{"id":554,"date":"2004-07-05T10:01:47","date_gmt":"2004-07-05T14:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=554"},"modified":"2004-07-05T10:01:47","modified_gmt":"2004-07-05T14:01:47","slug":"new-lords-of-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=554","title":{"rendered":"“New lords of Africa”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Guardian<\/i> reported<\/a> on November 14, 2003 that the UK had been quietly helping the U.S. to secure oil rights in Africa and elsewhere since Blair’s visit to Crawford, Texas in April 2002.<\/p>\n

A report prepared by American commerce secretary Don Evans and energy secretary Spencer Abraham detailed the success of those efforts:
\nRead extracts from the document <\/a>(pdf)<\/p>\n

Excellent background articles can be found here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Publically, Tony backed an initiative to increase transparency<\/a>: <\/p>\n

No one doubts that the primary villains are Africa’s corrupt dictators, whose moral compass the U.S. cannot alter. But it doesn’t help that Western companies, citing confidentiality agreements and competitive concerns, generally refuse to disclose the fees, royalties and other payments they make in African oil countries. <\/p>\n

There is plenty of evidence that companies are hiding what amounts to payoffs and bribes. <\/p>\n

In dealings with Equatorial Guinea, the Los Angeles Times reported, U.S. oil companies deposited more than $300 million into bank accounts in Washington solely controlled by the country’s president. <\/p>\n

In Gabon and other countries in the 1990s, the then-state-owned French oil giant ELF Aquitaine had such a huge slush fund for buying African influence that, according to testimony in an ongoing embezzlement trial in Paris, its executives enriched themselves by dipping into it at the same time millions went to the leaders of oil states. <\/p>\n

A British initiative to increase transparency in African oil deals, promoted by Prime Minister Tony Blair, is now at the center of a transatlantic tug of war. The program calls on oil companies to voluntarily disclose their payments for oil leases and development rights in Africa, which would allow for accountability on both sides of the transactions. <\/p>\n

The initiative is supported by six countries, including France, India and South Africa. Two major European oil companies, British Petroleum and Royal Dutch\/Shell, also support the initiative, on the condition that all other major companies abide by the proposed norms. <\/p>\n

But America’s Big Oil interests, spearheaded by Exxon Mobil and ChevronTexaco, resist the voluntary initiative, fearing in part that such a move is a slippery slope likely to make disclosure of payments mandatory in the future. (In fact, a separate international proposal, backed by financier George Soros, calls for mandatory reporting as a prerequisite for listing oil companies on the world’s stock exchanges.) <\/p>\n

Without all the oil giants complying, the British initiative has no chance of taking off. After all, companies that report where all their money goes are likely to lose lucrative contracts to those who can shield payments and avoid accountability.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As of May 30, 2004<\/a> the United States had yet to agree to a voluntary programme of transparency while continuing to send *military<\/a> *support<\/a> to troubled regimes as well as planning *games this summer<\/a> which will include *NATO<\/a>‘s presence. All in the name of fighting terrorism, of course.<\/p>\n

New lords of Africa<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

What does the US get out of it? Today the US relies on Africa for 15% of its oil imports. The estimates are that by 2005 this will rise to between 20% and 25% of US oil imports. To this we should add the high quality of some of the African oil and the better transport distance from the Atlantic coast compared to the Middle East. Finally, if the US can also set up military bases and station troops to make sure everything is quiet, even if not peaceful, then we have a nice military-economic linkage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

*links in the last paragraph via calixte<\/a>.<\/p>\n

lenin<\/a>‘s Friday, July 02, 2004 post got me thinking again about Africa’s oil. The first several links in this post are repeats from a post I did last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Guardian reported on November 14, 2003 that the UK had been quietly helping the U.S. to secure oil rights in Africa and elsewhere since Blair’s visit to Crawford, Texas in April 2002. A report prepared by American commerce secretary … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-8W","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}