Word: africa
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Seismic tests have suggested that São Tomé and Principe, two tropical rocks off the coast of West Africa with a population of 199,000, might be sitting on billions of barrels of oil. For the last few years, the islands have been buzzing with the hope that it will make millionaires of them all and transform a nation where the average annual income is $390. "This is a very poor country," says Luis Alberto Praxeres, executive director of São Tomé's National Petrol Agency. "Oil could solve all our problems...
...Principe is part of a string of countries on the Gulf of Guinea, the right angle in Africa's west coast, which is the oil industry's new El Dorado. By some estimates, Africa holds 10% of the world's reserves, but that figure belies the importance West Africa has already achieved as a source of energy. According to Poisoned Wells, a new book on African oil by Nicholas Shaxson, an associate fellow with international affairs institute Chatham House in London, the U.S. imported more oil from Africa than from the Middle East in 2005, and more from the Gulf...
Indeed, says Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, West Africa is "only going to get hotter. It has the location and the resources; the technology is now there to develop them; and companies from all over the world want to be in on the action." Rising demand from India and China and worries over instability in the Middle East have fueled higher oil prices, and those in turn have precipitated a new scramble for energy - oil rigs worldwide now have to be rented a year in advance. There are several reasons why the Gulf of Guinea...
Security is a crucial part of the attraction. West Africa may have a history of political instability, but most of its oil is offshore, and the assets of international companies have so far not been prone to the sort of nationalist expropriation common in oil's history from Mexico in the 1930s to Russia today. And although there have been attacks on oil installations in Nigeria, the region does not experience the sort of out-of-control violence that now plagues Iraq. Such factors make "West Africa of great interest and great significance," says a senior American diplomat...
...National Intelligence Council, a U.S.-government think tank, predicts that the Gulf of Guinea will supply 20-25% of total U.S. imports by 2020, but Americans are not alone in their mounting dependence upon West Africa. Angola is now China's top oil supplier. Gabon is a key supplier of France. Oilmen from countries as diverse as Russia, Japan and India are showing up in places like Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Chad - even perennial war zones like the Democratic Republic of Congo. With all that interest, Paul Lubeck, Michael Watts and Ronnie Lipshutz of the Center for International Policy...