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Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Review of Duncan Clarke's Crude Continent: the Struggle for Africa's Oil Prize - 0 views

  • The thrust of Crude Continent is precisely (and often, not so precisely) this: oil, far from being a curse, could actually save Africa. It is oil that will modernise Africa and oil that will lead it out of what Clarke dubs – without ever defining – ‘African medievalism’. Clarke argues that those countries without oil are the ones that are truly cursed, for they will be left ‘largely backward’.
  • This intriguing notion is preached throughout Crude Continent, with Clarke seeking to expose as fools those who argue that Africa's oil-rich countries are being poisoned to the core by the so-called ‘resource curse’. Our candid author is particularly incensed by two experts' ‘scribblings on oil’, both released last year: Oil and Politics in the Gulf of Guinea by Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, an Oxford lecturer; and Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil by Nicholas Shaxson, an associate fellow at Chatham House, London.
  • Clarke asks us to consider what he calls the long-term ‘multiplier effects’, the direct and indirect benefits of the oil and gas industry, including employment creation, foreign exchange inputs and capital inflow, technology transfers, fiscal funding and ‘indirect supply chain effects’. These are much more significant than the ‘palliative band-aid…of corporate social investment’ that Clarke clearly detests. He berates the fact that no one has ever ‘properly identified and measured’ the social and economic benefits of oil and gas projects in Africa.
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  • Regularly tumbling into appalling metaphor and analogy, Clarke nevertheless concludes: ‘North and south Sudan may be bound by the umbilical cords of a chequered politics and oil history, but as with Siamese twins these links can also be severed.’
  • Parts three and four provide the reader with 140 pages of comprehensive information on corporate oil operations in Africa and the global scramble for the big prize. Leaving aside his irritating penchant for metamorphosis – lions becoming countries, rhinos turning into multinationals – Clarke offers readers the chance to delve into his vast wealth of knowledge. Together with a comprehensive index, these two sections make it easy to find out which company is drilling what wells, where and with whom. Our expert guide also leads us around the world explaining how different nations are capturing Africa's oil and gas potential. All fascinating stuff.
  • The perpetuation of the petroleum age might make the current crop of oil executives and certain political leaders happy, but it is dangerously optimistic to suggest that the future well-being of African people depends primarily on drilling oil.
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    The thrust of Crude Continent is precisely (and often, not so precisely) this: oil, far from being a curse, could actually save Africa. It is oil that will modernise Africa and oil that will lead it out of what Clarke dubs - without ever defining - 'African medievalism'. Clarke argues that those countries without oil are the ones that are truly cursed, for they will be left 'largely backward'.
Arabica Robusta

The Niger Delta: The curse of the black gold - Africa, World - The Independent - 0 views

  • The stability or otherwise of the Delta matters a great deal, even to those who have never heard of it. Within a decade, the United States expects to extract around a quarter of its oil from the Gulf of Guinea. They see it as a safer option than the Middle East, and it has played a large part in the thinking behind the establishment of the US's Africa Command – a plan for a series of permanent military bases on the continent.
Arabica Robusta

» Understanding the political economy and rising oil prices - Vanguard (Nigeria) - 0 views

  • Nigeria is strategic to the global energy need, it is also crucial to the maintenance of security of the Gulf of Guinea region; the fear of the magnitude of the crisis and insecurity in that region forced the US to create the African Command.
Arabica Robusta

Union Man: Where are the jobs? | Pipe(line)Dreams - 0 views

  • When Ghanaians found out there was oil off their coast, a sense of excitement spread across the country. Optimistic and at times unrealistic statements from various company officials and ministries added to expectations.
  • Francis M.K. Sallah is the Regional Industrial Relations Officer for the General Transport, Petroleum and Chemical Workers’ Union. Lately he has been hearing a lot about jobs, or the lack of, in the oil industry.
  • The Ghanaian government says that 90% of the oil jobs should go to Ghanaians by 2020, but some people in the industry wonder why the government isn’t being more aggressive. Sallah says that right now Ghanaians could occupy more than half the posts. Welders, pipefitters, painters, maintenance people – there are plenty of skilled laborers in Ghana, so what’s keeping them from getting jobs?
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  • Yeah, I know a lot of jobs in the oil industry require technical skills and education. I grew up around the oil industry. My father was a petroleum engineer. But he started work as a roustabout.
  • Something is preventing Ghanaians from getting work and it’s hard for me to understand.  After all, the oil men who are hanging out at the hotel bar in Takoradi are mainly working class guys from Texas and Louisiana who are in Ghana via the Gulf of Mexico or E.G. (that’s Equatorial Guinea). What degrees do they have?
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