The pipes are already laid in southern Chad, where they snake south underground through tropical forests from the oil fields of Doba to a marine terminal off the coast of neighboring Cameroon. At the port of Kribi, the 660-mile pipeline will empty up to 250,000 barrels a day of coveted crude into tankers waiting to transport the unctuous black gold to Western markets. The World Bank says this multi-billion dollar project will help to reduce poverty, but many critics find that assessment surprising, given that scholarly studies for more than a decade have consistently warned of what is known as the resource curse: that developing countries whose economies depend on exporting oil, gas or extracted minerals are likely to be poor, authoritarian, corrupt and rocked by civil war.