Oil, Somalia and Geat Game of Africa

[hellheaven1987]

I believe many people were puzzling like me when Kenya started their campaign against Al-Shabab last October, below is an article about the campaign.

The international hotels here are starting to empty; the restaurants and bars are bringing their tables in off the streets; and a queasy, quiet sense of dread is coiling itself round Nairobi, as the country waits to see what - beyond the two grenade attacks this week - Kenya's military offensive inside neighbouring Somalia might yet provoke by way of retaliation.

Kenya's government is trying to sound confident. The deputy interior minister assured me that the country was "safe for tourists", and that foreigners have no reason to stay away despite clear threats from the militant Somali group al-Shabab.

Let us hope he is right. Kenya's vital tourism sector has fallen victim in the past to unnecessarily shrill foreign travel advisories.

But Kenya's unexpected military incursion into southern Somalia is a dramatic development for a country that has spent years carefully trying to avoid just such an entanglement.

So was it a mistake? That seems to be the main question on the lips of aid workers, diplomats and a variety of officials I have been speaking to here over the past few days.

Some Somali experts believe this was a long-planned operation, arranged with the covert support of the US and other western allies.

The theory goes that the recent kidnappings of foreigners in Kenya were merely a convenient pretext for the invasion - that al-Shabab has been fatally weakened by its "horrific ineptitude" in the face of the famine and its dwindling foreign support, and that the next few months could see the militant group ousted from its key port of Kismayo and effectively finished off inside Somalia.

A slightly more modest theory holds that Kenya has indeed been planning for a limited military intervention to build a more effective buffer zone along the border inside Somalia - where it already co-operates with various ineffective local militias opposed to al-Shabab and into which it intends to push some of the tens of thousands of Somali refugees now camped in Kenya.

A senior western aid source told me that the UN secretary general has already called Kenya's prime minister to warn him against any attempt to violate international law by expelling refugees.

Source

The question is why? Why Kenya, together with Ethiopia and AU, after been canning by NATO for four years for lack of action againsting Al-Shabab, finally decides to move their fat butt and started the campaign against Al-Shabab? Furthermore, the situation is even more strange when British foreign minister visited Somalia early this year, first time after two decades, together with UN Secretary General. Besides, world leaders even bother to meet together last month in London to discuss the future of Somalia last month.

Source

Many people are puzzled by this West's renewed interest of Somalia - after two decades of war and death, West suddenly find Somalia is interesting. Why not ten years ago? Why now? The answer is presented by BBC last week.

Construction has begun on a $23bn (£14.5bn) port project and oil refinery in south-eastern Kenya's coastal Lamu region near war-torn Somalia's border.

An oil pipeline, railway and motorway will also be built linking Lamu to South Sudan and Ethiopia.

Newly independent South Sudan plans to use Lamu as its main oil export outlet.

A BBC reporter says security concerns for the project may explain the presence of Ethiopian and Kenyan troops in Somalia aiming to pacify the region.

Source

The plan is to turn into Kenya into the oil refine center of East Africa, which the crude oil of South Sudan, Somalia (the oil reserve in Puntland) and Uganda would flow to Kenya for refine. Of course, to make sure the oil can flow to "right buyers", it is necessary to keep a West-friendly government in those countries, which is why it is necessary to remove Al-Shabab and keep a pro-West government in Somalia. This also happens in South Sudan, as the new nation was independent from the anti-West Sudan with West's back-up - to prevent oil remain under Chinese control. In conclusion, West's renewed interest on Horn of Africa is largely because its desire to control the oil reserve instead allow it fall into other competitors' hand, and it proves again that the existence of oil reserve is what importance to catch West's attention - not the genocide, not drought, not Joseph Kony nor millions deaths for whatever reasons.

[Town Watch]

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't North Sudan(original Sudan) just being butthurt about losing the oil reserves to the justifiably independant South Sudan?

And the North Sudan is just trying to blackmail the south for more oil revenues than what had previously been agreed upon, by embargoing the South Sudanese oil exports

what exactly speaking does china have to do with this?

[Rolling Thunder]

Yes, of course, it's the oil. Not the repeated pirate attacks on shipping throughout the gulf.

[hellheaven1987]

Yes, of course, it's the oil. Not the repeated pirate attacks on shipping throughout the gulf.

If NATO is serious about pirates British foreign minister would visit Somalia four years ago.

Furthermore, it seems Turkey plays a crucial role in NATO's new adventure in Horn of Africa.

The first major commercial airline in more than 20 years has landed at Mogadishu airport in war-torn Somalia.

Turkish Airlines says it is the start of a regular service to the Somali capital, the first by an international carrier from outside East Africa.

Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bosdag was on board the flight, which was welcomed by the Somali president.

The twice-weekly flights should make travel easier for Somali businessmen and members of the large diaspora.

Somalia has not had a functioning central government for more than two decades and has been riven by factional fighting.

Islamist militants were pushed out of the capital by Africa Union and government forces last August - although they have continued to stage attacks in the city.

Source

[hellheaven1987]

Update:

Oil has been discovered in Kenya after exploratory drilling by Anglo-Irish firm Tullow Oil, President Mwai Kibaki has said.

The discovery was made in the country's north-western Turkana region.

Mr Kibaki said it was "the first time Kenya has made such a discovery" and called it a "major breakthrough".

Kenya is a regional business and tourist hub with the largest economy in East Africa, although its relative wealth is not based on mineral riches.

The Kenyan president said Tullow would drill more wells to establish the commercial viability of the oil.

"It is... the beginning of a long journey to make our country an oil producer, which typically takes in excess of three years. We shall be giving the nation more information as the oil exploration process continues," he said.

Tullow Oil, which also struck oil in neighbouring Uganda, said the Kenyan find had exceeded their expectations.

"This is an excellent start to our major exploration campaign in the East African rift basins of Kenya and Ethiopia," said Angus McCoss, the company's exploration director.

He added: "To make a good oil discovery in our first well is beyond our expectations and bodes well for the material programme ahead of us."

Tullow has found oil in, or off the coast of, a number of African countries, including Ghana and Sierra Leone.

Source

Apartly Horn of Africa is quite oil-rich, no wonder West wants to move into that region with whatever excuse it can find.

[Exarch]

He who controls the Spice, controls the Galaxy....

but having military control over a region doesn't necessarily guarantee oil rights as the whiners and s who when Russian and Chinese oil companies got lucrative oil and mining contracts in A-Stan and Irak demonstrates.