Sadly, in most oil producing countries death, instability
and poverty have stalked the people, governments have shaken and fortune
seekers have played their hand
War drums in the last two weeks between DR Congo and
Uganda have filled the newspapers with headlines - and observers with the same
dread that hangs around the mining of oil and other minerals in areas prone to
what is known as resource wars. A high-money venture, the allure of oil around
the world has attracted the most colourful of characters and spawned some of
the most interesting stories.
Sadly, in most oil producing countries death, instability
and poverty have stalked the people, governments have shaken and fortune
seekers both local and foreign have played their hand. Enter Uganda.
While not yet an oil producer, promising prospects have
drawn in the usual suspects. At a dinner table to thank higher powers for the
good fortune of oil in May this year, President Yoweri Museveni sat next to
Heritage Oil’s Tony Buckingham. Anyone with an Internet connection will learn
interesting things about Mr Buckingham. Today one of Buckingham’s former
business partners -- a man with whom he set up a mercenary army comprising
ex-South African army commandos called Executive Outcomes -- is being held at a
maximum security jail in Zimbabwe.
Simon Mann, as Buckingham’s comrade is known, is facing
charges of attempting to overthrow the government of President Teodoro Obiang
Nguema Mbasogo of oil rich Equatorial Guinea.
Mann, Buckingham and others set up Executive Outcomes in
the 1990s and have operated the private military outfit in other oil or mineral
rich countries including Angola and Sierra Leone.
The company re-constructed itself when its business was declared
illegal in South Africa where it was based. However, its “mercenary”
activities were unheard of until March 2004 when the
Harare government stopped a plane with 70 mercenaries on board. The plane had
been met by Mann and had apparently stopped to pick up arms enroute for the
alleged coup in Equatorial Guinea. The mercenaries claimed they needed the guns
to protect a mine in DR Congo.
As the handcuffs were being snapped onto Mann’s wrists at
Harare airport, another band of mercenaries in Malabo, the capital of
Equatorial Guinea including friends of Buckingham like Nick Du Toit, another
former member of Executive Outcomes were being put under law and order. Some
reports claimed that the British, Spanish and American governments knew of the
privately funded attempt to overthrow Nguema’s regime and replace it with an
opposition leader residing in the Spanish capital, Madrid.
At the time of the scandal (March 2004), then acting
Foreign Affairs Minister Col. Tom Butime told this newspaper that he was not
aware of the relationship between Buckingham whose Heritage Oil had a license
for oil exploration in Uganda and the alleged coup plotters who had been nabbed
in a failed attempt at regime change in Equatorial Guinea.
Mann is currently serving part of a four-year sentence
but is facing extradition to Guinea for his alleged role in the coup. In
October 2004, President Museveni was in Harare for a three-day official visit.
Some sources claimed he had been tasked by Buckingham to broker the release of
his friend Mann by appealing to his colleague, Robert Mugabe.
Despite these events little of the connections of
Buckingham has been an issue with Kampala it seems. Indeed such are the high
stakes games that are played in the international oil industry. The Guinea
affair implicated not only foreign governments but personalities like Sir Mark
Thatcher, the son of former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who is a
friend of Mann.
BLESSING OR CURSE? Testing at one of the oil wells in
western Uganda.
Thatcher was named as one of the financiers of the failed
coup plot.
Other interesting names continue to pop up about Uganda
and her oil. One is that of Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el Gaddafi. A
study done on oil and its potential impact in Eastern DR Congo by the Pole
Institute in 2003, concluded that Col. Gaddafi was not picnicking when he
visited Toro Kingdom in early 2001 but investing in a potentially lucrative
relationship with the royal family.
Col. Gaddafi is the “Defender of the Crown” - a title
given to him by Toro’s young King Oyo Nyimba. The Libyan leader has been
associated with the Queen Mother Best Kemigisa since. The researchers said the
relationship between Col. Gaddafi and the Kingdom was calculated.
“It is difficult to believe that the Libyan leader is
acting out of altruistic motives; on the contrary, it is not hard to imagine
that Gaddafi's interest in Toro could be connected to the prospect of oil,” the
report noted.
At the time the report was done, said its author; Dominic
Johnson, much of the prospects for oil were in the Semiliki Valley in the
territory of the Kingdom.
Gaddafi is still interested in Ugandan oil and has,
according to sources close to the Libyan government, offered to help build a
small refinery in western Uganda. Note that the Libyans have won a pipeline
construction deal to extend the Kenya oil pipeline from Eldoret to Kampala.
Company officials at Tamoil, Libya’s state-owned company which is locally
registered, say that Libya is prepared to finance the infrastructure to the
western oil fields.
Recently, sources say, the Libyan government is extending
its interests to the Albertine Graben by bolstering its diplomatic relations
with the Kigali regime of Paul Kagame. Rwanda is also seeking oil and has an
agreement with a company called Vangold Resources based in Canada just like
Heritage Oil.
Rwanda in many respects is going about the oil issue more
expertly when compared to countries within the Eastern Rift Valley basin where
oil has been the main news these last two years. An oil find at the base of the
Albertine by Rwanda could potentially see accelerated activity by Kigali.
Oil as a potential spark for conflict has now been
established with the events that occurred in the Lake Albert over the past two
weeks.
There is little doubt that it is now clearly a
fully-fledged issue of economic and political stability for the countries of
the Great Lakes.
Not only is the vast eastern DRC teeming with mercenaries,
militias, tribal authorities and foreign armed groups like the Lord’s
Resistance Army (LRA) but the involvement of multi-national companies and
foreign governments in weak states in the region and you have a powder keg
situation on your hands.
Some of the latest names are Malaysia’s Oil and Gas
giant, Petronas, which is in talks with Uganda’s Ministry of Energy about a
possible petroleum development. A recent trip by President Yoweri Museveni to
Malaysia announced cooperation is in the works with Kuala Lampur.
Officials of Petronas are expected in Uganda next
weekend.
After the Uganda-DRC standoff, Heritage appears to have
emerged stronger. Sources say it is now getting better cooperation from Joseph
Kabila’s government (in the face of threats by Uganda to re- enter). Before
this, Heritage had made it publicly known that Kinshasa was at best dilly
dallying about activating the exploration concession agreement it signed with
Kinshasa. Think about this.
Also, an agreement on better relations between Kampala
and Kinshasa could lead to the company and its partner, Tullow, increasing
exploration in their concessions on the Congolese side of the border.
There were whispers in some circles that the border
tensions could have been deliberately played up by Kampala with that
consequence in mind.
Intelligence sources told Sunday Monitor the Ugandans
succeeded in forcing a settlement in part because President Kabila has in the
past months been isolated.
Countries in the European Union are disappointed by his
belligerence towards his defeated rival Jean Pierre Bemba -- after the Union
had spent hundreds of millions of euros financing a “democratic” election
there. A rebellion by Bemba in the East with any slight support, especially
from Uganda, would wrest control of the East from Kabila possibly leading to a
civil war.
Kabila has reportedly grown icy towards Belgium, a key
player in Congo and alienated his close personal friend, EU Development
Commissioner Louis Michel.
Countries like Belgium and France do not support further
chaos in the eastern DRC if only because it could bring the region under more
Ugandan (read English speaking) influence. A weakened Kabila would mean these
countries could lose whatever influence they have left in the eastern DRC altogether,
and this in a region where their former colonial properties like Rwanda and
Burundi have come under apparent American and British hegemony by proxy.
The United States, which leads in official development
assistance to DRC, is not averse to regime change in Kinshasa either, having
generated the coups that brought Marshall Mobutu Sese Seko to power there in
the ’60s.
This may explain why President Francois Bozize, of
French-speaking Central Africa Republic (CAR) whose country borders oil rich Chad,
Sudan and the DRC is expected in Kampala this weekend for talks with Museveni.
In a continent where foreign policy is as complex as can
be (most western governments prefer change by proxies), and where powerful
companies like Heritage Oil operate in complicated environments, it would not
be shocking that the Buckingham’s of this world hold not just private
enterprise but are part of the bigger battle for resources on the continent.