raised by many environmentalists, they could always hire environmental consultants from third parties to draw an outline for them. Abuse of human rights (especially to the aborigines, indigenous tribes) can be avoided by hiring anthropological experts from Peace Corps. Besides, should ExxonMobil had given up on this project, Sudan and Libya would take over the project anyway. And we can't  be assured that these countries would do better job taking care of the environment; any better than these fully experienced global oil companies.

So, yeah. Basically, that's the reason and explanations why I kissed Exxon-Mobil's ass the other day.

p/s: Just so you know, eventually Petronas and Chevron formed a consortium with ExxonMobil for this project.