Africom and the new scramble for Africa

The recent unveiling of Africom by the Bush administration is the clearest indicator yet of the military establishment’s continued ascendancy over the State Department in formulation and implementation of foreign policy, a trajectory that began soon after the conclusion of World War II.

However, if there is one single reason, almost equal in weight to all the others, that can be said to explain Africom’s existence — it has to be the problematic Nigeria, the most prolific provider of Africa’s oil to the U.S., but also what the Defense Department considers to be the world’s largest failed state.
Nigeria is the keystone of the oil-producing countries that border the Gulf of Guinea, which the U.S. now considers to be its private lake. It is that vast expanse of the Atlantic off the coast of West Africa that contains some of the world’s largest reservoirs of oil and natural gas.

Nineteen African countries, most of them oil producers, stretching from Liberia in the north to Angola in the south, either border or have immediate access to the Gulf of Guinea. In 2004, California’s Chevron Corporation completed an oil pipeline that stretches from southern Chad through Cameroon to the Gulf of Guinea, a distance of 1070 kilometers.

“The Gulf of Guinea offshore is one of the most prolific hydrocarbon provinces in the world, with oil and gas discoveries of more than 10 billion barrels and tremendous potential beyond that,” said Dr. Edmund Daukoru, then president of OPEC and currently Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, speaking at a conference attended by 1200 oil industry executives and technicians last year.

The clear relationship between the creation of Africom and access to oil, natural gas, and other minerals necessary to the energy industry lends credence to the belief by many political analysts that the U.S. is in the midst of a one hundred year, and counting, war for energy.

Tehran Times