Middle East anti-America sentiment boosts African oil
August 7, 2006, 1 hour, 41 minutes and 54 seconds ago.
By ANDnetwork .com
With anti-American sentiment growing in the Middle East - particulary becasue of their support for the Isaeli war in Lebanon - America has started looking towards Africa as an alternative source of oil.
Saudi Arabia, the number one supplier of oil in the world and to the US, last week openly criticised the pro-Israeli stance of the US on the war. Analysts see this as a significant shift in the position of US allies in the region, and a hardening of anti-American sentiment in the Persian Gulf.
West Africa is the major beneficiary of this rising anti-American feeling in the Middle East, which first gained currency with the war on terror declared by the US after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks.
Conscious of this, the US started looking away from the Middle East and towards Africa, even before the impetus provided by the current Israeli-Lebanese war, whose heavy civilian casualty on the Lebanese side has generated universal outrage.
US President George W Bush had in a State of the Union address early this year, proposed steps to "make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past".
Analysing the shift already made in this direction, Brett Schaefer, a research fellow in regulatory affairs at the Heritage Foundation, Washington, declared on 7 March 2006 that "Africa is increasingly important to the US as a source of oil".
He said the country’s oil imports from sub-Saharan Africa had leapt 33% since 1999, while imports from the Middle East had decreased.
In 2005, Schaefer said sub-Saharan Africa supplied 18% of US oil imports.
West Africa’s Gulf of Guinea accounts for 78% of this, with Nigeria being the overwhelming source. West Africa is projected to account for 25% of total US oil imports within this decade. Some 25% of Nigeria’s oil output is exported to the US.
In pursuit of this new direction, the US has recently been paying greater attention to security in the Gulf of Guinea.
Earlier in 2006, the commander of US naval forces in Europe, Admiral Henry Ulrich, paid visits to some nations in the Gulf of Guinea, including Ghana, Sao Tome and Gabon. During the visit, he said though that the US did not intend establishing a physical presence in the Gulf of Guinea.
It would offer training and other forms of assistance to the states in the region to strengthen their capacity for ensuring security in the area.
The shifting US attention could be beneficial to Nigeria with new fields coming on-stream, particularly from offshore.
It could also stir up the debate as to whether the nation should retain its membership of OPEC, whose quota Nigeria has been bursting in recent times.
Business Day Online
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