Desperately poor African nation mulls oil-rich future

SANTO ANTONIO, Sao Tome and Principe: For more than 30 years Eugenio Piter has scraped a livelihood fishing from his dugout canoe in West Africa’s Gulf of Guinea.

Now, his tiny island nation is about to unlock the wealth from an estimated 11 billion barrels of oil from the seabed beneath those same Atlantic waters. The government says the oil is the answer to this country’s grinding poverty.

“Maybe there’s oil out there,” Piter, 51 says, while mending his nets on the beach. “But whether we will see any of it is anyone’s guess.”
International Herald Tribune