Obasanjo Headed To Sao Tome, Lusa Says, To Help Resolve Issues

An article posted by Dadd17 on Raging Bull's ERHE message board confirms and elaborates on Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo's visit tomorrow to Sao Tome. The report, again, is from Lusa>, which has covered the story closely but has never reported both sides of it.

ERHC On The Move believes the real reason for the Obasanjo visit is to sign the awards.

It is unclear whether their reporter even asked if Obasanjo was headed there to annonce awards with President Fradique de Menezes, and just mentions the friction that it hints has grown up between the countries laregly as a result of its reporting on the bilateral Joint Development Zone awards, which until now have been delayed in Sao Tome.

As we said earlier, late in the second licensing round Portugal approached Sao Tome about becoming involved in the round, but was necessarily rebuffed and invited to become a bidder in the third round and a later round for award of Nigeria's EEZ blocks.

Portugal is a small country that has lost an empire and speaks a Romance language that is slowly becoming archaic; its sensitivities and fondness for "Lusaphone" stories - i.e., stories friendly to Portugal's interests and culture - may well underlie Lusa's journalistic slant.

In fact, we feel that the government news agency is playing a patriotic tune throughout its reporting that carefully blocks any balancing or favorable light that might fall on ERHC Energy and the Nigerian role in the process. Now, everything out of Sao Tome from Lusa> further elaborates the first story they did that touched off the 12-day dispute and forced three resignations and firing among high-ranking Sao Tome officials.

It is not, we should stress, that there is no merit to what Lusa> says, but that it says only what improves their own story line.

Here is the Lusa story:

Sao Tome: Nigeria's Obasanjo expected in Sao Tome Friday - presidential aide

Sao Tome, May 19 (Lusa) - Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo is expected in Sao Tome and Principe Friday for talks with his island counterpart, Fradique de Menezes, on the stalled awarding of five oil exploration blocks in the two countries' offshore Joint Development Zone (JDZ), a Sao Tome presidential aide confirmed Thursday.

De Menezes' aide, asking to remain unidentified, confirmed to Lusa rumors Obasanjo was heading to Sao Tome to discuss the delayed announcement of awards.

The official declined to elaborate further on Friday's agenda, but said the two presidents would discuss their bilateral "oil dossier" that has been bogged down by political gridlock in Sao Tome.

Confirmation of Obasanjo's visit came less than 24 hours after Nigeria's ambassador to the islands denied accusations by Sao Tome and Principe's leaders that Abuja was bullying the archipelago in the bilateral process of awarding JDZ oil exploration blocks.

Ambassador Saidu Pindar also used a Wednesday news conference to blame the archipelago's authorities for hobbling the transfer of USD 123 Mn from an earlier signature bonus award.

Pindar, dismissing charges made last week by the islands' president, de Menezes, said that decisions on JDZ block awards were "taken by consensus" in the bilateral Joint Development Authority (JDA) and the senior Joint Ministerial Council (JMC).

The JMC reportedly approved the awarding of five shared offshore blocks at a late April meeting in Abuja, but the announcement has been delayed by political infighting in Sao Tome.

Under fire over the awards from the islands' two governing parties, de Menezes defended his oversight of the process by saying Sao Tome had "mortgaged" its decision-making prerogatives to Nigeria in "disastrous accords" agreed by a preceding Sao Tome administration.

De Menezes, whose partisan backers sit on opposition benches in the archipelago's parliament, resigned last week as chairman of the National Petroleum Council, saying he wanted to "avoid confusion".

At the news conference Wednesday, Pindar warned the islands' governing coalition that its virulent denunciations of the awards process risked jeopardizing bilateral relations and cooperation between the region's major power, Nigeria, and their micro-state.

Questioned on the fate of the USD 123 Mn signature bonus paid by ChevronTexaco for the only JDZ block awarded so far, the ambassador said it lay in a Nigerian bank awaiting the signatures of Sao Tome authorities in order to be transferred.

"We are waiting on Sao Tome and Principe's authorities to distribute the money", he said, indicating that the lacking signatures referred to the JMC awards decision on five blocks taken in Abuja at the end of April.

Nigeria "has already signed the document", the ambassador said.

Under a bilateral treaty signed in 2001, revenues from the JDZ are shared 60:40 in Abuja's favor.

RCN/SAS.

Lusa