Reports of Oil in Darfur are Exaggerated
Claims that the war in Darfur is intimately linked to vast untapped oil reserves have been made ever since the conflict began and are revived in The Scramble for Africa, where Steven Fake and Kevin Funk repeat a series of assertions that, as far as is known in the often secretive world of oil exploration, have no basis in fact. Thus far, all efforts to find oil in Darfur have failed in the almost 30 years since Chevron discovered the small and declining Abu Gabra and Sharaf fields that border Kordofan.
Unlike in southern Sudan, where the war for oil was terrible, the massive displacement in Darfur was not caused by the presence, or even hopes, of oil; it was caused by a vicious counter-insurgency to quash a rebellion, including by the regime’s Islamist rivals in the Justice and Equality Movement, that seemed to be threatening to take control of the whole region. If oil reserves are ever found in significant quantities in Darfur, they could become a source of contention. On present evidence, however, that seems unlikely. Most of central and western Darfur consists of non-sedimentary rock, which will not contain any oil deposits. Experts concur that the region has only two areas where there could be serious finds””southern Darfur, bordering Kordofan and Bahr el-Ghazal, and the very north-western corner bordering Libya.
Slowly-expanding new exploration in both areas has caused intermittent, and apparently very limited, local conflict, but so far has yielded nothing of commercial interest.
Although important discoveries have been claimed since the war in Darfur began””including by the Ministry of Energy and Mining, which often exaggerates its success””the claims have been vague, significantly lacking in detail, and, in the single most important instance, incorrect.
The most productive field in Darfur is Block 6, where Chevron first found oil in 1979. This concession straddles Kordofan and South Darfur and was awarded to Sudan’s most important oil partner, the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), in November 1995. Early in the conflict in Darfur, CNPC relinguished most of the part of Block 6 that was inside Darfur to a group of small companies. Now called Block 17, there have not been any reports about activities there. The operator, Ansan, is a small Yemeni company with no track record in the upstream. (For a map of oil concessions, including in Darfur, see this map produced by the European Coalition on Oil in Sudan.)
The Darfur production in Block 6 is Abu Gabra, which is situated just inside Darfur and has been attacked several times by rebels, without lasting effect. Alleged production figures from the field vary from 20,000 to 60,000 b/d. CNPC has built a pipeline from the Fula field in Block 6, in the middle of Southern Kordofan, to Khartoum. The Abu Gabra oil is trucked out to Fula, which produces approximately 45,000 b/d. A small refinery at Abu Gabra, built before CNPC arrived, with a 2,000 b/d capacity, has been closed by CNPC. It produced mainly diesel.
In April 2005, Energy Minister Awad al-Jaz grabbed headlines by announcing discovery of a giant oilfield in southern Darfur that he said was expected to produce 500,000 b/d within months. The reported find was in Block C, a concession granted to a consortium called the Advanced Petroleum Company (APCO). APCO had started drilling late in 2004 and soon after claimed that its exploratory well had “˜oil in place’. But announcements of success were premature and proved illusory: the oil discovered was in insignificant, noncommercial quantities, and the well was soon reassessed as dry. Cliveden Petroleum, the largest partner in the original consortium, sold its share to High Tech, one of Sudan’s largest conglomerates that is controlled by a former Energy and Mining Minister, Abdel Aziz Osman. APCO stopped all activity and hasn’t resumed since.
This “˜discovery’ provoked considerable confusion and a surge of new reports linking the Darfur war to oil. On 16 April, UPI correctly reported the find as being in “˜southern Darfur’. On 19 April, Reuters said the discovery was “˜southwest of El Fasher in North Darfur State’. This sentence was problematic””although El Fasher is in North Darfur, the discovery was in South Darfur. In September 2006, citing the 2005 Reuters report, Tomdispatch, an armchair blog with a tendency to ascribe US foreign policy to oil and oil alone, said a discovery in North Darfur (the italics are mine) had “˜effectively doubled Sudan’s oil reserves’. The blog continues to be widely circulated on the internet. Fake and Funk cite it as evidence that “˜Darfur, along with Kordofan, “may be the areas richest in oil in the entire country.”’
But the South Darfur find trumpeted in 2005 was a bust, and there have been no lucky strikes in North Darfur. Industry sources say that one of the companies that bought drilling rights to 125,000 square miles of the North Darfur desert””Block 12A”” in November 2006 has reportedly had good seismic results. But it would be premature to claim even the possibility of oil wealth there: seismics identify potential; they do not find oil.
Julie Flint, a journalist with rich experience in Darfur, argues that there is currently little evidence of significant oil reserves in the region, noting that the largest find, announced in 2005 “was a bust†and that, while there are reports of “good seismic results,†there remain no sizable proven reserves.
Two questions arise:
1) What is the current evidence for oil in Darfur?
2) Did Khartoum have expectations of finding oil in Darfur?
With regard to the first question, Flint’s position is credible and persuasive, though one hesitates to draw firm conclusions from the silence regarding Darfuri oil in recent years, given the “often secretive world of oil exploration.â€
I am concerned, however, that the reader of this post may be left with the impression that our book emphasizes oil reserves in Darfur as the key to the conflict or devotes much space to discussing it. Two sentences in the entire book address the actuality of oil in Darfur.
The first, on page 56, reads, “Reports indicate that Darfur, along with Kordofan, ‘may be the areas richest in oil in the entire country’; one oil discovery in Darfur in April 2005 ‘effectively doubled’ Sudan’s reserves, and preceded a softening in tone by the Bush administration vis-à -vis Khartoum.†Flint has already noted our sources for these reports. While it may be that time has shown those reports to be in error, the evidence of the time was accurately reflected in what we wrote.
The second sentence, an endnote on page 272, states: “[Eric Reeves] is also wrong in asserting that Darfur has no oil–it has been known since 2005 that it does.†In light of Flint’s assertions, it seems appropriate to modify this sentence to note that, while there is certainly oil, it appears to be negligible, despite initial assessments of more substantial reserves.
We will certainly edit the two relevant sentences in any future editions of our book and consider creating an errata note for the book’s website.
Turning to the second question – that of whether oil was believed to be extant – it is unclear what grounds Flint uses for concluding, as she appears to, that Khartoum, Washington, and Beijing never harbored expectations that substantial reserves might be found. There is, of course, little grounds for concluding that the massive violence in Darfur was “caused by the presence, or even hopes, of oil.†A more serious question is whether any of Khartoum’s selections of military targets in Darfur, or reactions to the crisis in Beijing and Washington, were at any time influenced by the “hopes of oil.â€
Certainly, there were indications that the prospect of oil was being taken seriously. In the book we cite four sources on this point: a UN official, an oil company consultant quoted by Edmund Sanders of the Los Angeles Times, an article by Rob Crilly at the Times of London, and Fouad Hikmat, a Sudan analyst with the International Crisis Group. The UN official, named Jean Christophe, was a protection officer for the UN mission in Sudan. He was quoted by the Guardian (UK) observing that “the location of the emptied villages matches the map of oil concessions in south Darfur.†We noted that “rebel groups have made similar allegations.†The oil consultant goes so far as to assert that “The main reason behind Darfur is oil,†a comment which we note in the book is “bald (and perhaps exaggerated)â€. More credibly, Sanders wrote, in a March 2007 piece, that the “Sudanese government is quietly escalating oil exploration inside the Darfur region.†Sanders goes on to quote a Khartoum oil official: “There’s a real scramble to find oil in the north. …The likelihood that there is oil in Darfur is quite high.” Such appears to have been the thinking within Sudan, as of two years ago.
In our chapter devoted to providing an overview of the conflict, we mention oil in Darfur once, citing the aforementioned article by Edmund Sanders. The reader would be hard-pressed to conclude from the marginal emphasis that we place on it in the book that “the war in Darfur is intimately linked to vast untapped oil reserves.” Indeed, the entire sweep of the book readily accepts Flint’s assertion that the violence in Darfur “was caused by a vicious counter-insurgency to quash a rebellion, including by the regime’s Islamist rivals in the Justice and Equality Movement, that seemed to be threatening to take control of the whole region.â€
Given the minimal role that oil in Darfur plays in our analysis of the conflict, it is our hope that this discussion can shift to more fertile ground.
Incidentally, Tomdispatch – “armchair†blog or not; a rather unfair tag easily applied selectively to contrary sources, clueless and knowledgeable alike – is a site that regularly produces commentary of interest and I have yet to perceive a pattern of oil reductionism.
Thank you Ms. Flint. One of the earlier commenters on this book asked, why is this high-quality site wasting time on a book that has such simplistic analysis.
This report begs to differ: http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article19967)
There is this too:http://africannewsanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/04/natural-resources-in-sudan-and-africa.html
No-one disputes that the North-South war became, in large part a war for oil, especially after the opening of the Heglig-Port Sudan pipeline in 1999. I documented this in 2001 in a report for Christian Aid: The Scorched Earth: Oil and War in Sudan.
Darfur is different. The report cited by Jenny says specifically that ‘Darfur crisis was in essence not related to oil related issues’. It cites the Ministry of Energy’s 2005 claim that drilling in South Darfur had ‘proved the presence of oil in abundant quantities in Darfur’. This oil, as I have explained, was later found to be in insignificant, noncommercial quantities.
A September 2008 report by Afrol News is more interesting and worthy of comment. The italics are mine.
“Two Norwegian organisations, Norwatch and the Norwegian Council for Africa, today presented their investigations into a controversial delivery of “land based diesel motors and pumps” worth “tens of million of US$” by the Bergen-based company Rolls-Royce Marine, a daughter of UK’s Rolls-Royce, to Sudan. “The equipment probably will be used to connect new oil fields to the gigantic main oil pipeline in Sudan,” Erik Hagen of Norwatch says.
“According to a source in Sudan, the state-owned Chinese oil company CNPC had ordered the new equipment from Norway. CNPC is the operator of Sudan’s huge Block 6, which covers large parts of Western Kordofan and northern and southern Darfur. During the last few months, CNPC has been able to increase the production of Block 6 from 10,000 to 40,000 barrels a day.
“A source closely associated to Rolls-Royce told Norwatch that the Chinese state-company recently had made new oil discoveries in Darfur, ‘information they so far have not wanted to make public.’ The equipment delivered by Rolls-Royce also seems to be best suited to connect new wells to an existing field.â€
Industry observers, however, believe the Norwatch article is most probably about the Fula field, in southern Kordofan, which is the prevailing productive field in Block 6. But there is a dearth of research about oil exploration along the Darfur-Kordofan border and the measures being taken by the government to facilitate and enable it. Hopefully this is a gap someone will attempt to fill.
Too many recycled reports, too much reliance on the internet. Too little first-hand investigation, too little fact.
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