Angola Is U.S. Priority as Rising Oil Output Boosts Influence

Angola, currently Africa’s top oil producer, is now a priority in Washington. Hillary Clinton’s overnight visit last month — the first for a U.S. secretary of state — sent the message that America is eager to help transform the former Cold War battleground into a stable energy giant with strong democratic institutions and transparent business practices.

Angola is poised to become a hub of liquefied natural gas and diamond exports.
It is also a potential growth market for Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Co., Bechtel Group Inc. in San Francisco and other American companies seeking to take advantage of the government’s push to diversify the economy and improve conditions for the country’s 17 million people, most of whom live on $2 a day.

“We are definitely interested” in Angola, says David Welch, a former U.S. diplomat who is president of Middle East, Africa, Europe and South Asian operations at Bechtel, the largest U.S. engineering company. “They have every single infrastructure need.”

Angola topped Nigeria’s crude output in July and August partly because unrest cut production in Nigeria’s Niger Delta. It joined the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in 2007 and, as this year’s president, will host a Dec. 22 meeting in its capital, Luanda. Within three years, it will expand energy exports when it begins shipping natural gas with help from San Ramon, California-based Chevron Corp.

Angola gets about 84 percent of fiscal revenue from petrodollars, making it vulnerable to price swings like last year’s 77 percent drop to $33.87 a barrel Dec. 19 from $145.29 July 3. The price recovered to $69.29 Sept. 11. So Angola is turning to foreign investors for help developing non-energy industries including agriculture.

Bloomberg