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Not that this excuses anything Halliburton or the others did, but the period of time we're talking about was during the rise of Sani Abacha, who was the semi-civilian semi-military super corrupt leader of Nigeria.

In other words, bribing officials with massive amounts of cash may have been the only way to due business in Nigeria at that point.  Again I'm not condoning it, it's just doesn't surprise me.  And I know the Swiss banks recently came to some sort of agreement on some of the Abacha money kept there, a portion of which directly or indirectly came from the LNG money referenced in this story/diary.

What's far more interesting to me is that the current leader of Nigeria, Olesegun Obasanjo, is a "born again" Christian who is on remarkably good terms with the White House... and I know that Nigeria is busy working on a pipeline for W. Africa as well as integrating itself in the expanded version of the Pan Sahel Initiative, the Bushies' W. African "anti-terror" program.

There's a lot of geopolitically significant stuff going on in W. Africa today because of all that oil that's being found or at least assumed to exist, and while the papers written for westerners (read: white people) largely ignore it, it's quite extensive.  I see even poor old Chad, the country screwing up the Darfur talks, has gotten a nice chunk of money from the U.S. and they can't get their oil to market without going through Nigeria...

And if the UN ever gets around to adding an African member on the Security Council, you can be sure Nigeria will be on it.


Bush and Olesanjo yukking it up

Pax

Night and day you can find me Flogging the Simian

by soj on Wed Jun 22nd, 2005 at 10:37:38 PM EST
Actually, the Chad oil goes through Cameroon. See the World Bank page on this project, which they financed after extensive discussions.

But yes, there is a lot of geopolitical activity in that region.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Wed Jun 22nd, 2005 at 10:42:31 PM EST
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Oops my mistake.. I thought a portion of it went through Nigeria before it got to Cameroon.  Certainly Nigeria and Cameroon have had their difficulties in the past and I believe they're still arguing over some territory on their border.

Not to mention that the offshore waters in the Gulf of Guinea have major deposits...

So Jerome, that LNG pipeline they're talking about will go to Benin, Mali and Burkina Faso or am I misremembering that one too?

Pax

Night and day you can find me Flogging the Simian

by soj on Thu Jun 23rd, 2005 at 12:02:23 AM EST
[ Parent ]
i need to check again, but i have heard of a gas pipeline (LNG is - vety cold - liquefied gas, so it goes on special boats only) going north. I am just not sure if it was to bring gas from central african areas to the Nigerian coast, or to bring Nigerian gas north all the way to the algerian network for export from there. Either way it's still quite some way off.


In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Thu Jun 23rd, 2005 at 07:47:03 AM EST
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