The United States sees West African oil exports as a key means of reducing future dependence on oil from the unstable Middle East region, now roiled by the spectre of war with Iraq, US government officials said on Tuesday.
”Numerically, if we get more oil from more diverse sources, then a disruption of any one source will have a lesser impact on the total supply,” John Brodman, acting deputy assistant secretary of energy, told an audience of oil executives and West African diplomats at a Houston conference.
Africa will never replace the Middle East completely, but it holds 10% of the world’s proven oil reserves and can help increase the diversity of America’s oil supply, Brodman said.
Africa, excluding Opec member Nigeria, currently produces about two-million barrels of oil per day, Brodman said. That amount is expected to rise to seven-million barrels per day by 2020 as more companies develop reserves.
Sounding a familiar refrain from the Bush administration, Walter Kansteiner, assistant secretary of state for Africa, urged West African nations to create more transparent accounting rules and to enforce the rule of law.
A perception of corruption and the existence of legal systems that make it hard to enforce contracts may act as inhibitors to foreign investment, Kansteiner told the conference.
Nonetheless, a number of US oil companies operate in West Africa, generally in partnership with local governments.
Allegations of bribery by oil companies in developing nations have long existed. In March, oilfield services giant Baker Hughes Inc. disclosed a federal criminal investigation into allegations that its executives engaged in a kickback scheme involving a lucrative Nigerian oil contract.
Josefina Pitra Diakite, Angola’s ambassador to the US, acknowledged that corruption is a problem, but not solely an African one.
”Corruption is a global problem,” said Diakite. ”We find corruption in Western Europe, in Russia. We acknowledge the problem. We are trying to mitigate it.”
She cautioned against searching out a single solution on a vast continent of nations.
”When people assess a situation in Africa, they have a tendency to put all the countries in the same basket,” Diakite said. ”We are talking about 56 countries.” – Reuters