Sahara: IEA on North Africa

 

The International Energy Agency (IEA) medium-term outlook report, published on 28 May, anticipates that oil production from OPEC members Algeria, Angola, Libya, and Nigeria will stagnate over the next five years at 7.12 million b/d, posting more or less zero growth from 2012 to 2018. Last year, the agency anticipated supply growth of 685,000 b/d from 2011 to 2017.

 

Antoine Halff , head of markets at the IEA in Paris, said that at first the Arab Spring of 2011 looked like a blip as production recovered quickly from the war in Libya. 'But it turns out it is a big event,' he said. 'We are beginning to see security issues in northern and western Africa and this will have implications for OPEC supply.' Although oil production recovered from the Arab Spring faster than expected, the delayed impact of the revolutions that swept across North Africa is now hurting supply growth forecasts for Libya, Algeria, and Nigeria.

 

The IEA is particularly bearish about Algeria, forecasting a drop in oil production capacity from last year's 1.2 million b/d to 0.8 million b/d by 2018. The other African members of OPEC will see their production capacity stagnate instead of posting significant growth, as the IEA forecast only a year ago. This gloomy outlook comes on the back of escalating security risks, uncompetitive fiscal terms, challenging local content requirements, and contract sanctity concerns. The IEA concludes, 'Increased violence by Islamist extremists and militants, against a backdrop of political instability across much of northern and western Africa since the Arab spring, is changing the equation for acceptable risks for international oil companies.'

 

For more news and expert analysis about the Sahara region, please see Sahara Focus.

© 2013 Menas Associates

Mali: Prime Minister Diarra ashamed at interim leader's beating

In a TV broadcast, Mali's Prime Minister Cheick Modibo Diarra said he is ashamed that the country's interim President Dioncounda Traore was beaten unconscious by protesters on Monday 21st May.

Traore was attacked a day after a deal was made with coup leader Capt Amadou Sanogo for Traore to remain in office for a year.

In the same televised address, Diarra appealed for calm and called for the protests to stop. A spokesman for regional bloc ECOWAS said Mali could face sanctions if the military was in any way involved.

There has been speculation that soldiers allowed demonstrators, who backed the coup leaders, into Traore's office. He was reportedly unconscious when he reached the hospital, but was later released.

It is thought that the protesters were furious that Traore's decree, which was due to end on Monday, was prolonged. The recent political upheaval in the country and the rebel seizure of northern Mali, have seen thousands of people flee their homes.

Human rights groups are concerned about the humanitarian situation in the country, which is also currently undergoing a draught.

Speaking about the incident Diarra said: "I am ashamed to relate what happened this morning. I'm asking the young people who protested today not to protest again. I have understood their complaints and I'll make sure that the right people hear about them. Given the situation that this country is in right now, vandalism and looting is not what we need. It's not going to help the reconstruction of the nation."

ECOWAS representatives left Bamako on Monday, saying "we have accomplished our mission". The bloc's spokesman Sunny Ugoh, however, told the BBC he was shaken at the events that followed their departure and said sanctions were now a possibility.

He added: "We're rather shocked that this kind of incident would happen barely 24 hours after a delegation from ECOWAS managed to secure an agreement with the military. I believe that regional governments are already consulting to see how they can respond to the situation. Sanctions are still on the table if it turns out that those with whom an agreement was reached are complicit in this."

Sources: BBC News, Reuters, AFP

For more news and expert analysis about the Sahara region, please see Sahara Focus.

Mali's former president Toumani in Senegal's embassy

In a joint press conference in Paris with France's President Nicolas Sarkozy, Senegal's President Macky Sall said Mali's ousted leader is in the country at the Senegalese embassy. He noted: “President Amadou Toumani Toure [is] at this moment on the territory of the residence of the embassy of Senegal in Bamako."

Until recently, Toure's whereabouts since last month's military coup were unknown. The news of his whereabouts follows the arrest of several of his political allies this week.

Toure formally resigned on April 8, as part of a deal for the soldiers to hand back power. Mali's former prime minister Modi Sidibe was picked up by men in military police cars and reportedly taken to Kati, just outside the capital, Bamako, to the headquarters of the rebel soldiers. Reports later emerged that Defence Minister Sadio Gassama and the man responsible for the former president's personal security chief of staff Gen Hamidou Sissoko are also being detained by the military.

Speaking about the latest developments in Mali, Sall said: “This is a troubling situation." He added that West African leaders were "trying to find a rapid and peaceful solution first of all internally so we can return to the normal constitutional regime and then deal with the partition of Mali."

Since the coup, Tuareg and Islamist militants have taken over the majority of the northern desert region. The former have declared independence for the region, a move resisted by the civilian and military authorities as well as Islamist elements.

Sources: Reuters, AP, BBC News

For more news and expert analysis about the Sahara region, please see Sahara Focus.

Algerian troops in Mali

The linkage of the alleged Aguelhok executions to Al-Qa'ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the DRS raises two significant questions:

What was the Algerian army doing in Aguelhok?
Was the West complicit?
Troops on the move

Algerian armed forces crossed into Mali on 20 December. While the Algerian government eventually admitted that 15 military instructors had been sent to Mali, local observers reported an Algerian army convoy of five army trucks with trailers and 24 heavily armed 4x4s heading south on the Bordj Mokhtar–Tessalit– Aguelhok road. The number of troops was not given but can be assumed at around 200.

The same sources confirmed Algerian troops were garrisoned at the army bases in both Tessalit and Aguelhok. In addition, an army transport was seen flying into Kidal. It contained an unspecified number of Algerian army officers and was reportedly heavily armed. What were these troops doing in Aguelhok and had they been withdrawn to Algeria by the time of the alleged executions? The official reason given by Algeria for its troop presence was to help Mali combat AQIM. That was untrue, however, as no attacks have been launched at any time against AQIM in Mali by either Malian or Algerian forces.

All the signs are that the Algerian army wasn't here to protect AQIM from any assault on it by the MNLA, which has threatened to rid Mali of AQIM. As the MNLA has stated, AQIM is a cover for the billion-dollar cocaine trafficking industry, which is controlled by elements of the political-military elites and their security services in both Mali and Algeria. While the MNLA's secessionist demands may be a threat to Mali's sovereignty, the most serious threat is to the continued presence of AQIM in Mali and the lucrative state-run cocaine business. Indeed, if Mali were not such a close client state of Washington, it is likely that it would already have been labelled a narco-state.

Western complicity?

The second question concerns the matter of complicity. The line of reasoning is as follows. If Abdelhamid Abou Zaïd and AQIM were involved in executions at Aguelhok, the DRS is implicated and its allies and backers, namely the United States and the United Kingdom, may also be deemed complicit. Both US and UK intelligence services are aware of the DRSled AQIM training camp in the Tassili-n-Ajjer. Thus, if Malian soldiers were executed at Aguelhok by AQIM, the people who undertook the executions were under or closely associated with Abou Zaïd's command and almost certainly trained in such methods at the DRS-managed AQIM training camp. If an international enquiry were to establish such a chain, then how far could Western allies of the DRS be held accountable? That question makes a full investigation of what took place at Aguelhok unlikely.

For more news and expert analysis about the Sahara region, please see Sahara Focus.

© 2012 Menas Associates

New Saharan provinces in Mali

On 16th December, the Malian government announced that it was going ahead with the plan to create two new provinces in the northern desert regions of Taoudéni and Ménaka. Taoudéni is currently part of the Timbuktu region and Ménaka part of Gao.

This move is in accordance with the intention to increase the number of provinces from eight to 19 over five years. While justified as part of the state's decentralisation programme, the creation of these two new provinces in particular is also an attempt to improve the security of the country's northern region. The move will inject more administration into these largely ignored regions, as well as new military commands.

While the proposal appears to be welcomed by some sectors of the population, notably the Arab community of Timbuktu, it is receiving mixed initial views from the Tuareg population. While some see it as a genuine move towards decentralisation, others are wary that it will establish greater restrictions, especially militarily, over the predominantly Tuareg regions. The schedule for these new regions coming into practice is not yet established.

For more news and expert analysis about the Sahara region, please see Sahara Focus.

© 2012 Menas Associates

Sudan needs a more transparent oil sharing deal

A new report published by Global Witness has called on Sudan for more transparent oil revenue disclosures in order to avoid conflict ahead of Sunday's [9th January] referendum on southern independence.

The report stated that with the upcoming “referendum on independence for southern Sudan just days away, oil sector transparency is now more important than ever to preserving the fragile peace between north and south."

The UK based resource lobbyist says that the unclear distribution of oil wealth has contributed greatly to the mounting tensions between northern and southern Sudan. Most of the country's oil comes from the south but the infrastructure remains in the north.

The current oil revenue sharing deal between the two regions indicates a 50:50 distribution, but Global Witness says the two sides need to come to a more transparent and effective agreement to replace the existing one that expires at the end of January.

"There has been much mistrust over whether the current revenue distribution system has been implemented fairly. Mistrust over revenue sharing was one of the primary reasons for the south's temporary pullout from the power-sharing arrangement in 2007. Evidence suggests that such concerns are not unfounded," the report said.

The upcoming referendum is part of the 2005 treaty that ended a two decade war between the north and the south. It is estimated that over 95 per cent of registered voters live in southern Sudan, while the remainder are in the north or abroad.

"With both sides hugely reliant on oil revenues from the south, this issue is paramount going into the referendum… so the single best way to ensure stability after the referendum is to put a transparent and verifiable new oil deal in place," added the report.

Sources: BBC News, CNN, FT, Bloomberg

For more news and expert analysis about the Sahara region, please see Sahara Focus.