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China Harbour signs $1b deal for Nigeria oil hub road
China Harbour Engineering has signed an agreement to build a $1 billion road around Nigeria's main oil hub of Port Harcourt, the Africa Finance Corporation development bank said on Sunday.
- Reuters
- Published: 00:08 July 14, 2008
Lagos: China Harbour Engineering (CHEC) has signed an agreement to build a $1 billion road around Nigeria's main oil hub of Port Harcourt, the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) development bank said on Sunday.
Officials from CHEC signed the memorandum of understanding for the construction of the 125 km (78 mile), six-lane road around the city during a visit to Beijing by Nigerian local government and AFC officials last week, the AFC said.
It said the road-building project would be the largest of its kind in Africa.
The Niger Delta is home to Nigeria's 2.1 million barrels per day (bpd) oil industry but is plagued by unrest due to attacks by militant groups on oil pipelines and the kidnapping of foreign workers and local politicians by criminal gangs.
Peace efforts
The Nigerian government has made developing infrastructure in the region one of the planks of its campaign to bring peace to the delta, where impoverished local communities complain they are seeing none of the benefits of oil wealth.
"Infrastructure, creation of employment through capacity building of our people and growth of the economy are the essentials to solving the crisis," Rotimi Amaechi, governor of Rivers state where Port Harcourt is located, said in Beijing.
Nigeria's biggest construction firm, Julius Berger, has started pulling out of the delta because of the deteriorating security situation there, a senior company executive said on Saturday.
The decision came after gunmen kidnapped two Germans working for the firm, the Nigerian unit of German builder Bilfinger Berger by blowing their armoured vehicle off the road with dynamite, the latest such attack on foreign workers.
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