The oil scene

by Syed Rashid Husain

Oil and politics are virtually inseparable. Oil riches have been responsible, analysts strongly feel, for many a war and tragedies of today’s world. Not all the nations have succeeded, like Saudi Arabia and other countries of the Gulf, to utilize the riches for transforming their societies and countries. To many, it also carries a curse!
While the world is faced with growing concerns about security of supplies from this major energy producing part of the world, for scores of reasons, there seems to be rush to secure and diversify energy resources. Oil is thus sucking global powers into this "great game of the 21st century."

Recently, Darfur, and Sudan have been very much in news. Sudan faced with a civil war and currently is the focus of attention of the US and the rest of the world. US Secretary of State Colin Powell has expressed the determination of the administration to resolve the crisis. And some say this also has an oil connection.
The Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir accused the Western nations of interfering in its troubled Darfur region so as to exploit Sudan’s gold and oil resources, to their benefit.

Sudan’s neighbour Chad has emerged as a big oil producer in the past decade. Sudanese officials believe that the troubled Sudanese region of Darfur is "floating in oil". The country already has one of the fastest growing oil sectors in the world. Production grew four fold between 1999 and 2003, and official figures estimate recoverable oil reserves at over 2,000 mm barrels and proven reserves at 700 mm barrels.
The completion of a 1,540 km pipeline to the Red Sea port of Bashair, about 25 km south of Port Sudan, in August 1999 transformed the country from a net importer of hydrocarbons into a substantial exporter.

According to UK’s Wood Mackenzie, production rose to 250,000 bpd from just 12,000 bpd in 1997. Wood Mackenzie forecasts an average production of 310,000 bpd in 2004 and 418,000 bpd the next year. However, some Sudanese sources project the 2005 average crude production to be around half a million bpd.
In the absence of some major well known Western oil majors in Sudan, companies from China, Malaysia, Britain, Italy, India, New Zealand, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Qatar are active in exploration activities in the country.

And this is not peculiar to Sudan. Not long ago Indonesia was forced to let East Timor pull out. The secession was forced upon Jakarta despite the vow by the then US President Bill Clinton that the era of changing geography by force has already gone by. Yet the geography of Indonesia was changed! And some suggest that the energy riches of the region were one of the major factors that influenced the equation, prompting Australia to take a lead role in the East Timor affairs.
The issue of maritime boundaries and the distribution of royalties from the gas fields of the Timor Sea -- separating Australia and the East Timor -- has been a bone of contention between the two countries for some time. In question was the Greater Sunrise field, some 150 km from East Timor, estimated to contain 8.35 tcf of gas.

There have been speculations that one of the reasons behind the Australian "goodwill and humanitarian" decision to deploy their forces in East Timor was to get the deal signed on the terms which they were unable to get from Jakarta. Indeed the curse of oil and gas played its due role in this episode as well.
Indeed a number of tragedies that have occurred to a diverse range of people in various parts of the world was because of the oil and energy riches they have, one has to concede -- though reluctantly. Oil definitely attracts a lot of undue attention and interference from unwanted quarters and who else can bear witness to this better than people in this part of the world.