Chad has awarded an oil exploration contract to Opic Africa, a subsidiary of Taiwan’s Chinese Petroleum Corporation (CPC), the central African county's oil ministry said.

The contract concerns three prospecting blocks with a total area of 26,250 in the Lake Chad, South Chari and West Chari basins, it said.
“After 11 sessions of negotiations which took place in N'Djamena, the oil minister signed an oil contract on January 18 2006, with the Opic Africa company, a subsidiary of Chinese Petroleum Corporation,” the ministry said in a statement.
The statement said 30 per cent of any production would go to the state with the remaining 70 per cent going to Opic Africa.
Chad is involved in a public dispute with the World Bank over its existing oil project in the southern Doba basin, which is operated by a private sector consortium led by Exxon Mobil .
The World Bank froze all loans to Chad in early January after Chad altered a law governing the use of oil revenues in a bid to access a greater proportion for government spending.
The law had been passed by Chad as part of a deal under which the World Bank funded part of the $3.5 billion cost, unlocking funding for the rest of the project.