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From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Mon Jan 10 2011 - 17:05:01 EST
Militarization Of Energy Policy: U.S. Africa Command And the Gulf Of Guinea
by Rick Rozoff
http://www.globalresearch.ca/coverStoryPictures2/22699.jpg
<http://www.globalresearch.ca> Global Research, January10, 2011
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At the beginning of the century, while the United States was still embroiled
in military interventions in the Balkans and had launched what would become
the longest war in its history in Afghanistan with the invasion of Iraq to
follow, it was also laying the groundwork for subordinating the African
continent to a new military command.
With 4.5 percent of the world’s population, the U.S. accounts for
approximately 30 percent of crude oil consumption. Although the world’s
third largest producer of crude, it imports over 60 percent of what it
consumes (12.4 of 20.7 million barrels it uses daily). A decade ago 15
percent of those imports came from the Gulf of Guinea region on Africa’s
Atlantic Ocean coast, mainly from Nigeria, and it is projected that the
proportion will increase to 25 percent in the next four years.
The National Energy Policy Report issued by the Office of Vice President
Richard Cheney on May 16, 2001 stated: “West Africa is expected to be one of
the fastest-growing sources of oil and gas for the American market. African
oil tends to be of high quality and low in sulfur…giving it a growing market
share for refining centers on the East Coast of the U.S.”
The following year, the Washington, D.C.-based African Oil Policy Initiative
Group conducted a symposium entitled “African Oil: A Priority for U. S.
National Security and African Development,” with the participation of
American legislators, policy advisers, the private sector and
representatives of the State Department and Defense Department, at which
Congressman William Jefferson said:
“African oil should be treated as a priority for U.S. national security post
9-11. I think that…post 9-11 it’s occurred to all of us that our traditional
sources of oil are not as secure as we thought they were.”
As is customary in regards to American foreign policy objectives, the
Pentagon was charged with taking responsibility. It immediately went to work
on undertaking three initiatives to implement U.S. energy strategy in the
Gulf of Guinea: U.S. Africa Command, the first overseas military command
inaugurated since 1983. The U.S. Navy’s Africa Partnership Station as what
has developed into the major component of the Global Fleet Station, linked
with worldwide maritime operations like the 1,000-ship navy and the
Proliferation Security Initiative and piloted in the area of responsibility
of U.S. Southern Command and the U.S. Fourth Fleet reactivated in 2008: The
Caribbean Sea and Central and South America. The NATO Response Force
designed for rapid multi-service (army, air force, navy and marine)
deployments outside of the bloc’s North American-European area of
responsibility.
In recent weeks Ghana joined the ranks of African oil producers, pumping
crude oil for the first time from an offshore field in the Gulf of Guinea.
“The Jubilee oil field, discovered three years ago, holds an estimated 1.8
billion barrels of oil, and will begin producing around 55,000 barrels per
day in the coming weeks. Oil production is expected, however, to rise to
about 120,000 barrels over the next six months, making the country Africa’s
seventh largest oil producer.” [1]
The Ghanaian oil exploitation is run by a consortium led by Tullow Oil plc,
which is based in London and has 85 contracts in 22 countries.
The same source quoted above added:
“The Gulf of Guinea increasingly represents an important source of oil, with
the US estimating that it will supply over a quarter of American oil by
2015. It has already sent US military trainers to the region to help local
navies to secure shipping.
“Nearby Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Congo Republic are already exporting
oil from the Gulf, while Liberia and Sierra Leone remain hopeful of joining
the club.”
In March of 2010 95 U.S. Marines led by General Paul Brier, commander of
U.S. Marine Forces Africa, deployed to the Bundase Training Camp in the
Ghanaian capital of Accra for a three-week exercise with the armed forces of
the host country, “part of the Africa Partnership Station,” which also
included the participation of the USS Gunston Hall dock landing ship and
“embarked international staff” in the Gulf of Guinea.
According to the government of Ghana, “The US and Ghana [are] at the highest
level, work together and at the military level inter-operate, train
together, share ideas and skills and…it is important for the two countries’
militaries to come together so that Ghana can be at par with the US Army.”
[2]
Washington’s energy strategy in regards to West Africa is a reflection of
its international policy of not only gaining access to but control over
hydrocarbon supplies and delivery to other nations, in particular to those
countries importing the largest amount of oil and natural gas next to the
U.S. itself: China, Japan, India, South Korea and the nations of the
European Union.
While, for example, Chinese companies are expanding oil exploration in the
African nation of Chad and are embarked on a program to build the country’s
first refinery and a 300-kilometer pipeline, a U.S-led consortium has been
extracting oil in the south of Chad and sending it by pipeline through
Cameroon to the Gulf of Guinea, paralleling U.S. strategy in the Caspian Sea
Basin vis-a-vis Russia and Iran.
Late last year the Atlantic Council, the preeminent pro-NATO think tank on
either side of the Atlantic [3], co-released a report entitled “Advancing
U.S., African, and Global Interests: Security and Stability in the West
African Maritime Domain.” It proceeds from the fact that “The Gulf of Guinea
is at the brink of becoming a greater supplier of energy to the United
States than the Persian Gulf and is therefore of far higher strategic
importance than has historically been the case.”
The report recommends enhanced U.S. government concentration on “a vital
region to maintaining U.S. energy security, prosperity, and homeland
security.”
It also calls for a higher level of integration between U.S. and European
nations – that is, NATO and European Union member states – in respect to
Africa, and promotes the following programmatic goals:
The establishment of “an interagency coordinating body to conduct strategic
planning, oversee implementation and track progress in West African maritime
security assistance and performance.”
Working with local security organizations like the Economic Community Of
West African States (ECOWAS) and its affiliated African Standby Force
brigade on “a comprehensive proof of concept pilot project…to develop the
capabilities and conditions necessary for securing the maritime domain as a
model for the region.”
Setting up a Gulf of Guinea coastal naval operation, “including the sharing
of assets, establishment of joint operations centers, and assignment of key
functions and centers of excellence.”
And to expand and deepen the work of the U.S.-Nigeria Binational Commission
established by the U.S. State Department last April “as a vehicle for
security cooperation, including maritime security.” [4]
Three months after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton inaugurated a
strategic dialogue with Nigeria, she met with Foreign Minister Ansuncao
Afonso dos Anjos of Angola (on the southern end of the Gulf of Guinea) in
Washington to sign the U.S.-Angola Strategic Partnership Dialogue, “which
formalizes increased bilateral partnerships in energy, security, trade and
democracy promotion.”
On the occasion, Clinton recounted that after her visit to Angola in August
of the preceding year “a bilateral group on energy cooperation met in
November 2009 to outline shared U.S. and Angolan objectives in developing
Angola’s oil and gas reserves, promoting greater transparency in its oil
sector and developing renewable energy sources.” [5]
The security and defense agreements with Nigeria and Angola, and demands by
the Atlantic Council and like-minded parties that they be qualitatively and
comprehensively expanded to the entire region, are the inevitable
culmination of efforts by the Pentagon over the past nine years.
During that period U.S. naval vessels, troops and major military officials
have been in Gulf of Guinea littoral states continuously, solidifying
relations with Liberia (where the Pentagon has built a military from
scratch), Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon,
the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), Angola, and Sao Tome and Principe. [6]
All except for Ivory Coast, which is currently in turmoil and facing the
prospect of armed intervention by ECOWAS African Standby Force troops and
the armed forces of assorted NATO states.
Until AFRICOM achieved full operational capability on October 1, 2008,
Africa was assigned to U.S. European Command (EUCOM) except for Egypt, the
nations of the Horn of Africa and four Indian Ocean island states that were
under Central Command and Pacific Command.
The top commander of EUCOM is jointly NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander
Europe. AFRICOM, then, was created as the Pentagon’s first post-Cold War
foreign military command under the tutelage of Marine General James Jones
from 2003 to 2006 and Army General Bantz John Craddock from 2006 to 2009.
AFRICOM and the Africa Partnership Station (APS) have been envisioned since
their inception as U.S. military operations that included the involvement of
NATO, especially its member states that are the former colonial masters in
the Gulf of Guinea area: Britain, France, Portugal and Spain. [7] In 2005
the U.S. submarine tender Emory S. Land led naval exercises in the Gulf of
Guinea with naval officers from Benin, Gabon, Ghana, and Sao Tome and
Principe along with counterparts from Britain, France, Portugal and Spain.
APS deployments include military officers from other NATO states and the
African Standby Force is modeled after the NATO Response Force.
In 2002 U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld demanded the creation of a
new NATO rapid reaction force, a 21,000-troop strike group that could “deal
swiftly with crises outside its traditional area of operation.” [8] He won
support for the concept at a meeting of Alliance defense chiefs in September
and two months later what became the NATO Response Force was endorsed at the
NATO summit in Prague.
At the next summit of the U.S.-controlled military bloc in Istanbul, Turkey
in 2004, Rumsfeld stated, “The reality is that NATO is a military alliance
that has no real relevance unless it has the ability to fairly rapidly
deploy military capabilities.” [9]
In 2005 the Washington, D.C.- based Center for Strategic and International
Studies’ Task Force on Gulf of Guinea Security released a report reiterating
and updating U.S. strategy in West Africa which stated that “The Gulf of
Guinea is a nexus of vital US foreign policy priorities.”
The Task Force consisted of “oil executives, academics, diplomats and
retired naval officers under the chairmanship of Nebraska’s Senator Chuck
Hagel and received briefings from serving US ambassadors, oil companies, the
CIA and US military commanders.” [10]
In the same year U.S. Naval Forces Europe announced that it had embarked on
“a 10-year push to help 10 West African nations either develop or improve
maritime security.” The nations are Angola, Benin, Cameroon, Equatorial
Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Nigeria, the Republic of Congo, Sao Tome and Príncipe,
and Togo, all on the Gulf of Guinea.
When the above report appeared, in July, U.S. European Command had already
“conducted 18 military-to-military exercises in Africa so far in 2005.” [11]
The following month a U.S. Coast Guard cutter visited the waters off
petroleum-rich Sao Tome and Principe, travelling “through the seas of West
Africa’s Gulf of Guinea, where an oil boom could outpace Persian Gulf
exports to America in a decade.” [12]
In 2002 the president of Sao Tome and Principe, Fradique De Menezes,
reportedly agreed to host a U.S. naval base, disclosing that “Last week I
received a call from the Pentagon to tell me that the issue is being
studied.” [13]
In 2006 the Ghanaian press wrote that “Marine General James L. Jones, Head
of the US European Command, said the Pentagon was seeking to acquire access
to two kinds of bases in Senegal, Ghana, Mali and Kenya and other African
countries.” [14]
Later in the year Jones was cited confirming that “Officials at U.S.
European Command spend between 65 to 70 percent of their time on African
issues…Establishing [a military task force in West Africa] could also send a
message to U.S. companies ‘that investing in many parts of Africa is a good
idea.’” [15]
In his other capacity, that of top NATO military commander, Jones asserted
that “NATO was going to draw up [a] plan for ensuring security of oil and
gas industry facilities” [16] and “raised the prospect of NATO taking a role
to counter piracy off the coast of the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of
Guinea, especially when it threatens energy supply routes to Western
nations.” [17]
Also in 2006, while still Supreme Allied Commander Europe, he announced that
“NATO is developing a special plan to safeguard oil and gas fields in the
region,” adding that “a training session will be held in the Atlantic
oceanic area and the Cabo Verde island in June to outline activities to
protect the routes transporting oil to Western Europe” and “the alliance is
ready to ensure the security of oil-producing and transporting regions.”
[18]
As Jones had alluded to, in June the NATO Response Force (NRF) was first
tested in Exercise Steadfast Jaguar war games on and off the coast of the
African Atlantic Ocean island of Cape Verde with 7,100 Alliance military
personnel, including French and German infantry, American fighter pilots and
Spanish sailors, along with warplanes and warships. “The exercise [was] the
first to bring together the land, sea and air components of the NRF. Once
operational, it will give the Alliance the ability to deploy up to 25,000
troops within five days anywhere in the world.” [19]
A Western news agency at the time described the exercise in these terms:
“The land, air and sea exercises were NATO’s first major deployment in
Africa and designed to show the former Cold War giant can launch far-flung
military operations at short notice.”
It also quoted then-NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer boasting
that “You are seeing the new NATO, the one that has the ability to project
stability.” [20]
In September of 2007, Captain John Nowell, commodore of the Africa
Partnership Station, travelled from Sao Tome and Principe to Ghana “to lay
the groundwork for upcoming Africa Partnership Stations with local
government and military officials from both countries.” [21]
Late in the following month the U.S. activated the Africa Partnership
Station by deploying the USS Fort McHenry amphibious dock landing ship and
the embarked Commander Task Group 60.4 (later joined by High Speed Vessel
Swift) to the Gulf of Guinea. The APS deployment included stops in Cameroon,
Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Liberia, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal and
Togo. USS Fort McHenry had staff from other NATO nations on board.
In November of 2007 Associated Press reported that with ships assigned to
the U.S. Sixth Fleet patrolling the Gulf of Guinea, “U.S. naval presence
rose from just a handful of days in 2004 to daily beginning this year.” [22]
On October 1 U.S. Africa Command was launched as (in Pentagon lingo) a
temporary sub-unified command under U.S. European Command.
Voices of concern were raised throughout Africa, typified by these excerpts
from commentaries in the Nigerian press:
“The issue of Africa Command is…because of the oil interest on the Gulf of
Guinea, going out to the coast of Liberia and so on. Americans are
finding an easy place where they can extract oil, and you know is a much
shorter route than going around from the Middle East.” [23]
“From the current data on production capacities and proven oil reserves,
only two regions appear to exist where, in addition to the Middle East, oil
production will grow and where a strategy of diversification may easily
work: The Caspian Sea and the Gulf of Guinea.
“Some of the problems linked to Caspian oil give the Gulf of Guinea a
competitive edge. Much of its oil is conveniently located off shore.
“[T]he region enjoys several advantages, including its strategic location
just opposite the refineries of the US East Coast. It is ahead of all other
regions in proven deep water oil reserves, which will lead to significant
savings in security provisions. And it requires a drilling technology easily
available from the Gulf of Mexico.
“Curiously, the newly formed NRF [NATO Response Force] carried out its first
exercise code named STEADFAST JAGUAR in Cape Verde, here in West Africa,
from 14-28 June 2006.” [24]
“I am normally a fan of the United States of America….But over this matter
of plans by the United States to establish what it calls the Africa Command
or Africom in the Gulf of Guinea, it is time to call for deep caution and to
agree with Nigerian officials that we should take the American initiative
with a pinch of salt.
“The Gulf of Guinea has emerged as the second largest pool of commercial
petroleum resources in the world, next only to the Persian Gulf and its
territorial environs.
“In fact, it has recently surpassed the Persian Gulf as America’s highest
supplier of crude oil.
“Not satisfied with only a small piece of the new oil destination of the
world, America stepped up its formation of Africom, making open moves to
extend the kind of cohabitation it enjoys with Sao Tome and Principe to
Nigeria.” [25]
“The whole thing about this Africa Command by the US is all borne out of
their interests in the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea, which they have…been angling
to take over. The Nigerian government should not fold its arms to allow the
US government re-colonise it.
“[T]he US had concluded plans to establish a military base in Africa with
the intent of protecting the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea and also to forestall
the economic incursion of China into Africa, especially Nigeria.
“The US has completed all the groundwork and has moved into the offshore of
Sao Tome and Principe, Angola and Guinea to secure positions for their
submarines and other security facilities.” [26]
“The gulf’s oil and gas deposits are put in the region of 10 billion
barrels. Statistics show that as of 2004 Africa as a whole produced nearly 9
million barrels of oil a day, with approximately 4.7 million barrels a day
coming from West Africa.
“Also, African oil production accounted for approximately 11 percent of the
world’s oil supply, while the continent supplied approximately 18 percent of
US net oil imports. Both Nigeria and Angola were among the top 10 suppliers
of oil to the US.” [27]
The apprehensions were not without foundation. On October 3 U.S.
ambassador-designate to Gabon and to Sao Tome and Principe, Eunice Reddick,
issued the following statements:
“Mismanaged, an oil boom could threaten Sao Tome and Principe’s young
democracy, security and stability.”
“The United States has trained Gabonese forces under the African Contingency
Operations Training Assistance (ACOTA) program….To promote the security of
the strategic Gulf of Guinea region, origin of a growing share of U.S. oil
imports, U.S. military engagement with Gabon has developed in several
areas….If confirmed, I will work closely with the Gabonese civilian and
military leadership, our European Command and the new Africa Command….” [28]
As noted above, the month after AFRICOM’s preliminary activation the U.S.
Navy dispatched its first Africa Partnership Station mission to the Gulf of
Guinea, described by the Pentagon as a multinational maritime security
initiative.
The guided missile destroyer USS Forrest Sherman visited Cape Verde for
three days in early November “to consolidate a growing sense of partnership
between the U.S. Navy and the Caboverdian armed forces” [29] at the same
time USS Fort McHenry began the Africa Partnership Station’s maiden mission
with a visit to Senegal en route to the Gulf of Guinea.
In 2008 the NATO secretary general at the time, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer,
visited Ghana, meeting with the country’s president and defense minister “on
deepening the cooperation between NATO and Africa,” and delivered a speech
on the topic at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Center in
Accra. [30]
In July of that year U.S. European Command conducted the Operation Africa
Endeavor 2008 multinational interoperability and information exchange
exercise in Nigeria with the participation of the armed forces of Nigeria,
Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chad, Gabon,
The Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Namibia, Rwanda, Senegal,
Sierra Leone and Uganda. General William Ward, commander of AFRICOM,
attended the closing ceremonies at Nigerian Air Force Base, Abuja.
The following year’s Africa Endeavor exercises were held in Gabon, with
“more than 25 nations participating…the second largest communications
exercise in the world.” For the first time run under the command of AFRICOM,
it focused on “interoperability and information sharing among African
nations via communication networks and collaborative communications links
with the United States, NATO and other nations with common stability,
security and sustainment goals/objectives for the African continent.” [31]
Participants included the Economic Community of West African States and Gulf
of Guinea nations Benin, Cameroon, Gabon, Ghana, Nigeria, and Sao Tome and
Principe.
At the time Associated Press reported:
“Just a few years ago, the U.S.military was all but absent from the oil-rich
waters of West Africa’s Gulf of Guinea.
“This year, it plans to be there every day.
“Africa — including Algeria and Libya in the north — supplies the U.S. with
more than 24 percent of its oil, surpassing the Persian Gulf at 20 percent,
according to statistics from the U.S. government’s Energy Information
Administration. Of that amount, 17 percent comes from the Gulf of Guinea and
Chad, which runs a pipeline to the Atlantic Ocean through Cameroon.” [32]
A spokesman for the U.S. Sixth Fleet said that in terms of “ship days” in
the Gulf of Guinea, U.S. naval presence had increased 50 percent from 2006
to 2007 and the U.S. Navy was expected to have a daily presence in 2008.
The Pentagon and its NATO allies are firmly ensconced in the Gulf of Guinea,
in part to realize one of the decisions agreed upon at last November’s NATO
summit in Portugal: To “develop the capacity to contribute to energy
security,” as the summit declaration stated.
The Pentagon has forged both bilateral and regional military partnerships
with every African nation except for Eritrea, Ivory Coast, Libya, Sudan and
Zimbabwe.
What began in the Gulf of Guinea has now absorbed an entire continent.
Notes
1) Associated Press, December 15, 2010
Al Jazeera/Daily Mail (Ghana), December 20, 2011
2) Ghana Government, March 18, 2010
3) Atlantic Council: Securing The 21st Century For NATO
Stop NATO, April 30, 2010
<http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/05/01/atlantic-council-securing-the-21
st-century-for-nato>
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/05/01/atlantic-council-securing-the-21s
t-century-for-nato
4) Advancing U.S., African, and Global Interests: Security and Stability
in the West African Maritime Domain
Atlantic Council, November 30, 2011
<http://www.acus.org/publication/advancing-us-african-and-global-interests-s
ecurity-and-stability-west-african-maritime-d>
http://www.acus.org/publication/advancing-us-african-and-global-interests-se
curity-and-stability-west-african-maritime-d
5) U.S. Africa Command, July 12, 2010
6) AFRICOM Year Two: Seizing The Helm Of The Entire World
Stop NATO, October 22, 2009
<http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/africom-year-two-taking-the-helm
-of-the-entire-world>
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/africom-year-two-taking-the-helm-
of-the-entire-world
7) NATO: AFRICOM’s Partner In Military Penetration Of Africa
Stop NATO, March 20, 2010
<http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/03/20/nato-africoms-partner-in-militar
y-penetration-of-africa>
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/03/20/nato-africoms-partner-in-military
-penetration-of-africa
8) Agence France-Presse, September 24, 2002
9) U.S. Department of Defense, June 27, 2004
10) Agence France-Presse, July 22, 2005
11) Stars And Stripes, July 31, 2005
12) Associated Press, August 7, 2005
13) BBC News, August 22, 2002
14) Ghana Web, February 23, 2006
15) U.S. Department of Defense, August 18, 2006
….
Global Energy War: Washington’s New Kissinger’s African Plans
Stop NATO, January 22, 2009
<http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/global-energy-war-washingtons-ne
w-kissingers-african-plans>
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/global-energy-war-washingtons-new
-kissingers-african-plans
16) Trend News Agency, May 3, 2006
17) Associated Press, April 24, 2006
18) Associated Press, May 2, 2006
19) North Atlantic Treaty Organization, June 30, 20016
<http://www.nato.int/docu/update/2006/06-june/e0628a.htm>
http://www.nato.int/docu/update/2006/06-june/e0628a.htm
20) Reuters, June 22, 2006
21) United States European Command, September 18, 2007
22) Associated Press, November 6, 2007
23) Malu Suleiman Mohammed and Olumide Bajulaye
Why US Wants to Establish Military Base in the Country
Daily Trust, November 24, 2007
http://allafrica.com/stories/200711240118.html
24) Abba Mahmood, Country, Gulf of Guinea And Africom
Leadership, November 22, 2007
<http://allafrica.com/stories/200711220187.html>
http://allafrica.com/stories/200711220187.html
25) Ochereome Nnanna, Nigeria: No to U.S. Army Base
Vanguard, November 22, 2007
<http://allafrica.com/stories/200711220612.html>
http://allafrica.com/stories/200711220612.html
26) Juliana Taiwo, U.S. Military Base – Country Begins Diplomatic Inquiries
This Day, October 2, 2007
<http://allafrica.com/stories/200710020239.html>
http://allafrica.com/stories/200710020239.html
27) Horatius Egua, Nigeria too late to stop US military on base in Africa
Business Day, September 27, 2007
<http://businessdayonline.com/National/208.html>
http://businessdayonline.com/National/208.html
28) United States Department of State, October 3, 2007
29) United States European Command, November 13, 2007
30) North Atlantic treaty Organization, November 25, 2008
31) U.S. Africa Command, January 14, 2009
32) Associated Press, November 5, 2007
----[This List to be used for Eritrea Related News Only]----