Douala, Cameroon Africa. January 2011. (Cameroon News) – Cameroon deploys XAF138 Billion as a subsidy for fuel prices in 2010.

The Cameroon government provided 138 billion CFA Francs ($276 million) to subsidize fuel prices at fuel pumps all across the nations 2010.

“The total subvention to stabilize the prices of petroleum at the filling stations in 2010 stood at around XAF138 billion, up 500% from the previous year,” the state-owned Hydrocarbons Stabilization Fund told the press on Monday.

Oil and gas Plant

Increasing prices of fuel and those of commodities had created a panic amongst the population and there were lots of protests staged in February 2008 where more than 40 people lost their lives as the police had to be deployed to control the mob.

The decision to introduce a subsidy came in almost a week after the company convened a meeting of its board of directors to review the operations across the past year and to ready itself for the upcoming financial year, which kicks off this January.

The three categories of fuel are presently sold at XAF569 a liter for essence, which is in common mans language called super, XAF535 a liter for diesel and XAF365 a liter for kerosene

Cameroon gets its supply of soft crude oil from neighbors Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea, if numbers taken by the state owned National Hydrocarbons Corp., which holds the sole responsibility for controlling, selling and synchronizing the operations of Cameroon’s oil industry, are to be believed. It was not an easy thing to assimilate the import figures.

The National Refinery Corp. is also owned by the state but does not have the technical expertise or the machinery to treat the hard crude that is produced locally in the country.

The West African nation’s daily oil output of heavy crude has undergone a crash of around 70,000 barrels, from the forecasted 85,000 barrels recorded in 2008, according to numbers from the National Hydrocarbons Corp.