by Administrator     Thursday, 25 March 2010 08:51

Published by Andy Rowell March 19th, 2010 in African Oil, US foreign policy,

exploration, violence

Continuing our African focus over the last couple of days, let’s turn to

Somalia.

I spent some six months in the country over twenty years ago and even then

the American oil company Amoco was busy exploring for oil in the North of

the country and in the Gulf of Aden.

The reasoning being simple – the logic went back then that the huge oil

fields found in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf curve like a spoon under the Yemen

and Red Sea and pop up in Somalia and the Gulf of Aden.

Amoco’s excitement was also due to large natural bitumen seepage in the

North of the country. But, to my knowledge, nothing ever came of it.

Since then, Somalia has descended into chaos and anarchy and become the

country largely forgotten by the outside world.

Or has it? Last week, the last ambassador of the United States to Somalia

(1994-1995), Daniel H. Simpson, who is now an associate editor for the

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, wrote a piece called “Folly in Somalia”.

He posed the question “why, apart from the only lightly documented charge of

Islamic extremism among the Shabab, is the United States reengaging in

Somalia at this time?”

The week before that the New York Times had reported that the US was

offering increased military support to a new Somali government offensive.

The primary reason for US engagement is of course the worry that Somalia, as

a failed state, is becoming a haven for terrorists, and, as the paper put

it:

“The United States is increasingly concerned about the link between Somalia

and Yemen, a growing extremist hot spot, with fighters going back and forth

across the Red Sea in what one Somali watcher described as an “Al Qaeda

exchange program”.”

Chasing Al Qaeda round the Horn of Africa may be the US’s primary objective,

but a great article on Information Clearing House, also points to other

reasons and that of course means oil.

The same day as Daniel Simpson penned his piece in the Pittsburgh

Post-Gazette , a UPI press article wrote a feature titled “East Africa is

next hot oil zone.” The news agency disclosed that:

“East Africa is emerging as the next oil boom following a big strike in

Uganda’s Lake Albert Basin. Other oil and natural gas reserves have been

found in Tanzania and Mozambique and exploration is under way in Ethiopia

and even war-torn Somalia.”

The region, until recently largely ignored by the energy industry, is “the

last real high-potential area in the world that hasn’t been fully explored,”

Richard Schmitt, CEO of Dubai’s Black Marlin Energy, which is prospecting in

East Africa, told UPi.

About Somali it said: “A 1993 study by Petroconsultants of Geneva concluded

that Somalia has two of the most potentially interesting

hydrocarbon-yielding basins in the entire region — one in the central Mudugh

region, the other in the Gulf of Aden.”

Hence Amoco’s interest in the late eighties And hence, in part, America’s

interest now.

Meanwhile two days ago, the oil company Range announced it is finalising the

work on the first exploration well to be drilled in Somalia’s

semi-autonomous Puntland region for over 16 years, after concluding negotiations with the Government of the Puntland State.

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