The Politics of Oil in Africa

Overview

In the wake of the growing number of terrorist attacks on U.S. interests at home and abroad since the late 1990s, by Saudi-funded al Qaeda operatives, American neoconservatives and petroleum producers have moved quickly to explore alternative sources of oil and gas, beyond what might be extracted from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). African hydrocarbon resources are central to the new strategy, as evidenced by Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy policy (PDF), drawn up in secret and announced publicly in May 2001:

The NEPD [National Energy Policy Development (NEPD)] Group recommends that the President direct the Secretaries of State, Energy and Commerce to reinvigorate the U.S. African Trade and Economic Cooperation Forum and the U.S. African Energy Ministerial process; deepen bilateral and multilateral engagements to promote a more receptive environment for U.S. oil and gas trade, investment and operations; and promote geographic diversification of its energy supplies, addressing such issues as transparency, sanctity of contracts and security.¹

An ExxonMobil advertisement that appeared on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times on November 1, 2001, entitled “Africa: A Wealth of Opportunity,” was timed to influence the third biennial United States-Africa Business Summit in Philadelphia, a meeting of industry and government leaders on American business opportunities in Africa. “ExxonMobil,” the ad self-proclaimed, “has been committed to Africa for more than a century.” The need to diversify energy sources was also a theme of President George W. Bush’s national security strategy (PDF), released in September 2002, which aims to “enhance energy security” by expanding “the sources and types of global energy supplied, especially in the Western Hemisphere, Africa, Central Asia and the Caspian region.”² Note the absence of the Persian Gulf region.

A major player in the administration’s changed geopetroleum plans is the Jerusalem-based think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, which was created in 1984 and is close to Ariel Sharon’s right-wing Israeli Likud party. IASPS has succeeded in persuading the Bush administration to reorient its energy policy, away from Saudi Arabia, an important Israeli objective. In January 2002, IASPS organized a seminar in Washington, DC, for members of the U.S. government (inter alios, Walter Kansteiner, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs; Representative Edward Royce, Chair, House Subcommittee on Africa; Representative William Jefferson, Co-Chair, African Trade and Investment Caucus; and Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, U.S. Air Force/Office of the Secretary of Defense), petroleum industry representatives, and several African ambassadors. I attended the seminar and was struck by Terry Karl’s cautionary presentation on the paradox of plenty, which warned of poverty in oil-rich states, in contrast to the industry’s boosterism of the Gulf of Guinea’s potential for oil investment.³ The outcome of this meeting was the creation of the Oil Policy Initiative Group, which issued a report in July 2002, African Oil, a Priority for U.S. National Security and African Development (PDF).⁴ The report recommends that Congress and the White House declare the Gulf of Guinea an “area of vital interest” to the United States, a designation never before extended to any region of Africa, giving it strategic and military priority.⁵

The Bush administration has mobilized hundreds of thousands of troops for war against Iraq. Many observers believe that oil is the administration’s main interest in Iraq, and that Iraq is central to its plans to control world petroleum supplies. Iraq has the world’s second largest reserves, after Saudi Arabia, and the investment opportunities for oil service companies like Halliburton, which Vice President Cheney used to chair, are enormous, given the run-down state of Iraq’s oil fields.

While the preparations for war against Iraq built, a quiet offensive was underway in Africa. In Gabon, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Angola, and Algeria, Washington increased offers of aid and stationed military advisors, while oil companies sealed new contracts. The United States supported peace talks in Sudan at the beginning of 2002. It sent military equipment to help the Algerian government quell the Islamist insurgency (and berated Algeria for its technical assistance to Pdvsa, Venezuela’s oil company, during the strike). It broke ground for a new U.S. embassy in Luanda, Angola, and pledged aid to help resettle UNITA rebels. It promised to help Gabon establish the world’s largest forest preserve. It leaned on Nigeria to leave OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. It promised to reopen the U.S. Consulate in Equatorial Guinea and to drop that country from its list of 14 African countries condemned for their violations of human rights. And it invited ten central African heads of state to a White House breakfast in September 2002.

In December 2001, the U.S. ambassador in Cameroon received a warning that al Qaeda planned to attack U.S. oil installations in Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria. In July 2002, General Carlton Fulford went to São Tomé and Príncipe to study security issues in the Gulf of Guinea linked to the need to protect projected offshore oil rigs and vessels. Al Qaeda threats against oil tankers are an increasing concern since the attack on a French tanker, the Limburg, off the coast of Yemen in October 2002.⁶ Meanwhile, Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI), a private military company based in Virginia that was founded in 1988 by retired senior Pentagon officers, will likely defend the offshore installations of Equatorial Guinea.⁷ (MPRI also has an $8 million contract to professionalize the military in Nigeria, with one half paid by the U.S. Defense Department and the other half paid by the Nigerian government.)⁸ Some U.S. companies – e.g., Marathon – already include former U.S. military men in their security departments in Equatorial Guinea.

1. The White House, National Energy Policy Development Group, National Energy Policy: Report of the National Energy Policy Development Group (May 2001): 19, http://www.whitehouse.gov/energy/National-Energy-Policy.pdf (PDF). [↩]
2. The White House, National Security Council, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (September 17, 2002): 19, http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.pdf (PDF). [↩]
3. See Terry Karl, Paradox of Plenty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). [↩]
4. Oil Policy Initiative Group, African Oil, a Priority for U.S. National Security and African Development (July 2002), available at the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, http://www.israeleconomy.org/strategic/africawhitepaper.pdf (PDF). [↩]
5. International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), “Making a Killing: The Business of War,” October 28, 2002, http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/icij_bow.asp. [↩]
6. Keith Bradsher, “Threats and Responses: Seaborne Trade; Warnings from Al Qaeda Stir Fear that Terrorists May Attack Oil Tankers,” New York Times, December 12, 2002, late edition-final, sec. A. [↩]
7. Jean-Christophe Servant, “Offensive sur l’or noir africain,” Le Monde Diplomatique, January 2003, http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2003/01/SERVANT/9856. [↩]
8. ICIJ, “Making a Killing.” [↩]