From: L-Bueno@cup.portal.com (Louis Alberto Bueno)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Oil in Somalia
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 93 14:33:42 PST
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Distribution: world

cb@tamarack13.timbuk (Chris Brewster) writes:

>Isn't it amazing how Bush suddenly turned "humanitarian" in his final weeks
>in office, moved by the suffering in Somalia?  An article in the
>Minneapolis Star Tribune notes that four oil companies have been highly
>active in Somalia, and, as it happens, Somalia has a HUGE untapped oil
>reserve.  (This isn't surprising, since Somalia is just across the water
>from Arabia.)  So George went to war for oil; this is the one thing he
>really believes in.
>
>Chris Brewster
>cb@cray.com

	Here's the related article from the L.A. Times:

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	Copied without permission from:        
	The Los Angeles Times, January 18, 1993

	OIL COMPANIES TO BENEFIT FROM SOMALIA PACIFICATION

	By Mark Fineman

	MOGADISHU, Somalia - Far beneath the surface of the tragic drama of
Somalia, four major U.S. oil companies are sitting on a prospective fortune
in exclusive concessions to explore and exploit tens of millions of acres
of the Somali countryside.
	That land, in the opinion of geologists and industry sources, could
yield significant amounts of oil and natural gas if the U.S.-led military
mission can restore peace to the impoverished East African nation.
	According to documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times, nearly
two-thirds of Somalia was allocated to the American oil giants Conoco,
Amoco, Chevron and Phillips in the final years before Somalia's pro-U.S.
President Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown and the nation plunged into
chaos in January 1991. Industry sources said the companies holding the
rights to the most promising concessions are hoping that the Bush
administration's decision to send U.S. troops to safeguard aid shipments to
Somalia will also help protect their multimillion-dollar investments there.
	Officially, the administration and the State Department insist that
the U.S. military mission in Somalia is strictly humanitarian. Oil industry
spokesmen dismissed as "absurd" and "nonsense" allegations by aid experts,
veteran East Africa analysts and several prominent Somalis that President
Bush, a former Texas oilman, was moved to act in Somalia at least in part
by the U.S. corporate oil stake.
	But corporate and scientific documents disclose that the American
companies are well-positioned to pursue Somalia's most promising potential
oil reserves the moment the nation is pacified. And the State Department
and U.S. military officials acknowledge that one of those oil companies has
done more than simply sit back and hope for peace.
	Conoco Inc., the only major multinational corporation to maintain a
functioning office in Mogadishu throughout the past two years of nationwide
anarchy, has been directly involved in the U.S. government's role in the
U.N.-sponsored humanitarian military effort.
	Conoco, whose tireless exploration efforts in north-central Somalia
reportedly had yielded the most encouraging prospects just before Siad
Barre's fall, permitted its Mogadishu corporate compound to be transformed
into a de facto American embassy a few days before the U.S. Marines landed
in the capital, with President Bush's special envoy using it as his
temporary headquarters. In addition, the president of the company's
subsidiary in Somalia won high official praise for serving as the
government's volunteer "facilitator" during the months before and during
the U.S. intervention.
	Describing the arrangement as "a business relationship," John
Geybauer, spokesman for Conoco Oil in Houston, said the company was acting
as "a good corporate citizen and neighbor" in granting the U.S.
government's request to be allowed to rent the compound.
	But the close relationship between Conoco and the U.S. intervention
force has left many Somalis and foreign development experts deeply troubled
by the blurred line between the U.S. government and the large oil company,
leading many to liken the Somalia operation to a miniature version of
Operation Desert Storm, the U.S.-led military effort in January 1991 to
drive Iraq from Kuwait and, more broadly, safeguard the world's largest oil
reserves.
	Although most oil experts outside Somalia laugh at the suggestion
that the nation ever could rank among the world's major oil producers - and
most maintain that the international aid mission is intended simply to feed
Somalia's starving masses-no one doubts that there is oil in Somalia. The
only question: How much?
	"It's there. There's no doubt there's oil there," said Thomas E.
O'Connor, the principal petroleum engineer for the World Bank who headed an
in-depth, three-year study of oil prospects in the Gulf of Aden off
Somalia's northern coast.
	O'Connor, a professional geologist, based his conclusion on the
findings of some of the world's top petroleum geologists. In a 1991 World
Bank-coordinated study, intended to encourage private investment in the
petroleum potential of eight African nations, the geologists put Somalia
and Sudan at the top of the list of prospective commercial oil producers.
	Presenting their results during a three-day conference in London in
September 1991, two of those geologists, an American and an Egyptian,
reported that an analysis of nine exploratory wells drilled in Somalia
indicated that the region is "situated within the oil window, and thus are
highly prospective for gas and oil." A report by a third geologist, Z.R.
Beydoun, said offshore sites possess "the geological parameters conducive
to the generation, expulsion and trapping of significant amounts of oil and
gas."
	Beginning in 1986, Conoco, along with Amoco, Chevron, Phillips and,
briefly, Shell all sought and obtained exploration licenses for northern
Somalia from Siad Barre's government. Somalia was soon carved up into
concessional blocs, with Conoco, Amoco and Chevron winning the right to
explore and exploit the most promising ones.
	The companies' interest in Somalia clearly pre-dated the World Bank
study. It was grounded in the findings of another, highly successful
exploration effort by the Texas-based Hunt Oil Corp. across the Gulf of
Aden in the Arabian Peninsula nation of Yemen, where geologists disclosed
in the mid-1980s that the estimated 1 billion barrels of Yemeni oil
reserves were part of a great underground rift, or valley, that arced into
and across northern Somalia. Hunt's Yemeni operation, which is now yielding
nearly 200,000 barrels of oil a day, and their implications for the entire
region were not lost on then-Vice President Bush. In fact, Bush witnessed
it first-hand in April 1986, when he officially dedicated Hunt's new $18
million refinery near the ancient Yemeni town of Marib. In remarks during
the event, Bush emphasized the critical value of supporting U.S. corporate
efforts to develop and safeguard potential oil reserves in the region.
	Of the four U.S. companies holding the Siad Barre-era oil
concessions, Conoco is believed to be the only one that negotiated what
spokesman Geybauer called "a standstill agreement" with an interim
government set up by one of Mogadishu's two principal warlords, Ali Mahdi
Mohamed. Industry sources said the other U.S. companies with contracts in
Somalia cited 'force majeure' (superior power), a legal term asserting that
they were forced by the war to abandon their exploration efforts and would
return as soon as peace is restored.
	"It's going to be very interesting to see whether these agreements
are still good," said Mohamed Jirdeh, a prominent Somali businessman in
Mogadishu who is familiar with the oil-concession agreements. "Whatever
Siad did, all those records and contracts, all disappeared after he fled.
... And this period has brought with it a deep change of our society.
	"Our country is now very weak, and, of course, the American oil
companies are very strong. This has to be handled very diplomatically, and
I think the American government must move out of the oil business, or at
least make clear that there is a definite line separating the two, if they
want to maintain a long-term relationship here."
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