by Bleep » Tue 09 May 2006, 09:20:09
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Gazzatrone', 'C')onsidering
Africa's political maturity and the state of Nigeria.
Oh! You Pushed My Button!
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')url=http://www.indybay.org/news/2006/05/1821425.php]
Africa: The New Frontier for Imperial Oil (link)[/url]
by Michael Watts and Anna Zalik Saturday, May. 06, 2006 at 5:11 PM
In his State of the Union address, George Dubya said that the U.S. is “addicted to oil.” What he didn’t say was that post-WWII oil policy – which has been a central plank of U.S. foreign policy since President Roosevelt met King Saud of Saudi Arabia and cobbled together their ‘special relationship’ in 1945 – is in shambles. The pillars of this policy – Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf oil states, and Venezuela – are hardly models of U.S. spheres of influence. With surplus capacity in the world oil market at an all-time low, and speculative capacity in the commodity exchanges at an all-time high, the transnational oil companies and the oil producing states are awash in petro-dollars – but the days of cheap oil seem to be fast disappearing.
Cut to the chase$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')urrently Africa is the center of a major oil boom. The continent accounts for roughly 10 percent of world oil output and 9.3 percent of known reserves. Though oil fields in Africa are generally smaller and deeper than the Middle East - and production costs are accordingly 3-4 times higher - African crude is generally ‘sweet’ and low in sulfur, making it attractive to U.S. importers.
... Niger Delta are of enormous importance. In late 2005 and early 2006 there was a massive escalation in violent attacks on oil installations by ethnic militants (primarily Ijaw, the largest ethnic group in the oil producing region) including the taking of oil hostages by a largely unknown militant group MEND (the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta). As a result of this escalation (and events in Iran and Venezuela), oil markets remain very jittery.
... A multi-billion dollar oil industry has, however, proved to be a little more than a nightmare. To inventory the ‘achievements’ of Nigerian oil development is a salutary exercise: 85 percent of oil revenues accrue to 1 percent of the population; perhaps $100 billion of $400 billion in revenues since 1970 have simply gone “missing” (The anti-corruption chief Nuhu Ribadu, claimed that in 2003 70 percent of the country’s oil wealth was stolen or wasted; by 2005 it was “only” 40 percent). Between 1965-2004, the per capital income fell from $250 to $212 and income distribution deteriorated markedly over the same period. Between 1970 and 2000 in Nigeria, the number of people subsisting on less than one dollar per day grew from 36 percent to more than 70 percent: from 19 million to a staggering 90 million. According to the IMF, oil “did not seem to add to the standard of living” and “could have contributed to a decline in the standard of living.” Over the last decade GDP per capita and life expectancy have both fallen.