Transparency campaigners and union officials in Niger on Wednesday denounced the lack of information on an oil deal signed with China, calling for more details of the contract to be released.
On June 2, Niger signed an agreement with the China National Oil and Gas Development Exploration Corporation (CNODC).
It covered prospecting and exploiting oil reserves in Agadem in the southeastern Diffa region, as well as for the contruction of a pipeline and refinery near the southern city of Zinder.
Campaigners with the Network of Organisations for Transparency and Budgetary Analysis (ROTAB) have called for a parliamentary investigation into the contract and the use of any funds generated from the deal.
Under the agreement, Niger will rake in an initial 300 million dollars (190 millon euros), with CNODC investing another 300 million dollars for prospecting and 1.2 billion dollars for oilfield exploration.
But the exact terms of the agreement were far from clear, said the campaigners.
And the Sympamine mining union said the deal with the CNODC "took place in the greatest of secrecy and with contempt for regulation."
Sympamine said no official from Niger's mining ministry had been involved in the negotiations with China.
Instead, said Sympamine, the government had spent some five million euros (7.8 million dollars) recruiting foreign consultants.
The Zinder refinery, which is set to take three years and one billion dollars to build, will have a production capacity of 20,000 barrels a day.
Campaigners denounced Niamey's "refusal" to release details of both the oil contract with China and of another deal, with the French group Areva, for exploiting uranium in the north of the country.
Sympamine has also said the Agadem site has some 10 billion cubic metres (353 billion cubic feet) of natural gas not mentioned in excerpts from the contract published in the media.
GREN, the Group for Reflection and Action on Extraction Industries, denounced what it called the total lack of transparency in which China had carried out its petrol exploration in Niger for the past four years.
