ERHC Energy Inc (ERHE)

[RubyMartin]

Gulf of Guinea The List: The World’s Most Valuable Disputed Turf (From Link Provided By Rambus)

Who’s fighting: Angola, Cameroon, the Republic of Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and São Tomé and Príncipe, whose maritime borders remain largely unsettled.

What’s it worth? West Africa could be the new Middle East. Today, about 4.7 million barrels of oil per day come from the region; overall, the Gulf of Guinea could be home to over 24 billion barrels of crude oil. Oil fields discovered in the 1990s have turned impoverished Equatorial Guinea into an energy powerhouse, and some analysts speculate that the nearby island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe is also sitting on huge reserves.

Who’s done what: So far, the nations surrounding the Gulf of Guinea are resolving their disputes peacefully. Joint development zones (JDZ) have allowed several neighboring countries to share the area’s mineral wealth. Equatorial Guinea is still at loggerheads with Gabon, which in 1972 occupied three small islands now thought to be near large undiscovered oil and gas fields, but in the past few years Nigeria has settled border disputes with Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, and São Tomé and Príncipe. In 2006, leaders from around the Gulf of Guinea set up a regional forum to arbitrate oil-related disputes. The future could be far less stable, though, as ongoing violence in Nigeria and several recent coup attempts in São Tomé and Equatorial Guinea attest. Moreover, grossly corrupt West African governments could face a backlash from their publics, who have yet to see the Gulf of Guinea’s growing oil wealth improve their lives.