Mixing Occuption and Oil in Western Sahara
by Jacob Mundy, Special to CorpWatch July 21st, 2005
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12506
"We preferred that occupation," Salim says, pointing to the Spanish news channel on his television, "to this one," he says gesturing toward Moroccan settlers walking past his West Saharan shop window.
Western Sahara is a disputed territory sandwiched between Mauritania and Morocco, on the north African coast of the Atlantic ocean. The current struggle for control began in 1975 when Spain ended its colonial occupation and rule of Western Sahara and hastily handed over administration of its former colony to Morocco. Refugees fleeing the homes in Western Sahara, joined the nascent independence movement named Polisario, and declared the region a sovereign republic, setting off a guerrilla war.
Today, if the Oklahoma City-based Kerr-McGee Corporation gets its way and begins extracting oil and gas in contested Western Sahara, another volatile element will be added to the region's long-standing dispute.
HISTORICAL SIDEBAR:
1400s: Nomadic tribes from Yemen invade the Sahara. Mixing with the local indigenous population of Saharan Berbers, they form the people who now inhabit the westernmost Sahara.
1884: Spain establishes a "protectorate" over what is now called the Western Sahara. The colony, the Spanish Sahara, lasts until 1975.
1973: Several Saharans form a liberation movement named after the two regions of the Western Sahara: Popular Front for the liberation of the Saqiyah al-Hamra and the Río De Oro (Polisario Front).
1975: Although the International Court of Justice dismisses his historical claim to the Western Sahara, Morocco's King Hassan II announces that he will march 350,000 Moroccan civilians into the Spanish Sahara to "reclaim" it from Madrid. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's advice to his staff shortly before the march was "Just turn it over to the UN with the guarantee it will go to Morocco." The U.S. representative at the United Nations, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, later bragged, "In both [East Timor and Western Sahara] the United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of States desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success."
1976: Nearly half the indigenous Western Saharan population flees to Algeria for protection, with many joining the independence movement, the Polisario Front. At the end of February, as Spain formally withdraws, Polisario declares the birth of the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). Today the refugee population is estimated at 150,000 dispersed between four camps near Tindouf, Algeria.
1976-1991: Morocco and Polisario wage war for the Western Sahara; Morocco is able to restrict Polisario attacks by bisecting the territory with a heavily mined and manned sand wall, called the berm.
1981: Reagan administration reverses the Carter administration's Western Saharan policy and starts massively funding the Moroccan military effort. IMF and Saudi Arabia help offset the costs for Morocco.
1991: United Nations mission arrives in the Western Sahara to organize the referendum and maintain a cease-fire between the two sides. Although colonial authorities had only counted some 74,000 Western Saharans of all ages in 1974, Morocco managed to find some 170,000 voting-age Saharans that Spain somehow missed.
1997: Former US Secretary of State James Baker revives stalled peace process.
1999: King Hassan II dies; his son, Mohammed VI assumes the throne.
2000: In the shadow of the UN's 1999 East Timor debacle, Western policy makers fear that a vote for independence might jeopardize the rule of the young King Mohammed. Security Council pushes Baker to propose an alternative solution more favorable to Morocco.
2001-2003: Baker presents two proposals that would allow Moroccan settlers to vote in a referendum along with Western Saharans after a four-year "autonomy" period. Morocco accepts the former but rejects the latter, claiming it will not have its "territorial integrity" put to a vote.
October 2001: Kerr-McGee and Total enter into reconnaissance contracts with Morocco for areas off the coast of the Western Sahara.
2005: In late May there is a large pro-independence uprising in the Moroccan occupied Western Sahara, which is quickly repressed by Moroccan forces.
On the dusty streets of the sleepy Western Saharan capital, Al-'Ayun, where I met Salim, and around the world, Morocco finds little open support for its continued occupation. Not one country or international organization recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara. The United Nations defines the largely uninhabited Colorado-sized area as Africa's last remaining colony.
But Morocco has found allies in its claim of sovereignty over Western Sahara in the corporate world. One of its more recent friends is Kerr-McGee. In 2001, the company signed a hydrocarbon "reconnaissance permit" with the Moroccan government to explore areas off the coast of the Western Sahara. Since inking the deal, Kerr-McGee has been assessing the results of a "large 2D seismic grid" of the region and a 2004 "drop core survey." Kerr-McGee has renewed its contract several times, with the current agreement set to expire this October.
A Fortune 500 company founded in 1929, with more than $5 billion in revenue in 2004 and over $14 billion in global assets, Kerr-McGee "is one of the largest U.S.-based independent oil and natural gas exploration and production companies, with proved reserves of more than 1.2 billion barrels of oil," according to its website.
The area of Kerr-McGee's interest, the Boujdour Block, is a 27 million acre expanse claimed by Western Sahara. The Block stretches from the Sahara's cliff-lined shores to depths of more than 10,000 feet in the Atlantic Ocean.
Are there significant quantities of oil and gas off the shore of the Western Sahara? No one knows for sure. In neighboring Mauritania, Woodside Petroleum, Australia's second-biggest oil and gas company is expected to start pumping in 2006. The Chinese government is also heavily involved in offshore Mauritanian petroleum prospects. From the middle of the Sahara to all along the coast, West Africa is fast becoming an importance source of oil and gas for the United States.
But in Western Sahara, with uncertainty about ownership adding to the risk, oil companies are reluctant to commit resources. French oil "supermajor" Total, which also contracted with the Moroccan government in 2001 to explore off the Saharan shores, withdrew in 2004 for "business" reasons.
The Norwegian geological survey firm TGS-Nopec has also abandoned its interests in the area. Contracted to carry out the research for Total and Kerr-McGee, and with 85 percent of its survey completed, TGS bowed to intense grassroots pressure in 2003. After dozens of shareholders divested, TGS issued a public statement announcing that it "has decided not to undertake any new projects in Western Sahara without a change in political developments."
The subsequent withdrawal of two minor companies for similar reasons left Kerr-McGee as the only foreign company working with Moroccan oil interests in the area.
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Leigh www.leighm.net