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Arabica Robusta

Tomgram: Michael Schwartz, The New Oil Wars in Iraq | TomDispatch - 0 views

www.tomdispatch.com/...tz%2C_the_new_oil_wars_in_iraq

industry petroleum development oil international extractive transparency curse resource iraq us intervention

shared by Arabica Robusta on 05 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • It was a moment of remarkable contradictions.  Obama managed, for example, to warn against “mission creep” even as he was laying out what could only be described as mission creep.  Earlier that week, he had notified Congress that 275 troops would be sent to Iraq, largely to defend the vast U.S. embassy in Baghdad, once an almost three-quarters-of-a-billion-dollar symbol of imperial hubris, now a white elephant of the first order.  A hundred more military personnel were to be moved into the region for backup.
  • In tandem with the military moves, the president and his national security team, perhaps reflecting through a glass darkly the “democracy agenda” of the Bush era, also seemed to have dipped their fingers in purple ink.  They were reportedly pressuring Iraqi politicians to dump Prime Minister Maliki and appoint a “unity” government to fight the war they want.  (Adding to the farcical nature of the moment, one name raised for Maliki’s position was Ahmed Chalabi, once the darling of Bush-era officials and their choice for that same post.)
  • There is, however, no way that an American intervention won’t be viewed as a move to back the Shia side in an incipient set of civil wars, as even retired general and former CIA director David Petraeus warned last week.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Fortunately, sociologist Michael Schwartz, an old-time TomDispatch regular, is back after a long absence to remind us of The One Fact in Iraq, the one we should never forget. Tom
  • Under the seething ocean of Sunni discontent lies a factor that is being ignored. The insurgents are not only in a struggle against what they see as oppression by a largely Shiite government in Baghdad and its security forces, but also over who will control and benefit from what Maliki -- speaking for most of his constituents -- told the Wall Street Journal is Iraq’s “national patrimony.”
  • When, in 2009, the Obama administration first began withdrawing U.S. combat troops, Iraqis everywhere -- but especially in Sunni areas -- faced up to 60% unemployment, sporadic electrical service, poisoned water systems, episodic education, a dysfunctional medical system, and a lack of viable public or private transportation. Few Westerners remember that, in 2010, Maliki based his election campaign on a promise to remedy these problems by -- that figure again -- increasing oil production to six million barrels per day.
  • none of this oil wealth trickled down to the grassroots, especially in Sunni areas of the country where signs of reconstruction, economic development, restored services, or jobs were hard to discern. Instead, the vast new revenues disappeared into the recesses of a government ranked by Transparency International as the seventh most corrupt on the planet.
  • In a rare moment of ironic insight, Time magazine concluded its coverage of the F-16 purchase with this comment: “The good news is the deal will likely keep Lockheed’s F-16 plant in Fort Worth running perhaps a year longer. The bad news is that only 70% of Iraqis have access to clean water, and only 25% have clean sanitation.”
  • With conditions worsening, Sunni communities only became more insistent, supplementing their petitions and demonstrations with sit-ins at government offices, road blockades, and Tahrir Square-type occupations of public spaces. Maliki’s responses also escalated to arresting the political messengers, dispersing demonstrations, and, in a key moment in 2013, “killing dozens” of protestors when his “security forces opened fire on a Sunni protest camp.” This repression and the continued frustration of local demands helped regenerate the insurgencies that had been the backbone of the Sunni resistance during the American occupation. Once lethal violence began to be applied by government forces, guerrilla attacks became common in the areas north and west of Baghdad that the U.S. occupiers had labeled “the Sunni triangle.”
Arabica Robusta

Some good background reading while waiting for the Kiobel decision - Pipe(line)Dreams - 0 views

www.pipelinedreams.org/...aiting-for-the-kiobel-decision

petroleum industry development oil international extractive transparency curse resource nigeria kiobel shell corporations corruption exploitation multinational guatemala

shared by Arabica Robusta on 10 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Amid severe repression, nine members of the movement, including Dr Barinem Kiobel, were arrested, charged with specious crimes, tortured and summarily hanged. Dr Kiobel’s widow Esther and 11 other plaintiffs, all either victims of torture or relatives of victims residing in the US brought a class action suit in the US District Court.
  • In its defence, Shell argued that “the law of nations” does not recognise corporate liability for human rights abuses and that the ATS does not apply extraterritorially. Legal observers expect a decision in the Kiobel case at any time.
  • In justifying its position against the extraterritorial application of US laws, Shell underscored the “adverse consequences to US trade and foreign policy of a liberal expansion of private causes of action against corporations under international law”. It also posited that the costs associated with potential liability “may lead corporations to reduce their operations in the less-developed countries from which these suits tend to arise, to the detriment of citizens of those countries who benefit from foreign investment”.
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  • The US is not alone in grappling with the liability of transnational corporations for human rights abuses: in path-breaking litigation, Hudbay Minerals stands accused in Canadian courts of complicity in human rights abuses in Guatemala.
  • Complicating efforts to hold transnational corporations accountable is the fact that companies often construct a series of subsidiary companies that mask their true ownership, make it hard to impost corporate liability. Imposing corporate accountability is further impeded by other factors.
  • Logistically, many countries in the Global South where many transnational corporations operate lack the institutional and judicial capacity to manage complex litigation. Moreover, subsidiary companies often funnel profits to the parent corporations, leaving them with inadequate cash reserves to satisfy legal liabilities. Lastly, as noted above, governments may be reluctant to send a message of corporate accountability because those in power are often the most direct beneficiaries of corporate activity.
  • The corporations that voluntarily adhere to principles of Corporate Social Responsibility are likely not the vociferous opponents of accountability, and are arguably at a competitive disadvantage when others are permitted to violate human rights with impunity. Given corporate complicity in egregious abuses around the world, respect for human rights should not be a function of voluntary compliance but instead a matter of enforceable legal rights. The international community must demand accountability, and reinforce and reaffirm the practices of corporations that do take seriously the impact of their behaviour. The Supreme Court’s decision in the Kiobel case should advance global justice by categorically rejecting impunity for human rights abuses in which transnational corporations are complicit.
Arabica Robusta

Experts: Growing piracy across West Africa takes root in oil-slicked creeks of Nigeria ... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...2-9e1c-bb0fb0c2edd9_story.html

petroleum industry development oil international extractive transparency curse resource nigeria

shared by Arabica Robusta on 23 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • “If governments are not going to step up to the plate, ... others are going to move in,” said Alex Vines, the African research director for London-based Chatham House. “Private security providers are licking their lips in anticipation of coming in and making good money.”
Arabica Robusta

Field Report 297: Shell spills oil again at Otuasega - 0 views

www.eraction.org/...l-spills-oil-again-at-otuasega

shared by Arabica Robusta on 11 May 12 - No Cached
  • We do not really know when this oil spill happened. It seems to have occurred over a week now. Although Shell is claiming it was as a result of sabotage, we know the company is lying again. What we know is that Shell was working on its pipeline and it was as a result of that work that this spill occurred. They were flushing the pipeline from Well 3 and that was the cause.
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 11 May 12
       
      Shell: one of the great prevaricators of the modern corporate world system.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Leave new oil in the soil in Africa - 0 views

pambazuka.org/...66289

industry petroleum development oil international extractive nigeria transparency curse resource

shared by Arabica Robusta on 31 Jul 10 - Cached
  • The desire to capture more oil reserves is driving exploration and development of oil and gas fields in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somaliland, Puntland, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Mozambique, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, the Comoros, Seychelles and the coast of Durban in South Africa.
  • The National oil spill detection and response agency (NOSDRA), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) have identified over 2,000 spill sites that need to be remediated. Some of these spills happened over 40 years ago. The Ebubu spill that occurred in 1970, has not been cleaned up and Shell, the company implicated in the disaster, is vigorously appealing a judgement of a federal high court which ordered it to pay US$40 million compensation as at 2001.[3]
  • Even though Ikiogha is the government bureaucrat in charge of penalising Shell for the spill and signing off on the cleanup, he is also the contractor hired by Shell to do the cleanup… His cleanup operation consists of four shirtless men scooping oil from the surface of the polluted river with Frisbees… he claims that most of the oil had earlier been removed with absorbent foam and blankets.’[5]
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 31 Jul 10
       
      Kenneth Feinburg.
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  • The idea of leaving oil in the ground within the Yasuni forest was taken up in far away Ecuador by no less than the government of the country itself and is receiving widespread acceptance.
  • The world’s ecosystem is one and we have merely scratched the surface in understanding the intricate interconnectedness of nature at different levels. It is therefore short sighted to continue the reckless expansion of drilling around the world because in the long run the revenue we may earn today from oil extraction would not be sufficient to adequately return our environment to what it was before extraction when incidents like these occur.
  • We must begin by acknowledging that the sensible use of our ecosystem has the capacity in the long-term to provide much more benefits and revenue than oil can ever provide. We must individually and consciously take up the responsibility of drastically reducing our use of oil and its by-products. We must also set up international tribunals that would try entities and individuals for their role in destroying the ecosystem. But more importantly we must begin to have the consciousness and think along the lines of building capacities within our communities to ensure as much as possible that the role of oil our energy matrix becomes inconsequential by investing more in renewable energy, energy efficiency, better public transportation and small decentralised energy projects.
Arabica Robusta

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

www.pambazuka.org/...53066

petroleum development international oil extractive transparency curse resource industry

shared by Arabica Robusta on 16 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • 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.
  • Arabica Robusta on 16 Oct 10
     
    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

BIC's new handbook for advocacy on extractive industry revenues | Bank Information Cent... - 0 views

www.bicusa.org/...Article.3836.aspx

bic civil development extractive finance imf industry international movements petroleum social society

shared by Arabica Robusta on 06 Jul 08 - Cached
  • Arabica Robusta on 06 Jul 08
     
    The Handbook is intended as a tool for civil society organizations, journalists and other members of the public interested in learning more about transparency and fiscal management in the natural resource sectors. It distills and builds upon information contained in the IMF's document, with a focus on areas especially pertinent for civil society groups seeking to better understand how extractive industry (EI) sectors are managed. The Handbook aims to help civil society groups hold governments and private companies accountable for the exploitation of natural resources in their country.[2] In producing this Handbook, BIC is not endorsing the extractive industries or asserting that improved transparency, alone, would address the myriad social, environmental and economic impacts associated with natural resource exploitation. Rather, this document aims to provide citizens in resource-rich countries with one more tool to strengthen their efforts to hold industry actors and governments accountable.
Arabica Robusta

Analysis of implementation of revenue transparency commitments of IFC and EBRD loans | ... - 0 views

www.bicusa.org/...Article.3685.aspx

development ebrd extractive ifc industry international revenue transparancy

shared by Arabica Robusta on 24 Apr 08 - Cached
  • Arabica Robusta on 24 Apr 08
     
    After visiting the companies' websites in search for information on revenue payments to host county governments, BIC wrote emails to the contacts specified in the respective Summaries of Proposed Investments and Project Summary Documents, respectively. From research on the websites, only one company, Cadogan Petroleum (EBRD investment) had very accessible and transparent statistics on its payments to governments.
Arabica Robusta

ADB backs Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative | Bank Information Center: Moni... - 0 views

www.bicusa.org/...Article.3689.aspx

asian bank development eiti extractive industry news oil petroleum transparency

shared by Arabica Robusta on 24 Apr 08 - Cached
  • Arabica Robusta on 24 Apr 08
     
    Following similar announcements by other multilateral development banks, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) last week endorsed the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).
Arabica Robusta

Ghana And The Road To Nigeria By Pius Adesanmi | Sahara Reporters - 0 views

www.saharareporters.com/...and-road-nigeria-pius-adesanmi

petroleum industry development oil international extractive transparency curse ghana nigeria

shared by Arabica Robusta on 28 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • welcome to the world of Nigeria, Angola, and Gabon. Now that you are no longer just a backyard producer of cocoa and gold, you will begin to notice significant shifts in how you are treated by the international community - defined as the countries of Western Europe and America. You see, in international relations, all men were not created equal. The rule here is Orwellian: the owner of black gold is infinitely more equal than the owner of gold and cocoa. Don’t even mention groundnut sellers like Senegal. They are not on the radar and will not be until the Americans discover in the future that groundnut contains ingredients that could cure obesity. That’s the way it is. That’s just the way it is.
  • Here are the early indications of your new status that you must watch out for: you will be promoted from occasional spectator status to enhanced spectator status during G8 and G20 summits; President Atta Mills will be invited to Washington in the first quarter of 2011 on a grand state visit and White House chefs will be taught to prepare gourmet kenkey; your Ambassador in Washington will suddenly become a very important man and will begin to receive lots of invitations to White House diners much to the displeasure of Nigeria and South Africa; your Ambassador will soon become the Dean of the African diplomatic corps in Washington. That’s the way it is. That’s just the way it is.
  • Hillary Clinton will now regularly mention a special relationship that has always existed between Ghana and the USA in her speeches
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  • There is more: before the middle of 2011, the State Department will suddenly discover an old memo recommending the construction of a bigger and more functional American embassy in Accra that will rival the embassies in Baghdad and Kabul in size; before the end of 2011, AFRICOM commanders will recommend the establishment of a major Accra substation and Green Zone to pre-emptorily break the linkages between Ghanaian terrorists and their newly-discovered Ashanti relatives in the rugged regions of Yemen, Pakistan, and Afghanistan; China, as usual, will do her job more quietly and effectively than the noisy Americans to make sure that your black gold comes under the red flag and not the star-spangled banner.
  • In other words, you own that oil the way a child in Africa is said to own a goat that he feeds and cares for only to discover the true owner of the goat the day it is slaughtered and he gets the entrails while the elders in the compound feast on the real meat.
  • The fumes of oil are worse than the fumes of alcohol. Oil inebriates in a far more lethal fashion. Your citizens may start using words, phrases, and sentences hitherto unknown in Ghanaian English. Monitor and police them closely. When regular Joes, sorry, regular Mensahs, suddenly begin to gather in Kwame Nkrumah Circle or Labadi beach in Accra to talk about “resource control”, that is bad news.
  • Now that there is oil, parliamentary discourse in Accra may suddenly be exclusively reduced to the following keywords: estacode, upward budget review, upward contract review, supplementary appropriation, constituency projects, hardship allowances, newspaper allowances, furniture allowances, recharge card allowances, convoy allowances, renovation allowances, anticipatory approvals.
Arabica Robusta

West Africa Rising: Will a sovereign wealth fund really help reverse Nigeria's 'oil cur... - 0 views

www.csmonitor.com/...lp-reverse-Nigeria-s-oil-curse

petroleum industry development oil international extractive transparency curse resource nigeria

shared by Arabica Robusta on 05 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • On Dec. 1 last year, Nigeria’s cabinet approved the creation of a sovereign wealth fund that would invest any excess revenues generated from the sale of the country’s oil, which it exports at a rate of roughly two million barrels per day.
  • This isn’t the first time that the country has made such an effort. In 2003, under pressure from the International Monetary Fund, Nigeria set up the Excess Crude Oil Account, or ECA, to serve a similar purpose.
  • If Nigeria’s new fund succeeds in delivering tangible infrastructure improvements and other development outcomes from its oil profits, the country could become a role model for other poverty-stricken but resource-rich countries in West Africa.Ghana just began pumping oil in December, and significant reserves have recently been found off the coasts of Liberia and Sierra Leone. No doubt those countries will look to their larger neighbor to the east, the region’s economic heavyweight, in deciding how to manage their own oil revenues.
Arabica Robusta

Report card: Ghana oil gets a "C" | Pipe(line)Dreams - 0 views

www.pipelinedreams.org/...report-card-ghana-oil-gets-a-c

petroleum industry development oil international extractive transparency curse resource ghana

shared by Arabica Robusta on 30 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • the most encouraging sign was not the grades on the report card, but the presence of several officials at the event including a member of parliament, the communications director from Tullow Oil, the World Bank country director for Ghana and a Deputy Minister of Energy. Although some of the officials’ comments were perfunctory and fairly predictable, their attendance at least signaled the recognition of civil society as an important stakeholder in Ghana’s oil development. 
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 30 Apr 11
       
      Will this continue, or are the hegemonic organizations present simply to grease the skids and get petroleum exploitation started?
  • On transparency and citizen participation, for example, the government received “B” grades. Regarding transparency, the report states, “On the positive side, Ghana’s parliament passed the long-delayed and debated petroleum revenue management bill at the beginning of March 2011. The bill is now awaiting presidential approval. While some issues were hotly debated, there was consensus from both the majority and the minority members of parliament on all the transparency provisions. Should the bill approved by parliament become law, there will be a number of important transparency provisions.”
  • Of particular concern is the lack of a legal framework for dealing with oil spills: “The institutional weakness in the environmental protection institutions was demonstrated during the investigation into mud spillage by Kosmos Energy.
Arabica Robusta

Shell Nigeria appeal dismissed in Bonny land dispute | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...-dispute-idUSLDE74429O20110505

petroleum industry development oil international extractive transparency nigeria shell bonny

shared by Arabica Robusta on 08 May 11 - No Cached
  • Foreign investors say Nigeria ranks among the most litigious and bureaucratic business environments in the world.
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