The Horn of Africa States: Oil And Gas An Opportunity Or A Curse? – OpEd
Why Las Anod, now? Is it a clan issue again or the pseudo-religious tremors? No, it is none of these. It is oil and gas! Note that Las Anod is just a city in the region, but it is important for it is not far from one of the largest elephant oil fields of the region, the Holhol oil field, a concession given to ConocoPhillips long ago by the then regime of Mohamed Siad Barre.
It is said, in some old reports, that the field can produce some three hundred thousand barrels per day of oil, excluding gas and this makes it a truly giant field. This should not be a surprise. The Horn of Africa States remains todate one of the few unexplored regions in the world. Perhaps the only other unexplored regions are the Antarctic and to some extent the Arctic.
The Horn of Africa States region is further reported to be containing some six hundred billion barrels of oil and gas, which would make the region the second largest potential oil and gas producer. It is why the hydrocarbon man is busy in the region, stirring up trouble everywhere and every time to weaken it, so they could make them sign centuries long contracts that favor, of course, the oil man.
It is the main reason for which troubles find their way into the region with ease. Science today is exploitable for both good humanly reasons and for nefarious reasons. Some people question the now almost frequent recurrence of droughts and famines in the region. Is this natural or manmade? Where is the hydrocarbon man in this and why are some countries not far from the region which were deserts before turning into greens these days? Are they stealthily wooing away rain-bearing clouds from the region to their parts?
It is obvious that the region is one of the last frontiers for the hydrocarbon man, although they were in the region since 1948. They were, however, unable to deal with the region as they did with other regions of the world. The region was well fed, owned its proud long history and did not really push hard just to earn a few pennies to earn a living as happened for example in Arabia of the 1930s, a region that was hungry and thirsty and could do with a few pesetas and/or a few rupias at the time.
The hydrocarbon man never rests, and they have been working on the region ever since and it is perhaps time now for them to make the final killing blow on the region. The region is so weakened, and its leaders made so desperate to sign any contract placed on their desks, as long as they can get a fistful of dollars. It is where the Las Anod fiasco comes in for it is the administrative city that controls the Holhol oil field, still held in the name of ConocoPhillips. No wonder, there were American soldiers seen in the vicinity, in Aynabo
which is not far from the field itself. This appears to be an exploratory process to revisit the force majeure declared by the mostly American oil companies, which had concessions in the region at the time.
Though the clan strife cannot be ignored nor the foreign-implanted religious terror groups, it would appear now that they needed to weaken Somaliland not to go over its head assuming that it would be recognized as a government and independent of Somalia. Stability is anathema for the oilman unless it is in his interest. A glance at Europe which is now paying four times the price they were paying for Russian gas should be a sufficiently good lesson to learn from. It is perhaps time the Horn African citizen came to terms with the realities of the world today. There is a day for everybody!
The problem for the hydrocarbon man in the region is solving the revenue sharing issues not only with the officially recognized states of the region, the SEED countries, but also with each state and its various sub-regions where clan conflicts and clan competitions play havoc. What they seeded themselves has come to roost and the Hydrocarbon man is now facing the weakened structures which they helped create and has no solution for this problem. At least, as yet!
The Horn of Africa is a region that has its own particularities – its own problems and its own ways of addressing these problems. What has made matters worse is that the region is not allowed to manage their problems in their own ways and the interference of the hydrocarbon man has complicated matters much more than their actual implications as problems, in the first place. They have introduced more problems including piracy, religious terrorism and more deadly clannism and tribalism, which has killed millions of people. They have disabled the food production capabilities of the people and made them dependent on handouts of probably expired grains repackaged for the region, and much more.
It is why the issue of oil and gas has often times come into the forefront of discussions in the region as to whether it would truly be an opportunity or a curse. In some parts like the Arabia, it was an opportunity for they did not contest anything, and they signed whatever they were asked to sign. In other parts it was, indeed, a curse for it caused headaches and wars and issues they could have lived without. Nigeria come to focus when the curse of oil and gas is mentioned. The Biafra war, the continuing civil strives among the country’s population and its inability to route out corruption are some of the major problems of Nigeria.
