Oil Revenues Security and Stability in West Africa 1St Ed Edition Vandy Kanyako Full Chapter
Oil Revenues Security and Stability in West Africa 1St Ed Edition Vandy Kanyako Full Chapter
Oil Revenues Security and Stability in West Africa 1St Ed Edition Vandy Kanyako Full Chapter
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Acknowledgments
This book is the product of extensive research and several years of collab-
oration and dialogue with many individuals and groups to whom I owe a
debt of gratitude. It would not have been possible without the generous
funding I received from the faculty development grant at Portland State
University. The book would not have been possible without the support
and encouragement of various individuals, organizations and institutions,
both inside and outside of West Africa. My foremost thanks goes to all
those individuals and civil society organizations and grassroots community
groups that are working every day to draw attention to the core issues
covered in this book. Their support and guidance provided rich mate-
rials that helped in making this endeavor feasible. A big thank you to all
those who took time out of their busy schedule to meet with me or share
ideas via different mediums throughout the process of writing this book,
including PC David Mandu Farley Keili-Coomber of Mandu Chiefdom,
Sierra Leone, whose incisive knowledge of local laws and natural resource
owenership proved invaluable.
To my colleagues in the Conflict Resolution program at Portland
State University, Portland, Oregon, (Dr. Patricia Schechter [Interim
Director], Dr. Robert Gould, Dr. Harry Anastasiou, Dr. Barbara Tint,
Dr. Amanda Byron, Dr. Rachel Cunliffe, and Dr. Tom Hastings), I am
eternally grateful for your collegial support, Dr. Schechter’s encourage-
ment and professional guidance was particularly critical to the success of
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
this venture. I say a big thank you as well to Aislyn Matias, our hard-
working Program Coordinator who helped to weave the different strands
together!
To my family and friends, I would like to express my deepest gratitude.
It was a great comfort and relief to know that you were pushing me on
and motivating me to embark on this project. Your words of encourage-
ment kept me going till the very end. To my son Iveagh who kept asking
“Dad, Is the book done yet?” I say big thank you (with hugs) for your
patience and understanding.
To Dr. Susan Shepler of American University in Washington DC, and
my colleague at the West Africa Oil Watch, Dr. Robert Tynes, my heartfelt
thanks for your intellectual inspiration and continued support. A note
of appreciation to my research assistants for this project: Evan Way, Lisa
Serrano and Anisuz Zaman, who put in countless hours to help me meet
the deadline.
I’m eternally grateful to the various reviewers and endorsers including
Dr. Lansana Gberie, Dr. Jeffrey Colgan, and Ambassador Herman J.
Cohen. Your work on the extractive industry in particular and on sub-
Saharan Africa in general, has been a great source of inspiration for me.
Versions of Chapter 5 on community agitation has appeared in the
Journal for the Study of Peace and Conflict, and I am grateful to The
Wisconsin Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies for letting me repro-
duce it in this book.
Finally, to the team at Palgrave Macmillan: Alina Yurova, Balaji Varad-
haraju, Rachel Moore, and countless others who made this venture a
reality my heartfelt appreciation. There are countless others that I have
not listed here, more out of the need for brevity, rather than out of negli-
gence. If your name is not listed, please understand. I appreciate all of
your efforts in helping me reach this milestone in my professional journey.
Contents
Index 215
vii
Abbreviations
AU African Union
BBLS Barrels
BCM Billion Cubic Meters
BOE Barrels of Oil Equivalent
BP British Petroleum
CENTAL Center for Transparency and Accountability in Liberia
CNOOC China National Oil Corporation
CNPC China National Petroleum Corporation
CSO Civil Society Organization
CSPOG Civil Society Platform on Oil and Gas
DACDF Diamond Area Community Development Fund
DFID Department for International Development
ECOMOG Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group
(peace enforcement arm of ECOWAS)
ECOWAS Economic Community of West African States
EEZ Exclusive Economic Zone
EIA Energy Information Administration
EITI Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative
ENI Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi
EPA Economic Partnership Agreements
ERA Environmental Rights Action
FNLA National Liberation Front of Angola
GDP Gross Domestic Product
ICISD International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes
IEA International Energy Agency
IMF International Monetary Fund
ix
x ABBREVIATIONS
Fig. 2.1 Oil zones of West Africa: February 2010 (Credit U.S.
Geological Survey. Department of the Interior/USGS) 36
Fig. 4.1 Oil rents (% of GDP) (Source Estimates based on sources
and methods described in “The Changing Wealth of
Nations: Measuring Sustainable Development in the New
Millennium” [World Bank 2011]. License: CC BY-4.0) 89
Fig. 4.2 Oil rents (% of GDP) in West Africa (Source Estimates
based on sources and methods described in “The Changing
Wealth of Nations: Measuring Sustainable Development in
the New Millennium” [World Bank 2011]. License: CC
BY-4.0) 90
Fig. 4.3 Military expenditure (% of GDP) (Source Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute [SIPRI], Yearbook:
Armaments, Disarmament and International Security, ID
MS.MILXPND.CN. License: Use and distribution of
these data are subject to Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute [SIPRI] terms and condition) 98
Fig. 4.4 Military expenditure (% of GDP) in 1999 (Source
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute [SIPRI],
Yearbook: Armaments, Disarmament and International
Security, ID MS.MILXPND.CN. License: Use and
distribution of these data are subject to Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute [SIPRI] terms and
condition) 99
Fig. 5.1 Civic response to oil ‘capture’ 131
xi
List of Tables
xiii
CHAPTER 1
improving rapidly. Most of the new reserves are deep-sea oil fields that
can now be exploited by new technology and drilling techniques includ-
ing extended reach and complex path drilling, ideal for the region’s ultra-
deep waters. Other relevant factors include the relative stability in the
region following the conclusion of its civil wars in the early 2000s. The
conclusion of the civil war in Angola in 2002 and the consolidation of
democracy in Nigeria, has also helped fuel the oil boom in the region.
Externally, the perennial instability in the traditional petroleum regions
such as the Persian Gulf, has forced governments and oil companies to
look for alternative sources for oil in places like West Africa. Continued
high prices on the global market for the “Sweet crude” variety, which hit
a record high of $164.64 in 2008 helped to make West Africa attractive
to foreign direct investment.
The intensifying oil activities have been made possible in part by for-
eign direct investment from some of the largest international oil com-
panies (IOCs) in the world. A combination of what is referred to in
oil parlance as supermajors, majors, independents, and state-owned com-
panies are snatching up exploration licenses and establishing exploration
agreements with African governments in an unprecedented manner. Since
2009, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Texaco, three of the largest transna-
tional corporations in the world, have spent about $10 billion (all cur-
rency in US dollars except otherwise stated) annually toward West Africa’s
oil exploration (Watson 2009; Roberts 2006). According to the World
Bank (2012), between 2009 and 2011 foreign direct investment to the
region increased by 36% to $16.1 billion. Not surprisingly, a sizeable pro-
portion of this investment has been concentrated in the petroleum indus-
try. The economies of at least half of the 16 countries that make up the
region have experienced a 6% annual growth since 2002 (World Bank
2012). Buoyed by production from its enormously wealthy Jubilee Oil
Field, Ghana’s economy expanded by a whopping 13.4% between 2010,
when production started on Jubilee Oil Field, and 2011. The country
hitherto known as the gold coast, is now the fastest-growing oil economy
on the continent.
Of equal importance to the rising profile of West Africa in the global
political economy is the entry of China into the region’s oil sector. The
world’s second-largest net importer of petroleum products has intensi-
fied its involvement in Africa in general and West Africa in particular
over the last three decades. Through its three state-run companies—the
China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), China Petroleum and
1 INTRODUCTION: HUMAN SECURITY, OIL REVENUES, AND CONFLICT 3
the discovery of oil, the world’s most dominant fuel, can help promote
socioeconomic development, as it has done in countries in the Middle
East, Russia, and the Scandinavian countries of Norway and Sweden.
In spite of these positive developments and high expectations around
new oil finds, foreign direct investment, relative stability, and high global
demands—the ongoing discoveries have renewed concerns about the
possibilities of an entrenched “oil curse,” a phenomenon in which a
petroleum-endowed nation or region fails to transform its abundant oil
wealth into sustainable growth. These fears are not unfounded. If history
is anything to go by, the experiences in the region’s most established oil
economies, shows that successive governments (military or democratic)
have not exploited their vast oil wealth to benefit their citizens, or to
achieve prosperity and their desired socioeconomic ends. Both Angola
and Nigeria epitomize this concern: their vast oil revenues have either
been squandered or the wealth has not trickled down to their general pop-
ulations. Even though it earns over $8 billion a year from crude oil sales,
Nigeria’s per capita income stands at a mere $290 per year (Ghazvinian
2007). Though Angola’s is higher, at $4980 according to recent World
Bank estimates, it is marked by a huge wealth disparity between a small
upper class and an increasingly large impoverished population.
The other concern is that the introduction of petro-capitalism into a
region that has been adversely affected by the resource-fueled civil wars
of the 1990s and other major public health emergencies such as the 2014
Ebola outbreak, is bound to have major ramifications for the tentative
peace and stability that now prevails in large parts of West Africa. The
region consists predominantly of weak states that have experienced vary-
ing degrees of challenges to their internal stability since independence in
the 1960s. Eight of the 16 countries that make up the West Africa region
have experienced various forms of political and social instability in the
last two decades. Some of these conflicts—such as the devastating wars in
Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and even Nigeria—have been attributed to
a combination of resource mismanagement, bad governance, and years
of marginalization by the ruling elites of the region’s largely youthful
population, of whom more than 64% are under the age of 24 (United
Nations Population Fund 2018). Oil and poor governance are bound to
have major implications for state and human security in West Africa.
An oil bonanza in an environment of weak institutions and poor gov-
ernance creates all manner of accountability issues as well. A government
1 INTRODUCTION: HUMAN SECURITY, OIL REVENUES, AND CONFLICT 7
that derives its revenue from oil, evidence from both the region and else-
where shows, is less likely to be accountable to its citizens. Flush with oil
money, or in anticipation of a continued oil boom, oil-rich governments
often embark on wasteful public projects with little benefit for the wider
population. That is already playing out in the region. In anticipation of a
continued oil boom, some of the producer governments have embarked
on major politically—driven public projects that only benefit the priv-
ileged few. For example, having come into considerable wealth in the
1980s, Nigeria embarked on building a brand-new capital in Abuja, with
the construction of the city center alone costing a whopping $3.5 bil-
lion (Deloitte 2014). President Bongo of Gabon commissioned the 650-
kilometer Transgabonais rail line to Franceville in 2005 mainly to move
manganese from the interior to the coast, at the cost of $362 million.
The end result of all of these rapacious spending is that despite intensive
oil production in both countries for more than forty years, the average
citizen is no better off than they were before the oil finds in 1955 and
1956, respectively.
Unsurprisingly, because of the seeming lack of transparency and
accountability, the continuing emergence of a West Africa-wide oil indus-
try has become a magnet for all manner of campaigners and activists,
often opposed to the rapacious effects of oil drilling on people, institu-
tions and the environment. Abuses and human rights violations in the oil
industry has become a cause celebre for many crusading organizations
(and individuals) around the world, including nongovernmental orga-
nizations (NGOs) working on human rights, social justice, gender, and
peacebuilding. The London-based Global Witness and a host of local
advocacy organizations have used a moral and ethical lens and the con-
cept of redistributive justice to draw attention to the negative impacts
of the petroleum industry in regions such as West Africa. These cam-
paigning groups argue that the redistribution of profits and the long-
term negative effects on peoples and the environment has to be factored
into any oil contracts in regions such as West Africa, a region where oil
extraction has often been associated with human rights abuses (Barrera-
Hernandez et al. 2016, p. 8; Human Rights Watch World Report 2013).
Such critics of the industry, including various domestic and international
organizations are quick to point out that in spite of the enormous oil
revenues, many citizens remain excluded from, or are at best marginal
participants in, emerging oil sectors and the ensuing resource activity.
They point out that local communities often tend to bear the risks of
losses, such as environmental degradation and health impacts. The main
8 V. KANYAKO
by the oil companies carry major implications for the region’s marine and
coastal ecosystem, and by extension for its coastal people’s way of life.
With two of the region’s largest economies being petro-states, the pro-
liferation of commercially viable oil finds, there are questions around
the regional implications in the area of peace and stability. As West
Africa is slowly being transformed into a petro-region, some fear that
the region might become susceptible to the resource curse phenomenon,
as evidenced in the case of Nigeria and to some extent Angola, where
entrenched corruption and patrimony has circumscribed the industry. The
general thinking is that the ongoing discoveries, if unchecked will have
major implications for the peace and stability of one of the world’s most
politically—unstable regions. If managed well however petroleum rev-
enues could harness the good potential of oil, spur growth and minimize
social conflicts, The tried and trusted methods and strategies utilized by
various official (track 1) and unofficial (track 2) methods at thwarting or
reducing oil-induced violence and harnessing the transformative powers
of oil will play a critical role in preventing such conflicts. These issues are
key to understanding the political economy of West Africa’s “oil complex”
and its potential for promoting human security, peace and stability.
Challenges
The oil industry is notoriously difficult to study. Politics, the economy,
geography, and the actors involved all add to the complexity and chal-
lenges. It has often been described by critics as a secretive industry. While
official data on reserve estimates are found in different places, there
is really no comprehensive state-of-the-art measure of the volumes of
proven, probable and possible reserves (Clarke 2008, p. 382). To com-
pound the problem further, oil contracts are treated as state secrets, often
managed by the executive branch of government, with details of deals and
contracts known only to a closed circle of top government insiders. Fur-
thermore, the field is highly technical and littered with jargon that might
pose challenges to an “outsider” researcher with a passing interest in the
topic. A typical oil contract is of varied types (production sharing con-
tracts and joint ventures); has many parts and phases (exploration, pro-
duction, and development) and involves a multitude of powerful stake-
holders (both domestic and international) with vested interests ranging
from profits to the environment.
In spite of the secrecy and difficulties in penetrating a rather reclusive
industry, what is often easy to discern is the effects (especially the nega-
tive impacts) of oil extraction on a society. The book draws on a review
of the relevant documents (including company and newspaper reports)
and from interviews and focus-group sessions with representatives of civil
society and communities from across the region conducted between 2013
and 2015. It has been further enriched by insights gained from extensive
field-based engagements in the region over the last two decades, including
fieldwork in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, the twin cities of Sekondi/Takoradi in
Ghana’s western region, and in southern and western Sierra Leone and on
the coastal and border regions of Liberia. Researching for this book has
involved directly organizing or participating in trainings, workshops, and
other formal and informal engagements around the extractive industry
with civil society thought leaders and community members from countries
as diverse as Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Togo, Cameroon, Guinea,
Angola, the Gambia, and Senegal. Interactions with experts and indus-
try watchers both within and outside the region have also contributed
immensely to broadening my horizons and interests in the subject mat-
ter. In the summer of 2015 the author traversed London, Belgium, the
Netherlands, and the Nordic countries of Norway, Sweden, and Finland
in a bid to gain firsthand insight into the transformative influence of oil as
1 INTRODUCTION: HUMAN SECURITY, OIL REVENUES, AND CONFLICT 11
This book provides an insight into the motivations and modus operandi
of some of the most powerful and wealthiest transnational corporations
in the world. Royal Dutch Shell, BP, and ExxonMobil are the world’s
second-, third- and fourth-largest transnational companies, respectively
(Economist 2012). In spite of their power and influence, not much is
known in terms of the details of their contracts or specifics on their gen-
eral operations. This is not surprising, given that the oil industry is one of
the most secretive in the world. Most of the easily available information
is put out by the oil companies themselves or through groups that they
sponsor, either directly or indirectly. While these pro-industry reports are
important contributions in their own right, they do not provide the full
picture of what is, needless to say, a very complex, opaque, tenacious, and
constantly evolving industry.
The key international oil companies (IOCs) that operate in the coun-
tries along the Gulf of Guinea and the Senegal Basin share similar charac-
teristics either through multicountry ownerships of oil concessions in the
region or as subsidiaries of one another. For example, in addition to the
big IOCs such as Shell and ExxonMobil, other lesser-known names, such
as African Petroleum and Anadarko have major stakes in several countries
in the region. A regional approach helps us better understand their inter-
ests and alliances. In very specific terms, therefore, the study provides an
opportunity to evaluate the commitments (known in the business world
as corporate social responsibility) of profit-seeking companies that operate
in a regulatory vacuum with lax laws and weak implementation.
The book also provides an alternative argument for curtailing the
resource curse. While the linkages between natural resources and conflicts
have received immense attention from both scholars and analysts of all
sorts (Sachs and Warner 1995; Collier 2000; Collier and Hoeffler 1999,
Klare 2002), there is very little focus on the varied nuances of the impact
of oil on societies or regions emerging from conflict. The book focuses on
the more multifaceted ways in which oil’s impacts are felt at various lay-
ers of societies and communities. Among other themes this book explores
the “Peace properties” of oil. The argument put forward here is that oil
by itself is not a “cursed” resource. In other parts of the world, includ-
ing the Scandinavian countries, it has been used to propel development,
peace, and stability. In West Africa it has the potential to foster com-
munication and dialogue among the various stakeholders. The stakes and
investments in oil are often so high that it requires cooperation among
14 V. KANYAKO
Book Structure
To properly contextualize the complex relationship between a strategic
natural resource such as oil and its “conflict properties” in the context of
West Africa, I have divided the book into three main parts. The first part
(the centrality of oil) provides an analytical background to the growing
influence of hydrocarbons in the region’s two main geological oil zones:
the Senegal Basin and the Gulf of Guinea. The first section is mainly con-
cerned with the historiography as well as the geological and topographical
mapping of West Africa’s emerging oil economy. Here the book provides
a general historical overview of West Africa’s oil industry and outline the
1 INTRODUCTION: HUMAN SECURITY, OIL REVENUES, AND CONFLICT 15
chapter also points out that West Africa’s oil finds are widely dispersed
and unevenly distributed, with the resource found in commercial quan-
tity in its onshore, offshore, deep waters, and ultra-deep waters. There
are primary producers, such as Nigeria, Angola, and Equatorial Guinea;
and there are secondary producers. The chapter outlines the various ways
the geography, geology, and history has positioned West Africa as a key
player in the global political economy of oil. It ends with a discussion of
the role of technology on the development of the region’s oil industry.
Summary
West Africa is in the midst of an oil frenzy. The region is projected to
provide around 7–10% of the world’s total output in the next decade.
A constellation of factors has coalesced to turn the region into an “in-
creasingly attractive prize both by major energy-importing states and by
transnational energy corporations” (Raphael and Stokes 2011, p. 22).
These factors included technological advances in the way petroleum is
explored and drilled; high global demand; seemingly endless upheaval in
the Persian Gulf and North Africa, where the world’s largest oil reserves
are found; the phenomenal rise and growing energy needs of China; and
the consistently high prices that oil fetches in the international market.
The region’s oil is generally of the highest quality (commonly called sweet
crude, in petroleum parlance) and thus highly desirable: it is less costly to
process into the refined product. Also, West Africa’s proximity to Europe
and the United States means its oil can get to some of the largest and
most important global markets much faster and cheaper as opposed to oil
from places like the Middle East. From the oil companies’ perspective,
the fact that most of the oil finds in West Africa are located offshore is
a major incentive to source there. This is because such exploration and
drilling make it largely immune to onshore instability and community-
level conflicts. Furthermore, the West Africa region itself has a very small
local consumption market, meaning that the vast majority of whatever is
produced will be headed mainly for the international market. This book
explores the reasons for the region’s rise in profile, the modus operandi
of the varied stakeholders, including the responses of the grassroots com-
munities often affected by the negative consequences of oil drilling and
22 V. KANYAKO
the efforts at peacemaking. What happens in West Africa’s oil industry has
major implications for the rest of the world.
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CHAPTER 2
that most of the world started paying attention to West Africa’s oil via-
bility. The reasons for the delay in harnessing West Africa’s oil potential
are manifold, ranging from financial, logistical, political, economic, and
technological challenges. The most important of the reasons for the delay
lies elsewhere, in other parts of the world, where the technology and the
capital to extract oil first started.
The Drake Well oil creek drilling in Pennsylvania in 1859 is generally
considered to be the genesis of modern oil drilling. Edwin L. Drake, a
conductor for the New York and New Haven Railroad, who had no prior
knowledge of the oil business, is known as the “father of the petroleum
industry” because he devised a technology and technique of driving a
pipe down to protect the integrity of the well bore that revolutionized
how crude oil was produced and launched the industry on a large scale
(American Oil and Gas Historical Society 2019).
Prior to Drake’s revolutionary techniques, early oil exploration and
drilling was unsophisticated. Primitive methods of locating oil were largely
through trial and error, known in the industry as “wildcatting,” often
undertaken by enthusiastic prospectors with no scientific background or
knowledge and who largely depended on guesswork. But what these early
oil moguls lacked in scientific method they more than made up for in
enthusiasm and tenacity. De Golyer (1965, p. 120) described it best:
“Most of the world’s early production was found by men who knew no
more of origin or occurrence of oil than they did of the inner workings
of a slot machine. They drilled. They pulled the lever and hoped for the
jackpot.” As one could imagine, such a rudimentary search for what was
soon to become the world’s most sought after resource, was highly ineffi-
cient and expensive too. De Golyer gave the example of the United States,
where in 1948 “out of the 6,182 wildcat wells that were drilled (at the
cost of about a billion dollars each) seven out of eight were dry” (1965,
p. 120).
Following Drake’s remarkable discovery, the nascent oil industry began
to register modest progress in the next four decades. Thanks largely to
his contributions to the industry, the great age of oil discovery started
in earnest in the twentieth century when the first great oil strike was
recorded on January 13, 1901, at Spindletop in eastern Texas, near the
Louisiana border (De Golyer 1965, p. 117). This was the first-recorded
large-scale commercial oil well.
Shortly after these technological breakthroughs of drilling for oil, mod-
ern techniques of harvesting oil in commercial quantities (including the
28 V. KANYAKO
dry rotary auger method; rotary drill; and the mechanical percussion
drill method) all began to spread to other parts of the world, including
Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and subsequently sub-Saharan Africa. At
the time of Drake’s discovery, in the latter half of the nineteenth century,
Russia, with one of the world’s known oil reserves began to modernize its
oil production in the highly lucrative Baku region by replacing its unso-
phisticated manual-labor techniques, where locals reportedly used “rags
and buckets” to scoop up oil sleeks, with modern and more sophisticated
borehole techniques (Goldman 2008, p. 18). The Middle East, which is
today the world’s largest-known deposit, did not hit oil until the begin-
ning of the twentieth century, with the discovery of oil in Iran in 1907,
followed by Saudi Arabia in 1938 by the ARAMCO Consortium (Gold-
man 2008, p. 21).
Why did West Africa lag behind? To start with, oil is a very difficult
and complicated natural resource to harness. Prospecting for it efficiently
requires a deep knowledge of geology as well as huge financial resources.
It is one of the most capital-intensive industries in the world. Locating oil,
especially in the early days when oil-drilling technology was in its infancy
was incredibly difficult, made all the more difficult by the fact that those
initial efforts were not backed by science. As Golyer reminds us, it wasn’t
until the twentieth century that the field of geology truly gained recog-
nition in the oil industry. Prior to that, the industry depended largely
on digging holes and hoping for the best. Even though they knew of its
commercial worth, the colonial authorities in West Africa had a hard time
locating oil and an even harder time drilling for it.
With the entry of geologists who used scientific methods to locate oil,
most of the guesswork in oil exploration was eliminated. Geology and
other scientific methods helped determine with more certainty the avail-
ability (or not) of oil, the quantity of the find, as well as help determine
whether it is technically feasible to extract and the overall commercial
viability of the enterprise. The combustible nature of the material makes
extracting oil, processing it, and making it available to the end user even
more complicated. The field of geology helped make the industry safer
and more efficient.
With the scant information about the genesis and modus operandi of
the oil actors before 1950, scholarly and public analyzes do not bother
to interrogate the nature and forms of horizontal and vertical relation-
ships, often hugely disadvantageous to the West African countries, that
evolved among the stakeholders, both local and international. The role of
2 THE HISTORY AND GEOLOGY OF PETROLEUM IN WEST AFRICA 29
the colonial state and the pioneer oil explorers, many of whom were wild-
catters, is key to understanding the nature of the industry that emerged in
the late nineteenth century in what became the oil-producing countries
of Angola and Nigeria. Potential for economically viable oil has been rec-
ognized since at least the nineteenth century, when sustained exploration
for oil in most countries commenced (Clarke 2008, p. 3). The region’s oil
exploration and development occurred over four main time periods (colo-
nial/preindependence; postindependence; post–Cold War, and the glob-
alized twenty-first century). Each historical time period registered slow
but steady progress toward prospecting, exploring, and developing com-
mercial oil in the region.
efforts, knowing fully well that independence for the region and continent
as a whole, was just a matter of time. West African countries were soon to
gain their independence from the European powers in the 1960s, only to
realize that political independence did not equate to economic indepen-
dence.
Because of the critical nature of oil and its strategic importance to
nations even in its early phase of its widespread use, even political inde-
pendence did not necessarily lead to the severance of African nation’s
economic ties with the former European colonizers. If anything, the busi-
ness and economic ties were strengthened further, to the extent that
the same companies that were visible and active during the colonial era
remained the dominant players in the extractive industry in the region
even after independence. Political independence from colonial rule did
not amount to economic independence. The newly independent African
leader’s hands were tied. Their countries lacked the financial means and
the technical know-how to drill for oil on their own. For companies such
as Shell and Exxon, it was business (and profits) as usual. The preferred
strategy of the African leaders, therefore, was to seek some kind of an
accommodation with the various foreign powers, mainly those from which
they had just gained independence, to continue to extract and sell their
natural resources, including oil (Twomey 2001, p. 81).
in the first half of the twentieth century, shallow drilling for prospectivity
was conducted by Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, and Gabon, with sur-
face indication of oil and gas recorded in all geological littoral areas at this
time (Clarke 2008, p. 73).
The situation in Ghana exemplifies the methods, approach, and dilem-
mas faced by newly independent African countries who for their survival
looked both to the West and also to each other through various bilat-
eral and multilateral arrangements. The country was known not just for
gold but had signs of oil by the time it gained independence in 1958
from Great Britain. In 1963, AGIP an Italian oil company was awarded a
contract to construct an oil refinery at the port of Tema, Bight of Benin
to process imported crude oil from neighboring Nigeria. In its heyday in
the mid-1970s, the plant had a processing capacity of 43,000 barrels a day
(McCaskie 2008, p. 322). While importing oil from its neighbor, Ghana
embarked on aggressive oil prospecting as a way to reduce dependency on
outsiders, a stated objective of its independence leader, Kwame Nkrumah.
Through his efforts and initiatives, including nationalizing TOR in 1975,
Ghana became a modest oil producer in 1978 (Clarke 2008, p. 181).
By the late 1960s—a few years after independence for most African
countries—oil exploration, which had until that point largely been con-
fined onshore, started moving offshore. International oil companies
shifted their focus to offshore exploration again, partly influenced by
global developments thousands of miles away. On September 10, 1964,
the United Nations ratified what became known as the Geneva Conven-
tion on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone. Article 1 of the
32-article document states categorically that “the sovereignty of a State
extends, beyond its land territory and its internal waters, to a belt of sea
adjacent to its coast, described as the territorial sea” (Clarke 2008, p. 73;
United Nations 1964, p. 2). This provided West Africa’s littoral states
with the legal instruments to extend their reach beyond the territorial
borders to maritime borders with full access to all the natural resources
contained therein.
By the 1970s, the focus on the offshore terrain progressed steadily,
with some spectacular results. Initial wells were drilled on the shelf and
shallow water, followed by drilling in deeper waters, especially in countries
like Angola, Gabon, and Nigeria, paid off with series of discoveries (Horn
2018).
34 V. KANYAKO
Once the region gained independence, the new leaders were faced with
challenges in exploiting their oil potential. They lacked the resources and
technical know-how to harness oil—a notoriously technology-heavy and
large investment industry. It was a catch-22 situation: severing political
ties while as a matter of expediency relying on the Europeans for eco-
nomic development. Africa’s new leaders quickly found out that political
independence did not mean economic freedom. To be able to make the
best out of their natural resources they still needed to rely on overseas
partners, often their former oppressors, to help them harness the resource.
After years of difficulty Africa is positioned for improved exploration
and development, with West Africa as the main source of oil, accounting
for well over half of total production of the continent’s oil. The region’s
crude output has been rapidly improving and will continue to do. What
is new is the scale of the finds and the growing number of actors, both
domestic and international. By 1980 only Nigeria was producing oil on
a commercial basis. By 2000, 12 of the 16 countries in the region had
commercially—viable oil finds and productions. Due to rising competition
in the global energy market, the nature and character of the industry has
witnessed a dramatic shift over the last three decades.
Frank G. Carpenter
Doubleday, Page & Company, in response to the demand from
Carpenter readers, are now publishing the complete story of
CARPENTER’S WORLD TRAVELS, of which this book is the tenth
in the series. Those now available are:
Farm labour, how obtained for the Canadian wheat fields, 184.
Farmers, American, movement to the Canadian wheat belt, 193.
Farmhouses, well built in Nova Scotia, 38.
Farming, on the edge of the Arctic, Fisheries, of Newfoundland, 13;
of Nova Scotia, 36.
Fisheries of British Columbia, extent of, 230.
Fishermen, Newfoundland, their hard lives and small incomes, 20.
Fishermen’s Protective Union, activities of, 21.
Flax seed, production in the Winnipeg district, 149.
Fleming, Peter, plans harbour development of Montreal, 62.
Floating dry dock, at Prince Rupert, 229.
Flour industry, location of principal mills, 186.
Football, popular in Toronto, 101.
Forest fires and protective measures, 89.
Forest reserves, set aside by government of Ontario, 139.
Forests, denudation of Canadian, 88.
Fort Garry, present site of Winnipeg, 151.
Fort McMurray, on the route to the new oil fields, 203.
Fort Norman, trading post for the new oil region, 203.
Fort Smith, capital of the Northwest Territories, 203.
Fort Vermillion, last herd of wild wood buffalo reported near, 202.
Fort William, the great wheat centre, 135, 141.
Fox, Black, price of fur declining since advent of fur farming, 173.
Fox farms on Prince Edward Island, 40;
near Indian Lorette, Quebec, 44.
Fraser River, gold discoveries on, the first in British Columbia, 223.
Freighters, Lake Superior, 146.
French, dispute British claims to Newfoundland fisheries, 14;
attempts to hold Nova Scotia, 15;
driven from Cape Breton Island, 39.
French, the language of Quebec, 49.
French Canada—Quebec, 42.
French Catholicism, Quebec the American capital of, 57.
Fruit growing in the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, 224.
Fundy, Bay of, the forty-foot tides of, 38.
Fur, and the great organizations concerned in its marketing, 166 et
seq.