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Africa News afrol News
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Africa News afrol News
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afrol.com, 30 August - The oil boom in tiny Equatorial Guinea has been going on for four years now, and the GDP has more than tripled. Guineans, however, have not noticed much of this new wealth, as most of the revenue goes to the tiny clan clan around president Obiang and some foreign multinationals. Equatorial Guinea in the early 1990s was stagnant and loosing its international credibility due to the openly fraudulent elections, gross human rights abuses and few resources. Nobody believed in the possibility of finding oil, as one had been searching ever since colonial times. The IMF and World Bank pulled out and Spain, formerly the main donor country, did not renew its cooperation. President Obiang was not well seen, and most governments would have welcomed a coup d'état in Guinea. October 29th, 1996: Equatorial Guinea and its partners, Mobil and the Houston-based United Meridian Corporation (UMC), celebrated the first oil production from the Zafiro field. It had only gone 18 months since its discovery. "Today's ceremony signals that Equatorial Guinea is making steady progress toward developing its large energy resources," the president Teodoro Obiang Nguema was qouted saying. "We plan to invest the petroleum revenues into the economy to strengthen the infrastructure of the nation and raise the standard of living for all Equatorial Guineans." 1997: The following year, in 1997, offshore petroleum production earned the country an estimated US$100 million, effectively doubling the gross domestic product overnight. Mobil's production is hovering at about 80.000 barrels a day from a single deep-water field code. International companies were waiting in line to meet president Obiang when it became clear that there are bigger oil reserves off the Guinean coast. Mobil and other companies have been scrambling for the rights to explore for more deposits on deep-water blocks nearby. "Zafiro doesn't even represent one-tenth of the potential production of Equatorial Guinea," the Equatorial Guinean minister of mining, Cristóbal Mañana Elá, said to the New York Times, commenting the unexploited blocks. "What we are about to see in my country is an economic explosion." Economic explosion meaning "boom" in Spanish, one still can agree with Mañana's translation. Moreover, the entire oil rich zone of The Gulf of Guinea, from Angola, through Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon to Nigeria, is becoming an increasingly important energy source for the West. Angola is already supplying some 10% of U.S. oil imports, and Nigeria is also a major source of oil for the U.S. and Spain. Dependence of these countries is growing, and Western governments are keeping on friendly terms with whoever is ruling. This is best illustrated by the U.S. government's sudden courting with the former arch-enemy governing in Luanda, but also by European reluctance regarding human rights in Equatorial Guinea. The zone is also growing increasingly important for the influential oil companies. Elf derives about 60 percent of its global oil production from the Gulf of Guinea. Other companies, in particular Shell and Mobil, also get a large percentage of their revenues from the zone. Over the next 20 years, industry experts say, Western oil companies will invest between $40 billion and $60 billion in the Gulf of Guinea alone. As with Western governments, the oil companies turn a deaf ear when it comes to human rights abuses in their countries of revenue, best illustrated by the case of the Nigerian government's November 1995 execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, the prominent poet and environmental activist. October 1999: France and U.S. companies had become the main foreign contacts for the Obiang dictatorship, a situation seemingly inappropriate for the former motherland, Spain. After keeping the contacts with Guinea on a low profile for five years, a new, unconditional, cooperation accord was signed with president Obiang. The Equatorial Guinean opposition, mostly exiled in Spain and Cameroon, protested, of no avail. Indeed, since 1995 Spanish oil companies had sat on the sidelines while American and French companies consolidated their base of activities throughout the rich oil fields in the Gulf of Guinea. In an interview in the monthly magazine Jeune Afrique in June 1999, President Obiang extended a carrot by saying, "If the Spanish are ever interested again, I can find oil excavation zones that haven't been allotted, but I doubt their willingness with regard to this." This year, the boom goes on. In March, the American Vanco Energy Company, through its subsidiary Vanco International Ltd., signed a Production Sharing Contract with the government of Equatorial Guinea for the Corisco Deep Block. The Corisco Deep Block lies offshore Rio Muni, bordering to Gabon. Vanco has a 100% interest in the block, and is the operator. Vanco is an international oil and gas exploration and production company based in Houston, Texas, with activity in Gabon, Morocco, Cote d'Ivoire and Senegal and is the leading deepwater acreage holder in West Africa. In Equatorial Guinea, where the new oil income should, in theory, insure a comfortable life for all, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has repeatedly pledged not to repeat the mistakes of neighbors, like Nigeria and Gabon, that have squandered huge amounts of export earnings. Yet on Bioko Island, which includes Malabo, virtually the only new construction to be found is housing for the President, his relatives and political allies, structures that range from the sumptuous to the gaudy. Neither Bata on the Rio Muni mainland, which was named the new capital in July, has seen very much of the investments in "the infrastructure of the nation" promised in 1996. Bata, the new capital with some 71.000 inhabitants, is a desolate sight. Some government buildings and housing have popped up after its naming as a capital. "The town's main, artery which crosses the city of north to the south, from the airport to the port, alongside the Atlantic Ocean, is a construction site over several sections," a journalist of the AFP noted today. But Bata still does not have neither electricity nor tap water. At night, the town experiences total darkness, with exception of government residences and some businesses and hotels, which are equipped with power generating units. The hydroelectric power in Bikomo has been outdated and lacking water in the dry season for years. The inhabitants of Bata still are using water from wells. Of doubtful color, most of the time not potable, it smells of mud. Meanwhile, president Obiang enjoys of his new wealth. This week, the president travelled to Paris and later on New York to attend the UN "Millennium Summit". Pocket money for the journey should be no problem, neither for him, his wife nor his travelling companions. Mobil will have the honour of paying all expenses for his Excellence, such as they have done on his previous journeys. On 25 August 1999, Mañana Elá sent a fax to Mobil Equatorial Guinea with the following content: "With this letter, I request your usual collaboration, in the meaning that Mobil E.G. takes charge of the hotel and transport expenses and whatever other not foreseen expenses during the stay of the presidential cortège, according to the travel plan."
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