Newhouse News Syndicate Reporter David Wood has presented the "challenging" issues facing America's energy goal of importing 25 percent of its oil from West Africa's Gulf of Guinea in the next decade in a major story in today's Minneapolis Star Tribune, a frequent visitor to this blog.
The article carries a strong emphasis on the perceived need for America to deploy a fleet of naval vessels to the Gulf of Guinea to protect resources that are discovered offshore Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Sao Tome and Principe, where ERHC Energy has won extensive rights.
In some ways, the piece plays counterpoint to the same-day piece by Lydia Polgreen of the New York Times, who stressed the adject poverty and bloodshed that has taken or stunted the lives of so many poor villagers in the Niger Delta (see preceding post).
Calls for a U.S. base in Sao Tome have been rebuffed by the U.S. Navy and treated with some diffidence by the government there. Yet the U.S. has spent a lot of energy to the Gulf of Guinea over the past two years, beefing up patrols against oil theft and vandalism and discusiing approaches to averting coups and other instability that periodically racks the region.
It remains to be seen, of course, whether U.S. officials are willing to weather the difficult passage of laws that would enable a stronger presence in the GoG during its difficult experience in Iraq.
Wood quotes one well-attuned observer:
"The United States, by itself, cannot simply make this region stable," said Theresa Whelan, the Pentagon's top Africa expert. "The best we can do is to try to help these countries help themselves to become more stable."
The two major articles signal strong renewed intrest in the region, and could spark a fire under Alaska's U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, chairman of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, which has been investigating charges of bribery against ExxonMobil and other multinationals for more than two years without issuing a report. He could use the positive publicity: Stevens was recently embarrassed by a major defeat of his effort to open the Alaska National Wildlife Refu8ge to drilling, rejected by a vote of the full Senate last month.
New dependence on African oil may prove to be challenging
Now, 16 percent of America's imported oil comes from the Persian Gulf. In 10 years, 25 percent may come from another gulf, West Africa's Gulf of Guinea.
David Wood, Newhouse News Service
Last update: December 31, 2005 – 9:32 PM
WASHINGTON - The United States is becoming increasingly dependent on oil from a region beset by official corruption, tottering governments, violent criminal syndicates and religious and ethnic strife: West Africa.
The combination of petroleum and trouble ultimately may put the vast oil fields there in a league with the Persian Gulf. In the latter, U.S. energy needs require massive security commitments, including military bases and the constant presence of U.S. warships, and U.S. troops have been embroiled in two wars.
Today, 16 percent of America's imported oil comes from the Persian Gulf. Within a decade, according to projections by the CIA and the Energy Department, 25 percent will come from the other gulf, West Africa's Gulf of Guinea.
That would seem to scream out for a robust Navy presence, including warships, coastal patrol boats and maritime aircraft surveillance.
But the Navy, shrunken from a fleet of 568 warships in the late 1980s to 261 today, cannot maintain an armed presence there. All the United States can muster is an occasional ship for a training cruise along the coast; on the last one, the Navy sent an aging submarine maintenance ship, the USS Emory S. Land.
"We can't afford to have a ship there 365 days a year," said Rear Adm. D.C. Curtis of the U.S. 6th Fleet, which oversees naval responsibilities in Europe and Africa from its headquarters in Naples, Italy. "The days of getting an aircraft carrier off the coast are gone."
That leaves most security in the hands of local forces clearly not up to the job. U.S. officials said thieves each year steal at least $1 billion worth of oil from Nigeria's coastal pipelines; perhaps twice that much is siphoned off by official government corruption.Admirals set up hijacking
In one recent case, two Nigerian admirals -- since fired -- arranged for the hijacking of the African Pride, a rust-streaked, Greek-registered coastal tanker laden with 11,000 tons of Nigerian crude worth $4 million. The ship was seized by the Nigerian Navy on suspicion that its cargo had been stolen. But the navy escorted the African Pride to sea, where its cargo was pumped to another tanker, which disappeared.
Despite its riches, the Gulf of Guinea is "ungoverned, unmonitored and unprotected," Navy Lt. Cmdr. Dan Trott, a Navy desk officer for West Africa, said in a telephone interview from Accra, Ghana.
Current U.S. policy is to gently nudge governments in the region to clean up their own corruption and use their oil profits to build better security.
"The United States, by itself, cannot simply make this region stable," said Theresa Whelan, the Pentagon's top Africa expert. "The best we can do is to try to help these countries help themselves to become more stable."
"In the meantime," Whelan said, "we all just have to deal as best we can with the realities we can't change."
It's not clear this approach will pay off in time.
Today, oil-hungry China and India are elbowing in alongside U.S. and European oil companies in bidding on oil-field leases and exploration rights in waters off Nigeria and Angola and newer fields being developed by Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and the tiny twin-island nation of Sao Tome and Principe. International investors are sinking billions of dollars into ultra-deep drilling rigs and new facilities for oil and liquefied natural gas.
All this comes atop warnings that Al-Qaida, whose terrorists last summer attacked three U.S. warships docked in the Red Sea, may be planning strikes against maritime targets precisely like those off Africa's coast.
"A sustained, destructive storm churns over the horizon," Navy Capt. James Pelkofski, a joint operations officer at the U.S. Fleet Forces Command, writes in Proceedings, the journal of the U.S. Naval Institute. Al-Qaida "can attack, has attacked and will again attack maritime targets."Inviting targets
The sheer scope of the oil fields and related facilities in the Gulf of Guinea region leaves them vulnerable to attack. There are more than 6,000 miles of oil pipelines in Nigeria alone, most of them crisscrossing the maze of swamps and canals in the Niger River Delta.
Many rigs are isolated far offshore. One of the newest lies 75 miles off the Nigerian coast, a $3.6 billion Royal Dutch Shell facility for oil and natural gas that combines drilling, storage and loading facilities.
A dozen additional facilities for liquefied natural gas are being built across the region, including on Equatorial Guinea's main island of Bioko, and in Angola. These are expensive, sprawling complexes for production, storage, pipelines and offshore loading piers.
And they are attractive targets for increasingly savvy criminal gangs that are well-financed with billions of dollars of stolen oil money, U.S. intelligence officials said.
"Five years ago, they were using only small arms," said a U.S. Navy security adviser, who asked not to be identified. "Now ... let's just say the minimum safe altitude for helicopters has gone way up."
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