Energy and Security Issues in the Red Sea
Transforming as "the Age of Gas" Begins in Earnest
20 August, 2010 | By Michael Bagley
--------------------------------------------------------------------
communication (SLOC).
Much of the anticipated change is developing around the flood of new
discoveries and exploitation of natural gas fields in the Indian Ocean
region, particularly extending through Ethiopia, Egypt, and other
countries of the Red Sea region. Apart from the impending influx of
new energy wealth into the region, facilitating new levels of confidence
and capability in the security environment, the boom of the "Gas Age"
also seems set to promise -- within a decade -- an oversupply of gas
to the world market, almost certainly precipitating a collapse in price
for gas and petroleum.1
The strategic balance in the Horn of Africa, and reaching through the
Red Sea to Egypt and the Mediterranean, is changing rapidly -- and in
many respects is becoming more unstable -- as political, geopolitical,
economic, and ideological issues begin to clash. The war over the
reunification of Somalia, incorporating both the old Italian Somaliland
(now Somalia) and the Republic of Somaliland, has now become
indisputable, and nominally-moderate Egypt has come down firmly on
the side of reunifying the area under the clear dominance of an
Islamist-dominated but anomic -- essentially lawless -- Somalia.
Egypt -- with its unstable political transition underway at the same
time as the discovery of increasing quantities of natural gas -- has
been covertly supporting a wide range of radical actions along the
Red Sea littoral and in the Horn with the sole goal of ensuring that
Ethiopia does not use its traditional heartland strength to be able to
revive its dominance of the Red Sea and the sea lane which links to
Egypt's Suez Canal.
In the process, however, the Egyptian Government has given support
to the same radical jihadist groups which fundamentally oppose
Egyptian secular governance, which support Iranian expansion into the
Red Sea/Africa framework, and which have transformed a
strategically benign Ethiopia into one which must now accept
confrontation with Egypt and its regional allies.
This situation has been compounded by the recent Islamist/pan-
Somalist success in winning power in Somaliland, but of equal
importance has been the first quiet stage of the transformation of
Ethiopia into an energy exporting power. Ethiopia's natural gas
reserves which the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) in 2009
rated as zero and in early 2010 at one-trillion cubic feet (TCF), now
have been demonstrated to be significant, and gas exports will begin
within five years.
Malaysian State-owned oil and gas company Petroliam Nasional Bhd
(Petronas) has now proven as much as four TCF of gas in its reserves
in the Ogaden basin region of Ethiopia. Petronas is one of about 85
companies which have oil and gas exploration licenses in Ethiopia, but
the Malaysian company is the first to begin its production phase,
which should see a gas treatment plant and a gas pipeline from the
Ogaden to Djibouti (at a total cost of $1.9-billion) on-line within five
years. Estimated Ethiopian gas reserves, as of 2010 (not "proven
reserves"), were reported at 12.46 TCF, but this figure was likely to
be expanded frequently as new discoveries are reported.
Significantly, although the externally-supported and -armed Ogaden
National Liberation Front (ONLF) has continued to sustain sporadic
armed contact with Ethiopian security forces into August 2010, the
second week of August saw the senior ONLF leadership in
Washington, DC, meeting secretly (under US sponsorship) with
representatives of the Ethiopian Government. Just days before that,
representatives of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) also met in
Washington, DC, with senior Ethiopian Government officials. Both the
OLF and the ONLF have been receiving extensive logistical support,
weapons, training, and funding from Eritrea, supported directly or
indirectly by both Egypt and Iran.
It is now apparent to both the ONLF and OLF that their foreign
patrons have been waging a losing battle against the Ethiopian
Government, and that, with the growing strength and wealth of the
Ethiopian Government, now is the time to consider coming to terms
with Addis Ababa.
Any thought that the pan-Somalists, who have recently scored a
major success in winning the Presidency of the Republic of
Somaliland, can effectively make headway in the ethnically-Somali
Ogaden region of Ethiopia have been quashed by the effective military
action by the Ethiopian Defense Force (EDF) in its combat contacts
with the pan-Somalists. The EDF units involved were almost entirely
ethnically Somali (officers and men), and yet acted decisively to quash
the Somalian forces fighting them.
Fighting around July 12, 2010, in the el-Dibir area of the Somaliland-
Ethiopian border was largely credited in the media with being an EDF
attack on civilians, but in fact it involved a clash with Islamist forces
that were routed by the EDF, which seized 120 of the Islamists'
trucks and took them to the Ethiopian city of Jijiga.
At the core of all of this has been the proxy war waged by Iranian-
backed Islamists, supported by the secular governments of Eritrea
and Egypt, to keep Ethiopia landlocked. When the Ethiopian
Government, some two years ago, began having an inkling that it
might soon be in the gas exporting business, it started negotiations to
build a pipeline to the Somaliland port of Berbera.
When it became clear that the UDUB Government of Somaliland was
not well-prepared to contest the Presidential elections -- which
resulted in a pan-Somalist Islamist taking power in July 20102 --
Ethiopia was forced to turn back to Djibouti as the only available
seaport for the export of Ethiopian gas.3
This is not an ideal situation for Ethiopia, given that Djibouti has
traditionally held Ethiopia to ransom -- given that it has, once again, a
monopoly on Ethiopian trade imports and exports -- but it is
nonetheless viable for both countries.
At present, the Petronas plans to be exporting natural gas from the
Ethiopian Ogaden basin within five years highlight the reality that
Ethiopia will soon be in a position to compete economically against
Egypt and Eritrea, which have been struggling to keep Ethiopia
landlocked. Egypt's strategic motive, expressed constantly by Cairo,
has been to keep Ethiopia -- which is vastly more fertile than Egypt
and which controls the headwaters of the Blue Nile, which provides
Egypt (and Sudan) with most of its water -- from posing a strategic
threat to Egypt by, potentially, cutting off the flow of Blue Nile waters.
In fact, the policy has only served to make the Egyptian fear a reality.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and Prime Minister
Ahmed Nazif, speaking at the African Union summit in Kampala,
Uganda, on July 27, 2010, appeared to strike a conciliatory note on
the contentious issue of Nile water usage, but Foreign Minister
Ahmed Aboul Gheit slipped into his speech that Egypt sought a "re-
unification" of Somalia, bringing Somaliland back into the union with
Somalia, something which is clearly tantamount to bringing Somaliland
back into civil war and crisis, rather than helping the entire Somali
population. Significantly, this was a blow directed directly at Ethiopia
and at the West which seeks stability in the Horn of Africa.
Egypt, pointedly, would rather have chaos on the Horn so that it could
be the master of the Suez/Red Sea SLOC all the way through the Bab
el-Mandeb adjacent to Somaliland, at the entrance to the Indian
Ocean. This pointedly, also, meant that Egypt supported constraining
Ethiopia from easy access to the Red Sea, which had once been
dominated, at its lower reaches, by the Ethiopian Navy. Following the
fall of the Dergue control of Ethiopia, Eritrea was encouraged by
Ethiopia to declare its independence from Ethiopia in 1993. It did so,
taking not only the historical geographic area of Eritrea (the onetime
Bar Negus: Kingdom of the North), but also the coastal part of
Ethiopia adjacent to Djibouti, and containing the Ethiopian port of
Assab, which had never been part of traditional Eritrea, but had been
part of the modern administrative zone of Eritrea under the Empire.
The result was that Ethiopia lost its access to the Red Sea, and had
anticipated a friendly trading path through "new" Eritrea to the sea,
because of the friendly separation of the territories. This was not to
be, and Eritrea began making unacceptable demands on Ethiopia,
which ultimately led to war, and to the inability of Ethiopia to use the
ports of modern Eritrea. The result is that Eritrea is now economically
destitute, and Eritrean Pres. Isayas Afawerke is under increasing
pressure to see the Ethiopian Government fail.
However, it is also clear that Eritrea can no longer afford to militarily
challenge Ethiopia, at least directly. Its military successes against
Ethiopia in the 1998-2000 fighting can now not be replicated, given
the declining economic fortunes of Eritrea and the rising fortunes of
Ethiopia.
Moreover, the prospect of considerable income from gas exports
begins to elevate Ethiopia into a new class of military capability. So if
Eritrea can no longer directly attack Ethiopia militarily, it must be
forced to re-double its proxy warfare, and yet even in this area
Ethiopia now seems poised to be able to achieve settlements with the
ONLF and OLF, two of the main proxy forces financed by Ethiopia
and its allies.
And yet Ethiopia finds itself still restricted in its ability to satisfactorily
control its export logistics, other than at the goodwill of Djibouti.
Some Ethiopian sources have been saying that should Eritrea again
provoke a war, then Ethiopia should sieze back the ports in
independent Eritrea which were once Ethiopian ports, particularly
Assab, which was never part of "traditional" Eritrea.
Moreover, in the South-Eastern part of modern Eritrea, the area
around Assab, there is already great local hostility to being under
control of Asmara (the Eritrean capital), and the Eritrean Government
of Isayas Afewerke. This hostility takes the form of armed insurrection
by ethnic Afars. The Afar Revolutionary Democratic Union (ARDU)
has engaged in combat operations since 1993 against the Eritrean
Government. They have commanded the attention of brigade-sized
Eritrean Government forces, which have unsuccessfully attempted to
curb the ARDU. ARDU itself is part of the Alliance of Eritrean
National Forces (AENF), an umbrella for opposition groups, mostly
Muslim, fighting the Isayas Government.
Ethiopia has, like Eritrea, used proxy forces against its adversarial
neighbor. The predominantly Muslim Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF)
has been based out of Addis Ababa since Eritrean independence, and
continues to fight the Isayas Government in Asmara. But the scale of
Ethiopian proxy warfare against Eritrea is nothing like Eritrea's use of
all available proxy resources against Ethiopia. The radical Islamist
forces operating in Somalia have long been supported by Eritrea,
along with their support from Iran, Egypt, and Libya, as a means of
tying down Ethiopian forces and promoting secessionist moves by
ethnic Somalis and Oromos in Ethiopia.
Now, unlike a year or two ago, Eritrea recognizes that it can no
longer give Ethiopia a pretext to go to war, because it would lose that
conflict. On the other hand, Ethiopia's need for the recovery of its Red
Sea access may well have been forced by the combined efforts which
recently resulted in, effectively, the loss of access through the Republic
of Somaliland, which has succumbed, with broad Eritrean, Iranian,
and other aid, to pan-Somalist, Islamist governance. So Ethiopia must
bow to whatever demands Djibouti may make on it, in order to use
the port of Djibouti, or else Addis Ababa must find a way to take
back its territory in the south-eastern, Afar, area of what is the
modern Eritrean state.
It would be logical, then, to assume that Addis Ababa would find
ways to promote the demands for independence or separation from
Eritrea made by ARDU and others. Success, or momentum, by these
anti-Isayas forces could eventually trigger Ethiopian military support.
Egypt, however, has been using Eritrea as its own proxy, and such a
development might cause Cairo to openly support Eritrea in a military
confrontation with Ethiopia, or else face the prospect of a revived
Ethiopian naval presence in the Red Sea, and growing Ethiopian
wealth and confidence to challenge Egypt and Sudan on the question
of the use of Blue Nile waters.
In all of this, the stability of the Red Sea/Suez global SLOC is
threatened, and no end is yet to be seen in the anomie -- the
lawlessness -- of Somalia, now being broadened to include
Somaliland. As well, the mounting pace of natural gas discovery and
exploitation in the region (and more broadly) will -- contrary to
conventional linear extrapolations of energy market trends --
transform global energy markets, and bring about a major shift toward
the use of gas, probably to the point of a supply-dominated
marketplace causing price falls within a decade.
Footnotes:
Analysis by Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS/Defense & Foreign
Affairs
(c) 2010 International Strategic Studies Association, www.
StrategicStudies.org
By Michael Bagley
With 20 years of experience in Washington DC covering energy,
banking and intelligence issues for various members of Congress and
private sector clients, Bagley is well-connected with key energy and
financial policy advisors and government officials in both political
parties on Capitol Hill, as well as the K Street-Pennsylvania Avenue
corridor in Washington. Bagley contributes to Oilprice.com to assist
hedge funds, asset managers, private equity firms and other
international institutional clients who want to understand the
"crossroads" of global energy, finance and policy in making important
portfolio investment and asset management decisions. Clients of
Oilprice.com receive unique intelligence products that can help make
those decisions.
As founder and president of The OSINT Group, a boutique Open
Source Intelligence firm based in Washington DC that supports
government sector clients, intelligence agencies and the defense
industry in the collection and analysis of global energy and financial
market intelligence, Bagley is the current president of the Maryland
Chapter of the Military Intelligence Corps Association (MICORPS).
Bagley and The OSINT Group also hold memberships in the Armed
Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) and
the Association For Intelligence Officers (AFIO).
Copyright 2010 Oilprice.com. All rights reserved. No part of this
report may be reproduced or placed on any electronic medium
without written permission from the publisher. Information
contained herein is obtained from sources believed to be reliable,
but its accuracy cannot be guaranteed. OilPrice.com or its
editors and publications do not advocate the purchase or sale of
any security or investment.
Courtesy
Transforming as "the Age of Gas" Begins in Earnest
20 August, 2010 | By Michael Bagley
--------------------------------------------------------------------
- Major new energy
issues are about to
transform still further
the strategic balance of
the Horn of Africa and
the Red Sea, with
foreseeable
consequences for the
global energy market
over the coming
decade. Soon-to-be-
evident new wealth in
the Red Sea/Horn of
Africa region will
transform the intensity
of conflict there, which
in turn will affect not
only the region, but the
communication (SLOC).
Much of the anticipated change is developing around the flood of new
discoveries and exploitation of natural gas fields in the Indian Ocean
region, particularly extending through Ethiopia, Egypt, and other
countries of the Red Sea region. Apart from the impending influx of
new energy wealth into the region, facilitating new levels of confidence
and capability in the security environment, the boom of the "Gas Age"
also seems set to promise -- within a decade -- an oversupply of gas
to the world market, almost certainly precipitating a collapse in price
for gas and petroleum.1
The strategic balance in the Horn of Africa, and reaching through the
Red Sea to Egypt and the Mediterranean, is changing rapidly -- and in
many respects is becoming more unstable -- as political, geopolitical,
economic, and ideological issues begin to clash. The war over the
reunification of Somalia, incorporating both the old Italian Somaliland
(now Somalia) and the Republic of Somaliland, has now become
indisputable, and nominally-moderate Egypt has come down firmly on
the side of reunifying the area under the clear dominance of an
Islamist-dominated but anomic -- essentially lawless -- Somalia.
Egypt -- with its unstable political transition underway at the same
time as the discovery of increasing quantities of natural gas -- has
been covertly supporting a wide range of radical actions along the
Red Sea littoral and in the Horn with the sole goal of ensuring that
Ethiopia does not use its traditional heartland strength to be able to
revive its dominance of the Red Sea and the sea lane which links to
Egypt's Suez Canal.
In the process, however, the Egyptian Government has given support
to the same radical jihadist groups which fundamentally oppose
Egyptian secular governance, which support Iranian expansion into the
Red Sea/Africa framework, and which have transformed a
strategically benign Ethiopia into one which must now accept
confrontation with Egypt and its regional allies.
This situation has been compounded by the recent Islamist/pan-
Somalist success in winning power in Somaliland, but of equal
importance has been the first quiet stage of the transformation of
Ethiopia into an energy exporting power. Ethiopia's natural gas
reserves which the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) in 2009
rated as zero and in early 2010 at one-trillion cubic feet (TCF), now
have been demonstrated to be significant, and gas exports will begin
within five years.
Malaysian State-owned oil and gas company Petroliam Nasional Bhd
(Petronas) has now proven as much as four TCF of gas in its reserves
in the Ogaden basin region of Ethiopia. Petronas is one of about 85
companies which have oil and gas exploration licenses in Ethiopia, but
the Malaysian company is the first to begin its production phase,
which should see a gas treatment plant and a gas pipeline from the
Ogaden to Djibouti (at a total cost of $1.9-billion) on-line within five
years. Estimated Ethiopian gas reserves, as of 2010 (not "proven
reserves"), were reported at 12.46 TCF, but this figure was likely to
be expanded frequently as new discoveries are reported.
Significantly, although the externally-supported and -armed Ogaden
National Liberation Front (ONLF) has continued to sustain sporadic
armed contact with Ethiopian security forces into August 2010, the
second week of August saw the senior ONLF leadership in
Washington, DC, meeting secretly (under US sponsorship) with
representatives of the Ethiopian Government. Just days before that,
representatives of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) also met in
Washington, DC, with senior Ethiopian Government officials. Both the
OLF and the ONLF have been receiving extensive logistical support,
weapons, training, and funding from Eritrea, supported directly or
indirectly by both Egypt and Iran.
It is now apparent to both the ONLF and OLF that their foreign
patrons have been waging a losing battle against the Ethiopian
Government, and that, with the growing strength and wealth of the
Ethiopian Government, now is the time to consider coming to terms
with Addis Ababa.
Any thought that the pan-Somalists, who have recently scored a
major success in winning the Presidency of the Republic of
Somaliland, can effectively make headway in the ethnically-Somali
Ogaden region of Ethiopia have been quashed by the effective military
action by the Ethiopian Defense Force (EDF) in its combat contacts
with the pan-Somalists. The EDF units involved were almost entirely
ethnically Somali (officers and men), and yet acted decisively to quash
the Somalian forces fighting them.
Fighting around July 12, 2010, in the el-Dibir area of the Somaliland-
Ethiopian border was largely credited in the media with being an EDF
attack on civilians, but in fact it involved a clash with Islamist forces
that were routed by the EDF, which seized 120 of the Islamists'
trucks and took them to the Ethiopian city of Jijiga.
At the core of all of this has been the proxy war waged by Iranian-
backed Islamists, supported by the secular governments of Eritrea
and Egypt, to keep Ethiopia landlocked. When the Ethiopian
Government, some two years ago, began having an inkling that it
might soon be in the gas exporting business, it started negotiations to
build a pipeline to the Somaliland port of Berbera.
When it became clear that the UDUB Government of Somaliland was
not well-prepared to contest the Presidential elections -- which
resulted in a pan-Somalist Islamist taking power in July 20102 --
Ethiopia was forced to turn back to Djibouti as the only available
seaport for the export of Ethiopian gas.3
This is not an ideal situation for Ethiopia, given that Djibouti has
traditionally held Ethiopia to ransom -- given that it has, once again, a
monopoly on Ethiopian trade imports and exports -- but it is
nonetheless viable for both countries.
At present, the Petronas plans to be exporting natural gas from the
Ethiopian Ogaden basin within five years highlight the reality that
Ethiopia will soon be in a position to compete economically against
Egypt and Eritrea, which have been struggling to keep Ethiopia
landlocked. Egypt's strategic motive, expressed constantly by Cairo,
has been to keep Ethiopia -- which is vastly more fertile than Egypt
and which controls the headwaters of the Blue Nile, which provides
Egypt (and Sudan) with most of its water -- from posing a strategic
threat to Egypt by, potentially, cutting off the flow of Blue Nile waters.
In fact, the policy has only served to make the Egyptian fear a reality.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and Prime Minister
Ahmed Nazif, speaking at the African Union summit in Kampala,
Uganda, on July 27, 2010, appeared to strike a conciliatory note on
the contentious issue of Nile water usage, but Foreign Minister
Ahmed Aboul Gheit slipped into his speech that Egypt sought a "re-
unification" of Somalia, bringing Somaliland back into the union with
Somalia, something which is clearly tantamount to bringing Somaliland
back into civil war and crisis, rather than helping the entire Somali
population. Significantly, this was a blow directed directly at Ethiopia
and at the West which seeks stability in the Horn of Africa.
Egypt, pointedly, would rather have chaos on the Horn so that it could
be the master of the Suez/Red Sea SLOC all the way through the Bab
el-Mandeb adjacent to Somaliland, at the entrance to the Indian
Ocean. This pointedly, also, meant that Egypt supported constraining
Ethiopia from easy access to the Red Sea, which had once been
dominated, at its lower reaches, by the Ethiopian Navy. Following the
fall of the Dergue control of Ethiopia, Eritrea was encouraged by
Ethiopia to declare its independence from Ethiopia in 1993. It did so,
taking not only the historical geographic area of Eritrea (the onetime
Bar Negus: Kingdom of the North), but also the coastal part of
Ethiopia adjacent to Djibouti, and containing the Ethiopian port of
Assab, which had never been part of traditional Eritrea, but had been
part of the modern administrative zone of Eritrea under the Empire.
The result was that Ethiopia lost its access to the Red Sea, and had
anticipated a friendly trading path through "new" Eritrea to the sea,
because of the friendly separation of the territories. This was not to
be, and Eritrea began making unacceptable demands on Ethiopia,
which ultimately led to war, and to the inability of Ethiopia to use the
ports of modern Eritrea. The result is that Eritrea is now economically
destitute, and Eritrean Pres. Isayas Afawerke is under increasing
pressure to see the Ethiopian Government fail.
However, it is also clear that Eritrea can no longer afford to militarily
challenge Ethiopia, at least directly. Its military successes against
Ethiopia in the 1998-2000 fighting can now not be replicated, given
the declining economic fortunes of Eritrea and the rising fortunes of
Ethiopia.
Moreover, the prospect of considerable income from gas exports
begins to elevate Ethiopia into a new class of military capability. So if
Eritrea can no longer directly attack Ethiopia militarily, it must be
forced to re-double its proxy warfare, and yet even in this area
Ethiopia now seems poised to be able to achieve settlements with the
ONLF and OLF, two of the main proxy forces financed by Ethiopia
and its allies.
And yet Ethiopia finds itself still restricted in its ability to satisfactorily
control its export logistics, other than at the goodwill of Djibouti.
Some Ethiopian sources have been saying that should Eritrea again
provoke a war, then Ethiopia should sieze back the ports in
independent Eritrea which were once Ethiopian ports, particularly
Assab, which was never part of "traditional" Eritrea.
Moreover, in the South-Eastern part of modern Eritrea, the area
around Assab, there is already great local hostility to being under
control of Asmara (the Eritrean capital), and the Eritrean Government
of Isayas Afewerke. This hostility takes the form of armed insurrection
by ethnic Afars. The Afar Revolutionary Democratic Union (ARDU)
has engaged in combat operations since 1993 against the Eritrean
Government. They have commanded the attention of brigade-sized
Eritrean Government forces, which have unsuccessfully attempted to
curb the ARDU. ARDU itself is part of the Alliance of Eritrean
National Forces (AENF), an umbrella for opposition groups, mostly
Muslim, fighting the Isayas Government.
Ethiopia has, like Eritrea, used proxy forces against its adversarial
neighbor. The predominantly Muslim Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF)
has been based out of Addis Ababa since Eritrean independence, and
continues to fight the Isayas Government in Asmara. But the scale of
Ethiopian proxy warfare against Eritrea is nothing like Eritrea's use of
all available proxy resources against Ethiopia. The radical Islamist
forces operating in Somalia have long been supported by Eritrea,
along with their support from Iran, Egypt, and Libya, as a means of
tying down Ethiopian forces and promoting secessionist moves by
ethnic Somalis and Oromos in Ethiopia.
Now, unlike a year or two ago, Eritrea recognizes that it can no
longer give Ethiopia a pretext to go to war, because it would lose that
conflict. On the other hand, Ethiopia's need for the recovery of its Red
Sea access may well have been forced by the combined efforts which
recently resulted in, effectively, the loss of access through the Republic
of Somaliland, which has succumbed, with broad Eritrean, Iranian,
and other aid, to pan-Somalist, Islamist governance. So Ethiopia must
bow to whatever demands Djibouti may make on it, in order to use
the port of Djibouti, or else Addis Ababa must find a way to take
back its territory in the south-eastern, Afar, area of what is the
modern Eritrean state.
It would be logical, then, to assume that Addis Ababa would find
ways to promote the demands for independence or separation from
Eritrea made by ARDU and others. Success, or momentum, by these
anti-Isayas forces could eventually trigger Ethiopian military support.
Egypt, however, has been using Eritrea as its own proxy, and such a
development might cause Cairo to openly support Eritrea in a military
confrontation with Ethiopia, or else face the prospect of a revived
Ethiopian naval presence in the Red Sea, and growing Ethiopian
wealth and confidence to challenge Egypt and Sudan on the question
of the use of Blue Nile waters.
In all of this, the stability of the Red Sea/Suez global SLOC is
threatened, and no end is yet to be seen in the anomie -- the
lawlessness -- of Somalia, now being broadened to include
Somaliland. As well, the mounting pace of natural gas discovery and
exploitation in the region (and more broadly) will -- contrary to
conventional linear extrapolations of energy market trends --
transform global energy markets, and bring about a major shift toward
the use of gas, probably to the point of a supply-dominated
marketplace causing price falls within a decade.
Footnotes:
- The situation regarding "proven" gas reserves is changing
constantly, but, within the greater Indian Ocean region, the
Qatari reserves continue to dominate (although proven reserves
declined in 2009 over 2008, due to exploitation), with 892-
trillion cubic feet (TCF) of reserves. Iran has even greater
proven reserves, presently standing at 992 TCF (according to
the US Energy Information Agency: EIA), but has been less
able than Qatar to exploit these reserves for the moment.
Indonesia in 2009, according to the EIA, had proven reserves
of 106 TCF; Pakistan, 31 TCF; Yemen, 17 TCF; Sudan 3
TCF; India, the fourth largest consumer of petroleum in the
world, had 38 TCF, and was producing at 1.4 TCF a year in
2009; and Australia (according to Australian estimates) had
100 TCF of proven gas reserves. Most traditional estimates of
the global energy market indicate that gas presently commands
some 23 percent of the market, a position likely to rise to 29
percent by 2020, with petroleum staying constant at 40 percent
market share. This, however, in the view of this analyst, is likely
to be affected by (a) growing exploitation of gas fields which
will make choices in energy type easier for markets such as
India and the People's Republic of China (PRC); (b) major
economic, environmental, and security dislocations which could
affect demand and pricing; and (c) the development of new
nuclear technologies which may offer cheaper and logistically
more secure energy. - All of the key portfolios in the new Somaliland Government of
Pres. Silanyo had, by early August 2010, been assigned to
Islamists, including the ministries of: Interior, Finance, Planning,
Aviation, Awqaf (Islamic Endowments), and the Chief of
Cabinet. - In this regard, too, watch for the opening of Islamic banking in
the Somaliland capital, Hargeisa, since the assumption of
Islamist and pan-Somalist Pres. Ahmed Mahamoud Silanyo to
office in the June 26, 2010, Presidential elections. Dahabshiil,
the Somalian bank, was about to open an Islamic bank in
Hargeisa, and had already (in March 2010) opened an Islamic
bank in Djibouti. Sources in the new Government in Hargeisa
said that the new bank in Hargeisa was expected to become
the main avenue for the laundering of funds from Hawiye tribal
activities in Somalia (former Italian Somaliland) -- including
foreign-subsidised militant activities -- out of Somalia and into
the global financial marketplace.
Analysis by Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS/Defense & Foreign
Affairs
(c) 2010 International Strategic Studies Association, www.
StrategicStudies.org
By Michael Bagley
With 20 years of experience in Washington DC covering energy,
banking and intelligence issues for various members of Congress and
private sector clients, Bagley is well-connected with key energy and
financial policy advisors and government officials in both political
parties on Capitol Hill, as well as the K Street-Pennsylvania Avenue
corridor in Washington. Bagley contributes to Oilprice.com to assist
hedge funds, asset managers, private equity firms and other
international institutional clients who want to understand the
"crossroads" of global energy, finance and policy in making important
portfolio investment and asset management decisions. Clients of
Oilprice.com receive unique intelligence products that can help make
those decisions.
As founder and president of The OSINT Group, a boutique Open
Source Intelligence firm based in Washington DC that supports
government sector clients, intelligence agencies and the defense
industry in the collection and analysis of global energy and financial
market intelligence, Bagley is the current president of the Maryland
Chapter of the Military Intelligence Corps Association (MICORPS).
Bagley and The OSINT Group also hold memberships in the Armed
Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) and
the Association For Intelligence Officers (AFIO).
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| Ethio Quest News Together We Can Make It! |
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| Nile Politics The Africans Focus Peace for Horn of Africa Terror in Horn of Africa Congo Eritrea Ghana Kenya Liberia Somalia South Africa Sudan Uganda Zimbabwe |
| A Quest For Unity |
| "...The African Union (AU) is an organisation made up of 53 African states." More |
| Ethiopia's History of National Resistance for African Unity & Dignity PART - ONE PART - TWO PART - THREE |
| The Enduring Food Crisis and Legal Politics of the Nile. "While the annual inundations of 'our river' presented the foundation of one of the most stable and structured eco-political society of....More |
| NILE (Wikipedia) " The Abbai portion of the river is considered holy by many in Ethiopia, and is believed to be the Gihon river mentioned as flowing out of the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2.[1] The Abay portion of the Blue Nile rises at Lake Tana and flows for some thirty kilometers before plunging over the Tis Issat Falls.. More |
| Previous Stories Ethiopian Government and opposition parties unite in Nile water agreement By Yohannes Anberbir Kenya finally signs new Nile accord NTV Kenya Four African countries sign new Nile treaty By Ben Simon (AFP) The Fate of the Nile Basin Initiative after May 14th.2010 By Professor Ali Abdalla Ali Egypt and Sudan continue to argue over the Nile By Matt Bradley Whose water is it? By Gamal Nkrumah Swimming Upstream Will investments in Nile basin countries be enough to quiet the debate on water resources? By By Maher Hamoud AS ETHIO-EGYPTIAN ACCORD TAKES EFFECT, AL AHRAM RUBS SALT ON OLD WOUNDS By Genet Mersha Eyeing Abyssinia By Gamal Nkrumah Struggle over The River Nile; what should be Sudan's strategy? Professor Ali Abdalla ALI Ethiopia-Egypt accords, a danger to Nile Basin negotiations? By Desalegn Sisay |
| Mubarak pledges to keep Nile water in Egypt Al-Masry Al-Youm Egypt extends olive branch in Nile river row By Barry Malone (Reuters) Abul Gheit: No clash with Nile countries Al-Masry Al-Youm Cairo and Khartoum challenged By Reem Leila (Al-Ahram Weekly) Nile agreement countries reject Egyptian pressure By Barry Malone Nile basin states water Ministers to meet in Ethiopia next week By Tesfa-Alem Tekle Is a water war on the horizon over the Nile River? By Gwynne Dyer East African nations to challenge colonial Nile treaty By Mike Pflanz Nile nations promise to consider Egypt’s concern in water deal By Matt Bradley |
| Ethio Quest News: For latest Ethiopian News, views, Reviews and More |
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