Word: tomming
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...Tomé and 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...
Nigeria: Wretched Excess Tom Pullo looks like a fighter. His chest is a barrel, his forearms are all muscle. Seeing him at breakfast at the Agura Hotel in Nigeria's capital, Abuja, a place favored by foreign oil executives, you might take him for a security guard protecting his charges. But Pullo works for the other side. "We are not taking hostages because of money," he says. "We are taking hostages to draw world attention to our plight." Nigeria is the oil giant of Africa. It is also, as an American diplomat in the region says, "one big problem...
...Asia will discover that their own energy security depends in part on political and economic stability in West Africa." American warships already patrol off West Africa, and U.S. energy and security experts have repeatedly called for a permanent military base in the region, possibly on São Tomé and Principe. The American diplomat is dismissive. "The notion that we're going to build a base on São Tomé, like Guantánamo or Diego Garcia, is unrealistic," he says, but he adds that the U.S. is talking to several countries around the region about...
...Tomé: The Dream Lives If são tomé really has the oil it hopes for, can the island get it right where so many others have failed? Maybe. In 2003, a group of former mercenaries known as the Buffaloes seized power for a week to protest over the secrecy and corruption surrounding concessions granted to Nigeria. The Buffaloes are now the Christian Democratic Front, and the support they lay claim to underlines public wariness that São Tomé might "do a Gabon," as the party's leader Alecio Costa puts...
Praxeres, executive director of the National Petroleum Agency, insists it won't happen. São Tomé has constructed a watertight system of oversight and transparency, he says, that will take petrol revenue out of government hands and put it under the control of an independent commission. The government has even set up an account at the Federal Reserve in the U.S. to hold all the cash that it expects to flood in. "We've learned the lessons of Africa," says Praxeres. "We have to use the money to invest in education, infrastructure and health - a future that...