www.guineequatoriale-info.net.  The Equatorial Guinea News Portal; This site is open to all internet users who wishes to announce their articles and/or work on the internet.

 
 
       
   

WELCOME TO EQUATORIAL
GUINEA

 
       
       
 

Ge-Infonet web Site,   Updating in Bata, .  The Equatorial Guinea Top News

         
   

U.S. Oil Politics in the 'Kuwait of Africa' 

   
         
         
         
   
  By Ken Silverstein
This article appeared in the April 22, 2002 edition of The Nation.
 
 

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020422/silverstein
April 4, 2002
"We've found in excess of 500 million barrels of oil here, and we expect that to grow to at least 1 billion--and that's not to say that we won't find more. This is one of the hottest spots in the world right now." The speaker is Jim Musselman, head of Triton Energy, and the spot he's talking about is Equatorial Guinea, a tiny nation located on the west coast of Africa. We're sitting in the front room of his comfortably appointed government villa in the capital city of Malabo, and though it's blistering hot outside, the villa's interior is pleasantly cool. It's one of dozens that the government, flush with oil revenues, has built for visiting foreign dignitaries and businessmen, and that sit inside a walled compound guarded by soldiers posted in towers spaced alongside the perimeter.

 
 

Equatorial Guinea has long been one of the poorest and most neglected nations on the planet, but within a few years the country could be producing as much as 500,000 barrels a day--one per capita--which would make it sub-Saharan Africa's third-largest producer behind Nigeria and Angola. Thanks to oil, Equatorial Guinea's economy is projected to grow by 34 percent this year, more than twice the rate of any other nation's. It is also thanks to oil that under George Bush there's been a slow but steady blossoming of relations between the United States, which buys almost two-thirds of Equatorial Guinea's petroleum, and the government of Brig. Gen. Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who took power in a coup in 1979.

Musselman, an affable, balding man wearing a blue dress shirt and cowboy boots embossed with his initials, describes himself as "an unabashed fan" of Equatorial Guinea, and it's easy to see why. Dallas-based Triton was founded by William Lee, who ran the firm until 1993, when Triton was accused (and later convicted) of bribing Indonesian government officials. Musselman took charge five years later, after putting together a $350 million rescue package, but Triton was still floundering until it made a big oil strike here in 1999. Largely due to its Equatorial Guinea stake, Triton was recently purchased by oil giant Amerada Hess, and Musselman is here with that company's chairman, John Hess, for meetings with Obiang.

What makes Equatorial Guinea especially important today, Musselman says, is political turmoil in the Persian Gulf and other regions from which the United States imports petroleum. "There is plenty of instability in the world, and the more diverse supplies of oil we have, the better off things are," he says. "Knock on wood, this country is stable and the president is sincerely trying to improve things. It's not going to turn into suburban Washington, but it could be a model for this part of the world."

With its newfound oil wealth and tiny population, Equatorial Guinea could indeed be a model in a region known for dictatorial rule and gross corruption. But that prospect seems unlikely given that the Obiang regime is generally considered to rank among the world's worst--an assessment shared not only by human rights groups but also the CIA. The agency's current World Factbook says that America's new strategic partner is a country "ruled by ruthless leaders who have badly mismanaged the economy." From outside the villa walls, it's easy to see how the CIA reached that conclusion.

Bringing the Oil Home

During the cold war, the United States viewed Africa as a major battleground with the Soviet Union and poured billions of dollars of economic and military aid into the continent. After the collapse of Communism, though, American interest waned. As recently as 1995, a Pentagon report concluded that the United States had "very little traditional strategic interests in Africa." But during the past few years, Africa has become a growing source of American oil imports--especially West Africa, which in oil parlance is considered to include Angola as well as Nigeria, Congo Republic, Gabon, Cameroon and now Equatorial Guinea. The United States already buys 15 percent of its oil from West Africa--nearly as much as comes from Saudi Arabia--a figure expected to grow to 20 percent within the next five years and, according to the National Intelligence Council, to as high as 25 percent by 2015.

The Bush Administration's national energy policy, released last May, predicted that West Africa would become "one of the fastest-growing sources of oil and gas for the American market." The year before, Paul Michael Wihbey of Washington's Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies described West Africa as "an area of vital US interest" in testimony before Congress. He proposed the creation of a new South Atlantic Military Command that would "permit the US Navy and armed forces to more easily project power to defend American interests and allies in West Africa." The September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon further heightened American attention to Africa, with national security planners urging that the United States seek to diversify supplies of oil away from the Middle East.

There's been virtually no public discussion or debate about America's growing appetite for West African oil, though it has significant economic, military and geopolitical implications. While these countries are not Islamic regimes--a fact frequently emphasized by American strategists--US allies in West Africa are not especially attractive. In Angola, petroleum revenues have allowed the government of José Eduardo dos Santos to build a vast military and internal security apparatus. Other than oil, Angola produces little besides artificial limbs for war victims, but dos Santos has become by some estimates one of the world's fifty richest people. Nigeria, though it formally made the transition from military dictatorship to democratic rule in 1999, is also a disaster. The army has committed several massacres of civilians since President Olusegun Obasanjo took power, and a parliamentary report recently accused his administration of corruption and ineptitude. "The Middle East presents a number of problems, but most West African regimes are neither stable nor democratic," says Terry Karl, a professor of political science at Stanford University and author of The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States. "Oil development in that context is likely to buffer authoritarian rule and foster corruption, instability and environmental destruction."

None of this has dimmed West Africa's allure in foreign policy circles. In January the Council on Foreign Relations hosted an event on the growing importance of Africa ("America's Response to Terrorism: Managing Africa's Oil Revenues in a Changing Global Climate"), and Wihbey's institute held a similar affair. The latter, at downtown Washington's tony University Club, was attended by oil company executives, Bush Administration officials, corporate lobbyists and representatives from a number of African embassies, including Teodoro Biyogo Nsue, Equatorial Guinea's ambassador to the United States (and General Obiang's brother-in-law). Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter Kansteiner gave the introductory talk, which had the vague ring of a revival meeting sermon. "African oil is a national strategic interest," he told the crowd. "It's people like you who will...bring the oil home." Other speakers included Lieut. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, an Air Force officer assigned to the Defense Secretary's office, who said the United States needs to step up military training for African oil producers so that those countries can "secure their property, their investment and our investment."

                                                                 __________________________________

Washington and Malabo: The Ice Age

Not so long ago, Equatorial Guinea didn't register as even the tiniest blip on Washington's radar screen. Roughly the size of Maryland, the country is composed of a few islands--including Bioko, home to Malabo--and a square of land on the continent wedged between Gabon and Cameroon. Average life expectancy is 54; malaria, yellow fever and other diseases are rampant; and much of the population is engaged in subsistence farming of rice, yams and bananas.

The political picture is as grim as the economic one. The only former Spanish colony in sub-Saharan Africa, Equatorial Guinea gained independence in 1968. The country's first ruler was Francisco Macias Nguema, a West African version of Idi Amin who banned opposition parties and in 1970 appointed himself "President for Life"--the first of a string of self-decreed titles that included "Leader of Steel," "Implacable Apostle of Freedom" and "The Sole Miracle of Equatorial Guinea." As many as 50,000 people, roughly 10 percent of the population, were murdered during the Macias years--some were crucified along the road to the airport, for the benefit of visiting diplomats--and 80,000 fled the country. In 1979 the Sole Miracle was overthrown and subsequently executed by Obiang, his nephew.

Obiang was no reformer: As head of the National Guard and later commander of the armed forces, he played a major role in carrying out the terrible repression of the Macias years. And while he hasn't ruled as brutally as his predecessor, he's been sufficiently cruel that one Western diplomat has called him "a known murderer." The State Department's most recent report on worldwide human rights, released March 4, says that the government employs "the psychological effects of arrest, along with the fear of beatings and harassment, to intimidate opposition party officials and members," and that the country has never had a "free, fair and transparent" election. A case in point was Obiang's "re-election" to a seven-year term in 1996, which he won with 99.2 percent of the vote. Three years later his ruling Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea won seventy-five of eighty seats contested in national legislative elections that were flagrantly rigged.

Obiang's economic record is also abysmal, and only the discovery of oil has prevented the country from sinking into complete misery. "It's a corrupt, rotten government," says Frank Ruddy, US ambassador to Equatorial Guinea during the Reagan years. "The people there deserve better than the crooks they've got."

For years US officials looked upon the country as a laughingstock. Ruddy told the story of how one of Obiang's top aides, who was fortunate to benefit from diplomatic immunity, was once stopped at New York's JFK airport with a suitcase full of marijuana. The police had little trouble making the bust: The aide's bag had a hole in the side, and he was trailing pot as he strolled through the terminal. There's a story famous in CIA circles about how two of Obiang's intelligence operatives came to Washington in the mid-1980s to meet top agency officials. The Guineans went shopping at a suburban Virginia mall beforehand and came to the meeting dressed in identical outfits: black business suits and electric Nike sneakers.

A less amusing illustration of the Obiang regime's nature came in 1994, when the US ambassador in Malabo, John Bennett, was threatened with death after calling for improved human rights conditions. The threat came in a message thrown from the window of a passing vehicle--which eyewitnesses said was driven by a government official--that warned Bennett, "You will go to America as a corpse." Two years later, the Clinton Administration shut down the US Embassy in Malabo, and relations have been handled from Cameroon ever since.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020422/silverstein/2

                                                                 _____________________________________________

The Thaw

Just a few weeks after the embassy closed its doors, several US companies found significant petroleum reserves off the coast of Equatorial Guinea. Subsequent discoveries led firms such as ExxonMobil and Chevron, as well as small independents like Ocean Energy, Vanco and Triton, to invest a collective $5 billion in Equatorial Guinea. Sweetening the deal for the oil companies is the fact that the Obiang regime gave them as much as 87 percent of the oil receipts. (That figure has now dropped to about 75 percent, but it's still far above what they get in much of the Third World, which is frequently 50 percent or less.)

As US economic interests grew, a slow political shift in Washington-Malabo relations emerged. In June of 2000, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation approved $373 million in loan guarantees for construction of a methanol plant in Equatorial Guinea, its largest program ever in sub-Saharan Africa. Two US companies--Noble Affiliates and Marathon--together hold an 86 percent share in the plant. Five months later, Louisiana Representative William Jefferson led the first-ever Congressional delegation to Equatorial Guinea, taking along representatives of Baton Rouge-based Shaw Global Energy Services. Several Congressional staffers also traveled to the country, among them Malik Chaka, a top aide to Representative Ed Royce, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Africa. "There's still a great deal of room for improvement in terms of democracy and transparency, but they are desirous of closer relations with the United States," he says. "We need to take advantage of that by working with them."

In general, though, the Clinton Administration did little to improve relations with Obiang. The primary reason, according to oil company officials, was opposition from Susan Rice, Clinton's Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. "Obiang began to reach out in the late 1990s to improve his image, but there was little to suggest that there was any substance to it," she recounted during a recent interview. "Equatorial Guinea was a poster child of undemocratic practices."

All independent observers of Equatorial Guinea share that assessment. Freedom House, the conservative human rights organization, lumps the country in a group with North Korea, Burma, Iraq and a few other pariahs as the world's most oppressive regimes. The State Department's human rights report states, "The government's human rights record remained poor.... The security forces committed numerous abuses, including torture, beating, and other physical abuse of prisoners and suspects."

A Bush official I spoke to said he didn't see any signs of improvement in the Obiang regime's practices, and he asserted that the Administration will not ignore human rights violations to accommodate the oil industry. "Our policy is to advance human rights and democracy," he said. "There's no trade-off here."

Despite such talk, there's been a marked if unpublicized improvement in Washington-Malabo ties since Bush took office. Last November Bush quietly authorized the opening of a new US Embassy in Malabo (one site being considered is on land owned by the oil companies), a huge victory for the Obiang regime. A well-placed government source told me that the Administration will soon remove Equatorial Guinea from a list of fourteen African nations that are barred on human rights grounds from receiving trade benefits under a bill passed by Congress in 2000. Meanwhile, the State Department has given the green light--barring unforeseen Congressional opposition--to a program under which Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI), a private firm led by high-ranking Pentagon retirees, will train a Guinean Coast Guard that can protect the offshore oilfields. "They do have a poor human rights record, but so did the Nazi government, and we did pretty well with Germany after World War II," says retired general Ed Soyster, a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency who works at MPRI.

The political thaw has come in response to intense lobbying from the oil industry, which has sought to portray Obiang as a born-again reformer and, more credibly, Equatorial Guinea as a potentially huge new source of oil. "For a long time our relationship with Equatorial Guinea revolved around human rights," one oil company official told me. "That's a legitimate concern, but now that the energy picture is changing, that introduces something to balance out the dialogue."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020422/silverstein/3

                                      __________________________________________

"We've found in excess of 500 million barrels of oil here, and we expect that to grow to at least 1 billion--and that's not to say that we won't find more. This is one of the hottest spots in the world right now." The speaker is Jim Musselman, head of Triton Energy, and the spot he's talking about is Equatorial Guinea, a tiny nation located on the west coast of Africa. We're sitting in the front room of his comfortably appointed government villa in the capital city of Malabo, and though it's blistering hot outside, the villa's interior is pleasantly cool. It's one of dozens that the government, flush with oil revenues, has built for visiting foreign dignitaries and businessmen, and that sit inside a walled compound guarded by soldiers posted in towers spaced alongside the perimeter.

Equatorial Guinea has long been one of the poorest and most neglected nations on the planet, but within a few years the country could be producing as much as 500,000 barrels a day--one per capita--which would make it sub-Saharan Africa's third-largest producer behind Nigeria and Angola. Thanks to oil, Equatorial Guinea's economy is projected to grow by 34 percent this year, more than twice the rate of any other nation's. It is also thanks to oil that under George Bush there's been a slow but steady blossoming of relations between the United States, which buys almost two-thirds of Equatorial Guinea's petroleum, and the government of Brig. Gen. Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who took power in a coup in 1979.

Musselman, an affable, balding man wearing a blue dress shirt and cowboy boots embossed with his initials, describes himself as "an unabashed fan" of Equatorial Guinea, and it's easy to see why. Dallas-based Triton was founded by William Lee, who ran the firm until 1993, when Triton was accused (and later convicted) of bribing Indonesian government officials. Musselman took charge five years later, after putting together a $350 million rescue package, but Triton was still floundering until it made a big oil strike here in 1999. Largely due to its Equatorial Guinea stake, Triton was recently purchased by oil giant Amerada Hess, and Musselman is here with that company's chairman, John Hess, for meetings with Obiang.

What makes Equatorial Guinea especially important today, Musselman says, is political turmoil in the Persian Gulf and other regions from which the United States imports petroleum. "There is plenty of instability in the world, and the more diverse supplies of oil we have, the better off things are," he says. "Knock on wood, this country is stable and the president is sincerely trying to improve things. It's not going to turn into suburban Washington, but it could be a model for this part of the world."

With its newfound oil wealth and tiny population, Equatorial Guinea could indeed be a model in a region known for dictatorial rule and gross corruption. But that prospect seems unlikely given that the Obiang regime is generally considered to rank among the world's worst--an assessment shared not only by human rights groups but also the CIA. The agency's current World Factbook says that America's new strategic partner is a country "ruled by ruthless leaders who have badly mismanaged the economy." From outside the villa walls, it's easy to see how the CIA reached that conclusion.

Bringing the Oil Home

During the cold war, the United States viewed Africa as a major battleground with the Soviet Union and poured billions of dollars of economic and military aid into the continent. After the collapse of Communism, though, American interest waned. As recently as 1995, a Pentagon report concluded that the United States had "very little traditional strategic interests in Africa." But during the past few years, Africa has become a growing source of American oil imports--especially West Africa, which in oil parlance is considered to include Angola as well as Nigeria, Congo Republic, Gabon, Cameroon and now Equatorial Guinea. The United States already buys 15 percent of its oil from West Africa--nearly as much as comes from Saudi Arabia--a figure expected to grow to 20 percent within the next five years and, according to the National Intelligence Council, to as high as 25 percent by 2015.

The Bush Administration's national energy policy, released last May, predicted that West Africa would become "one of the fastest-growing sources of oil and gas for the American market." The year before, Paul Michael Wihbey of Washington's Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies described West Africa as "an area of vital US interest" in testimony before Congress. He proposed the creation of a new South Atlantic Military Command that would "permit the US Navy and armed forces to more easily project power to defend American interests and allies in West Africa." The September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon further heightened American attention to Africa, with national security planners urging that the United States seek to diversify supplies of oil away from the Middle East.

There's been virtually no public discussion or debate about America's growing appetite for West African oil, though it has significant economic, military and geopolitical implications. While these countries are not Islamic regimes--a fact frequently emphasized by American strategists--US allies in West Africa are not especially attractive. In Angola, petroleum revenues have allowed the government of José Eduardo dos Santos to build a vast military and internal security apparatus. Other than oil, Angola produces little besides artificial limbs for war victims, but dos Santos has become by some estimates one of the world's fifty richest people. Nigeria, though it formally made the transition from military dictatorship to democratic rule in 1999, is also a disaster. The army has committed several massacres of civilians since President Olusegun Obasanjo took power, and a parliamentary report recently accused his administration of corruption and ineptitude. "The Middle East presents a number of problems, but most West African regimes are neither stable nor democratic," says Terry Karl, a professor of political science at Stanford University and author of The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States. "Oil development in that context is likely to buffer authoritarian rule and foster corruption, instability and environmental destruction."

None of this has dimmed West Africa's allure in foreign policy circles. In January the Council on Foreign Relations hosted an event on the growing importance of Africa ("America's Response to Terrorism: Managing Africa's Oil Revenues in a Changing Global Climate"), and Wihbey's institute held a similar affair. The latter, at downtown Washington's tony University Club, was attended by oil company executives, Bush Administration officials, corporate lobbyists and representatives from a number of African embassies, including Teodoro Biyogo Nsue, Equatorial Guinea's ambassador to the United States (and General Obiang's brother-in-law). Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter Kansteiner gave the introductory talk, which had the vague ring of a revival meeting sermon. "African oil is a national strategic interest," he told the crowd. "It's people like you who will...bring the oil home." Other speakers included Lieut. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, an Air Force officer assigned to the Defense Secretary's office, who said the United States needs to step up military training for African oil producers so that those countries can "secure their property, their investment and our investment."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020422/silverstein/

 
     
   
         
   
 

  Previous     1    2    3    4    5    6   7    Next  

 
   
   

 

   

Mise en garde aux usagers de ce Site: Ge-Infonet est un portail, nous ne font que centraliser dans notre Site,  toutes les  nouvelles publiées  par les journaux et/ou ouvrages qui parlent  de la Guinée Equatoriale. Nous ne sommes pas responsables du contenu de chaque article puisque le dommage ne peut être réparé que par celui qui l'a commis. Merci.

Retour Ge-Infonet au Camerounroun

Warning to the users of this site: This site is a portal,we only centralise in our site , all the news published by newspapers and/or work that talks about equatorial guinea. we are not responsible of the content of each article  because You are strictly liable for your act.thanks

Copyright (c) Guinéequatoriale-Info.Net (Ge-Infonet)                All rights reserved