Kenyan oil discovery, blessing or disaster?

At first sight, if oil is discovered in a country, one might think that is a good thing for people’s living standards in that country.

However, the world economic system, and the powerful role of Big Oil corporations within it, being what they are now, unfortunately one cannot be totally optimistic.

Oil (and gas) in Iraq and Afghanistan contributed and contribute to war and occupation ravaging these two countries. Like in Libya.

Oil in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and elsewhere props up cruel dictatorships.

In Nigeria, Shell and other multinational corporations pollute the environment.

Recent oil discoveries in Ghana raise fears that similar problems may arise in that African country.

Oil discoveries in Uganda, neighbour of Kenya, are mentioned as causes of violence there.

This video says about itself:

31 August 2011

A team of legal experts have left Uganda for London to argue out a case between the government of Uganda and Tullow oil in the disputed tax gains resulting from the sale of Heritage interest to Tullow oil. NTV has learnt that the Ugandan team of lawyers left for the UK for the arbitration meeting last weekend. It is being headed by the Attorney General and the Solicitor General Harriet Lwabi.

There is oil as well in Somalia, another neighbour of Kenya. And in the present world economic system, that oil contributes to the bloody war in Somalia. A bloody war in which Kenyan armed forces, as proxies of the Pentagon (and of Exxon Mobil etc., one may ask) already play a bloody role.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

British firm finds oil in Kenya

Monday 26 March 2012

A British oil transnational announced at the weekend that it has discovered oil in Kenya’s Turkana County.

London-based Tullow Oil – which is carrying out oil exploration in the rift basins of Kenya and Ethiopia – said that 20 metres of net oil pay was discovered at a site called Ngamia-1.

Tullow exploration director Angus McCoss called the discovery an “excellent start. To make a good oil discovery in our first well is beyond our expectations and bodes well for the material programme ahead of us.”

He added that the firm is working with Kenya’s government and plans on further seismic and drilling activities. The oil find was near the border with Uganda and South Sudan.

Tullow, which began its exploration work in Kenya last year, has a 50 per cent interest in multiple sites in Kenya and Ethiopia’s Rift Valley basins covering more than 38,610 square miles.