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March 25, 2006

Africa, here we come (again...)

By: Silvio

Reading from Reuters:

Oil producing countries not aligned to OPEC are set to add more than five million barrels a day to world supply by 2010, although this may rise if prices remain high, a leading industry analyst said.

Much of this growth will come from a handful of countries, including Angola, the rising star of African oil production, Harry Tchilinguirian, senior analyst at the International Energy Agency, told Reuters.

and from Engineering News Online:

The US wants to break Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Companies’ (Opec’s) hold over world oil supplies and sees Africa as a viable alternative.

That was the message from US senator Rodney Ellis, on Wednesday, when he addressed the Oil Africa 2006 conference currently under way, in Cape Town.

we get the feeling that a new age of colonization is rising: it's not easy to tell if OPEC has already peaked its production or not, but for sure new "stars in oil production" are needed, and it looks like the place where they are searching for them is Africa.

And that's nothing new under the sun, as Africa has been and still is the most colonized and exploited continent in the world: diamonds, gold, slaves - we could say that a big part of our Great Western Power (mainly the U.S.'s, actually) has been built by African blood and resources.

The feeling I have, thou - look at Nigeria , for example, or Sudan - is that this new round of African colonization won't be easy at all.
Africa is not the "empty" continent it was when European invaders colonized it, nor the place of defenseless tribes that could be easily enslaved as it happened a couple of centuries ago: the whole continent is devastated by years of "civil" war (that western and eastern powers happily fomented as it created markets for their arms industries) and so pretty much everywhere there are "armies" quite angry, ready to do anything they can to get power (remember the Tutsi genocide, the Liberian civil war, the Darfur massacres), and - thanks to our support - packed with deadly weapons (by the way, much of the Rwanda massacre was carried on with machetes...)

So, maybe there is a reason why only now we are "discovering" oil fields in Africa...

Posted by Silvio at March 25, 2006 3:38 AM Category: Peak Oil