The Curious Bonds of Oil Diplomacy
The tongues of yellow flames from flaring gas burn like candlesticks lined up in a cathedral, lighting the night sky of the port city of Malabo and sending black fumes billowing upwards. In the waters offshore, oil rigs and production platforms sit majestically, sucking hundred of thousands of barrels a day from the deep sea oil fields of Equatorial Guinea. Until a few years ago, this nation of 486,000 � consisting of five islands and a square snip of coastal West Africa between Cameroon and Gabon � was a small and insignificant sideshow in the political drama of the African continent. But the beginning of large scale oil production in 1996, along with new concerns about the security of Mideast oil supplies, has thrust West African nations like Equatorial Guinea to the forefront of the global politics of oil. Already, 15 percent of the United States' imported oil supply comes from sub-Saharan Africa. Oil experts predict that the amount of oil the United States receives from the prolific fields of Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea and Angola will double in the next five years. �African oil is of strategic national interest to us and it will increase and become more important as we go forward,� Walter Kansteiner, assistant U.S. secretary of state for African Affairs, said during a July 2002 visit to Nigeria � the largest oil producer in West Africa with an estimated 24 billion barrels in reserve. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, a former oil company executive, predicted the same a year earlier, when, referring to the instability of Mideast oil, he said, �Along with Latin America, West Africa is expected to be one of the fastest-growing sources of oil and gas for the American market.� Today, U.S. oil firms dominate the Equatorial Guinea landscape. ExxonMobil, Amerada Hess, Chevron Texaco and Marathon Oil have the largest share of the country�s oil production. Based on new discoveries, analysts expect their total collective investment of $3 billion to approach about $5 billion by the end of 2002. Other countries also have interests in the region. The French, traditional rivals to the United States in West Africa, have long-standing ties to neighboring Gabon. The French oil giant TotalFinaElf, along with ExxonMobil, drills the Ekanga fields that straddle territory of both Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria. The Malaysian state oil company, Petronas, is the largest shareholder in the South African-listed company, Energy Africa, which is active in Equatorial Guinea. ExxonMobil, the first oil multinational to launch commercial exploration in Equatorial Guinea�s offshore waters in 1995, controls the Zafiro oil field. Stretching from 25 to 60 miles offshore, it is Equatorial Guinea�s most productive field, with a potential yield of close to 200,000 barrels of oil per day. The company�s oil vessel Zafiro Producer pulls out about 160,000 barrels per day, and the Magnolia stores the oil for refining until shipment across the Atlantic to markets in the United States. The 23-year-old regime of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has been criticized for allowing the oil companies to exploit Equatorial Guinea�s oil riches with little obvious benefit to the people. The U.S. Energy Department notes that the government�s share of oil revenues is relatively small by international standards. Obiang has announced plans to renegotiate contracts to increase the country�s participation in oil licenses. President Teodore Obiang (left) with French President Jacques Chirac (Reuters) Meanwhile, the president and his family have been buying up multimillion-dollar homes in the United States. �The government gave the American oil companies carte blanche and threw its doors open,� said Christanio, a Jehovah�s Witness missionary from Canada who has spent nearly four years in the capital Malabo. �The Americans are slicing their way effortlessly through the oil blocks.� Equatorial Guinea has an estimated 600 million barrels in crude oil reserves, and the quantity of oil being pumped daily from its waters is on the rise. A combined figure for all the oil companies is expected to surpass 300,000 barrels per day by the end of 2002. But, with the most modern oil drilling technology and oil exploration experts deployed to harness the country�s deep sea reserves, supplies may dry up in as little as a decade, said Max Birley, vice president of Marathon Oil Equatorial Guinea.
