The Pursuit for Oil in Africa

But the U.S.--in its usual way of "divide and rule" to maintain its hegemonic position in the world--has already seized on this positive African approach and tried to pit Africans against the Arabs on the issue of oil to break the solidarity among the Organization of Petroleum Producing Countries (OPEC). It is this hegemonic "divide and rule" imperialist strategy that turns "friends" into enemies at any time it pleases the U.S. government. It is this same approach in an earlier phase that, in the U.S. interests for oil, used Saudi Arabia as a "friend" of the U.S. in order to weaken the Arab peoples' cause for nationhood, but was now turning against it when it did not any longer suit those interests.

On 25th January 2002, the State Department released information at a breakfast seminar sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS) entitled: "African Oil: A Priority for U.S. National Security and African Development" about the projected U.S. strategies on oil and the growing importance of African oil to the U.S. economy. The U.S. officials, among them an Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Walter Kunsteiner, added: "It is undeniable that this (oil) has become of national strategic interest to us."

According to James Dunlop, an assistant to Kunsteiner, who also spoke at the meeting, the United States already was getting 15 per cent of its oil imports from the African continent, and the figure was growing. A U.S. Air Force, Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, a political/military officer assigned to the Office of Secretary of Defense for African Affairs, confirmed that Africa was important to U.S. national security. She authoritatively added that she spoke as " a U.S. government policymaker in the area of sub-Saharan Africa and national security interests." She tried to justify the shift in U.S. interests by pointing out that the U.S. relationship to African countries was non-colonial, based on a generally positive history. In this, she did not refer to the past relationship of slave trade, which had a negative impact on today's development prospects for Africa. What was important to the U.S. at this juncture was to try to woo African states in the new strategic game of U.S. "security interests" and Africa's oil had now become important to the U.S. security interests because the availability of Arab oil could no longer be relied upon. According to the U.S. National Intelligence Council's document "Global Trends 2015" report, which came out in December 2001 after the September attack, 25 per cent of U.S. oil imports in 2015 were projected to come from sub-Saharan Africa. The prime energy location sites were in West Africa, Sudan, and Central Africa.

In this respect, Africa was seen as being important for the "diversification of our sources of imported oil" away from the "troubled areas of the Middle East and other politically high-risk areas." In fact this drive to diversify sources of oil was behind the U.S. policy to bring about "regime change" in Iraq. In this context, the vast oil and gas reserves of Africa, Russia and the Asian Caspian regions had become critical for U.S. hegemony. The proven reserves of the African continent were said to be well over 30 billion barrels of oil, and over 40 different types of crude were available. Under current projections, the U.S. expects to import over 770 million barrels of African petroleum by the year 2020. U.S. investments in this direction were expected to increase so that by 2003, these would exceed $10 billion a year. Between two-thirds and three-fourths of U.S. direct investment in Africa will be in the energy sector, and this was expected to contribute to Africa's economic development.

The U.S. has vigorously begun to pursue this policy in the Sudan and Nigeria. Recent U.S. peace moves in the Sudan are linked to this strategy. At a dinner honoring Reverend Leon Sullivan on the 20th of June 2002, President Bush stated that the U.S. would continue the search for peace in the Sudan, while at the same time seeking to end her sponsorship of terrorism. He added:

Since September the 11th there is no question that the government of Sudan has made useful contributions in cracking down on terror. But Sudan can and must do more. And Sudan's government must understand that ending and stopping its sponsorship of terror outside Sudan is no substitute for efforts to stop war inside Sudan. Sudan's government cannot continue to block and manipulate U.N. food deliveries, and must not allow slavery to persist.

It was therefore imperative to put to an end the war in the Sudan in order to explore the vast oil resources in all Sudan. It was estimated that 3-4 billion barrels of oil lie in the Southern Sudd area of the country, which was under the control of the SPLM. The new anti-terrorism policy in Sudan, combined with the shift of U.S. strategic considerations from the Middle East in terms of oil production, required that a peace settlement be worked on as a matter of priority and this explains the role the U.S. played in bringing about the Machakos Peace Agreement between the government of Sudan and the SPLM in July 2002. Recently, the Sudanese government in the North reported that it had discovered a new oil source in the Northern parts of the country. This suggested that the U.S. would in the future play the South against the North in order to assure itself of energy supplies. Hence its efforts to bring about peace in the Sudan were not wholly genuine.

As regards Nigeria, the U.S. government is said to be targeting the Gulf of Guinea as a replacement to the Gulf of Persia as the future main source of U.S. oil imports. This region is now dubbed the "Africa Kuwait" in the U.S. strategic lexicon. A White Paper submitted to the U.S. Government by the African Oil Policy Initiative Group (AOPIG), pointed to the growing fear of insecurity in the continued supply of crude oil from the troubled Persian Gulf. According to Dr. Paul Michael Wihbey, a leading member and Fellow of the American Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (AIASPS), the U.S. expected to double its oil imports from Nigeria from 900,000 barrels per day to around 1.8 million barrels per day in the next five years. He pointed out that one major lesson of the September 11th terrorist attack was that the U.S. needed to diversify its major source of oil away from the Persian Gulf. A Lagos newspaper quoted him as saying:

Statistics from the US Department of Energy showed African oil exports to the US will rise to 50 percent of total oil supply by 2015. Nigeria is the energy super power of Africa. The private sector, small and major operators, administration and officials, have come to realize that Nigeria and the Gulf of Guinea are of strategic importance to the US.

The U.S. government had in fact already begun discussions on the new initiative with the Nigerian government. An important factor that was creating a greater focus on its oil was that Nigeria had created an atmosphere of stability since the democratically elected government of President Olusegun Obasanjo had come to power. U.S. President George W. Bush visited Nigeria and four other African countries in the first quarter of 2003. In fact all this made a lot of sense at the very time when the U.S. was distancing itself from Saudi Arabia, its former ally. A briefing to a Pentagon defense panel described Saudi Arabia as a "kernel of evil." The Washington Post of August 6, 2002 reported that the briefing had described Saudi Arabia as the enemy of the U.S. Laurent Murawiec, in his July 10th 2002 briefing, is said to have stated: "The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from ideologists to cheerleaders." He added that Saudi Arabia supported U.S. enemies and also attacked U.S. allies. He described Saudi Arabia as "the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the dangerous opponent" in the Middle East. The Washington Post added that although the briefing did not reflect official U.S. policy, these views represented a "growing currency" within the Bush administration. Yet in trying to play Africa against the Arab world, the U.S. was exploiting certain weaknesses within the African polity created by the European colonial strategy of "divide and rule." The U.S. reasoned that its reliance on African sources of oil was better assured in Africa than in the Arab world. One official argued that it would be difficult to find a Saddam Hussein in Africa. The reason was Africa's political disunity because of the African political elite having accepted former colonial boundaries as sacrosanct. The U.S. could exploit these divisions even more, especially when it came to the "Anglophone" and "francophone" divisions, which the U.S. and France could exploit to advance their interests. Moreover, it could also exploit the democracy and good governance cards to topple regimes that put road blocks in its way.

It is clear that the U.S. had gained wide acceptance of its anti-terrorist policies among the majority of African States. There is also indication that although at the G8 Summit at Kananaskis (Alberta, Canada) the U.S. did not offer much by way of financial backing to the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), the U.S. and other members of the G8 had placed great importance on the NEPAD initiative if only because it gave Nigeria and South Africa a predominant voice in Africa's affairs. It was believed that these two countries would bring the other African leaders under disciplined control through the Peer Review Mechanism on Good Governance, which the leaders had imposed on themselves as a condition for financial support for NEPAD.

Indeed, one of the very first "projects" under NEPAD was a project to fight terrorism. During his whistle-stop tour of West Africa in April 2002, the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, acknowledged that the September 11th attacks on the United States had effected a real change in the way everybody looked at the world. In his address to the Ghana Parliament, Blair argued that increased financial support to Africa was part of the process of fighting "terrorism" because engaging African states could reduce the risk of their becoming "breeding grounds for the kind of people who carried out the U.S. attacks." He further argued: "If we leave failed states in parts of Africa, the problems sooner or later end up on our door step." So the African countries are part and parcel of the September 11th alliance against terrorism, but African continued support will depend on how the U.S. plays its game, which is very dicey.

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