President Bush has extended the reach of the Carter Doctrine to West Africa, now one of America's major sources of oil. Particular emphasis is being placed on Nigeria, where unrest in the Delta (which holds most of the country's onshore petroleum fields) has produced a substantial decline in oil output. "Nigeria is the fifth largest source of U.S. oil imports," the State Dept's Fiscal Year 2007 Congressional Budget Justification for Foreign Operations declares, "and disruption of supply from Nigeria would represent a major blow to U.S. oil security strategy." To prevent such a disruption, the Department of Defense is providing Nigerian military and internal security forces with substantial arms and equipment intended to quell unrest in the Delta region; the Pentagon is also collaborating with Nigerian forces in a number of regional patrol and surveillance efforts aimed at improving security in the Gulf of Guinea, where most of West Africa's offshore oil and gas fields are located. ... Especially revealing is a November 2006 task force report from the Council on Foreign Relations on "National Security Consequences of U.S. Oil Dependency." Co-chaired by former Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger and former CIA Director John Deutsch, and endorsed by a slew of elite policy wonks from both parties, the report ... struck just the militaristic note first voiced in the 2000 CSIS report (which Schlesinger also co-chaired): "Several standard operations of U.S. regionally deployed forces [presumably CENTCOM and PACOM] have made important contributions to improving energy security, and the continuation of such efforts will be necessary in the future. U.S. naval protection of the sea-lanes that transport oil is of paramount importance." The report also called for stepped up U.S. naval engagement in the Gulf of Guinea off the coast of Nigeria.36 Looking at the Niger Delta on a satellite map37, probably the first thing to catch the eye is the spidery plethora of rivers and creeks weaving across the terrain. It’s an area of great ecological significance, the kidneys, quite literally, of West Africa. The mangrove forests here are the third largest of its kind on the planet, and the extent of the ecological value is known only to the locals, as the majority of scientific surveys of the Niger Delta have been done strictly for economic reasons. If you zoom in on the Delta area you will soon start seeing gas flares, the most visible sign of the results of that research. The landscape is dotted with oil and natural gas wells and the production facilities required to contain and transport these fossil fuels to foreign lands, and gas flaring here has long been a problem. In their efforts to get to the oil underneath, the extraction industries have typically burned off the gas reserves that have collected on the top of these deposits, allowing large gas flares to burn for years, adding toxins into the atmosphere which then return to poison the lands and those living there. It is said “some children have never known a dark night even though they have no electricity.”38 Despite sitting on top of all these natural oil and natural gas deposits, the ethnic groups living in the Delta region have benefited minimally from its extraction. Actually, considering the environmental damage and pollution that this extraction brings, in addition to the de facto rule of the oil companies that comes with it, the people of the Delta are heavily penalized for it.39 Organized indigenous resistance to federal centralization, the usurpation of their local rights and resources without fair compensation, and the destruction of their landbase has picked up steam in the last two decades. Environmental and human rights activists have, for years, documented atrocities on the part of oil companies and the military in this region. Oil companies have generally been able to operate with impunity, refusing to compensate local residents for the environmental damage and medical ailments resulting from the rush to turn oil into money.40 Some companies have turned to paying and even arming mercenaries to discourage or eliminate those who oppose their presence.41 New, increasingly militant, movements have evolved out of the decades of fruitless efforts to seek self-determination and compensation from the federal government and the oil companies that it essentially gave free rein to. The information revolution has allowed a new means for sharing ideas, organizing, and drawing attention to their struggles. An increasing proliferation of arms traffic combined with strong market prices fetched for bunkered oil – that is, tapped from the oil companies without their authorization – and healthy ransoms paid for the release of kidnapped oil workers, has resulted in the increase of productive campaigns of sabotage and acts of armed resistance. With their lives and those of their families being devalued in favor of fivedollar barrels of oil, tactics for many have shifted from petition and protest to more proactive measures. Attacks on pipelines and oil facilities have curtailed the flow of oil leaving the region. As the Convergent Interests report puts it, “Within the first six months of 2006, there were nineteen attacks on foreign oil operations and over $2.187 billion lost in oil revenues; the Department of Petroleum Resourc es claims this figure represents 32 percent of ‘the revenue the country generated this year.’”42 Much has been made of the attempts to link these resistance groups into the GWOT, especially on the part of the oil companies, in order to use the power of the U.S. military to stabilize these areas and secure the energy flows. Perhaps the most visible group in the Western media right now are members of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), largely portrayed as a fierce group of masked, painted warriors either dancing around waving AK-47s in the air, or cruising through the creeks that traverse the delta in their motorboats, again, waving AK-47s in the air. That’s when they’re not kidnapping someone, taking out a pipeline, or “stealing” oil. However, as usual, the media tends to omit a lot of context and many facts in their attempts to sensationalize or shape the perceptions of their audiences. Efforts to link MEND and the other attacks against the oil majors to Islamist organizations continue to get perpetuated in the West. Yet solid evidence for these claims is always lacking. Simply put, the situation in the Niger Delta is that of ethnic - nationalist movements fighting by any means necessary for the “political objective of advancing the cause of self-determination and equitable sharing of oil-receipts.” It has nothing to do with international terror networks or jihadists.43 The volatility surrounding oil installations in Nigeria, and elsewhere in the continent, is used by the U.S. security establishment to justify foreign (and domestic) military presence in African oil producing states while contributing to the oil industry’s windfall profits. Yet the depth of resentments, and the military capabilities of insurgent groups armed in large measure through oil theft suggests that the oil companies’ operations – what they call their social license to operate – may be in question.44
Particular emphasis is being placed on Nigeria, where unrest in the Delta has produced a substantial decline in oil output. "Nigeria is the fifth largest source of U.S. oil imports," "and disruption of supply from Nigeria would represent a major blow to U.S. oil security strategy." To prevent such a disruption, the Department of Defense is providing Nigerian military and internal security forces with substantial arms and equipment intended to quell unrest in the Delta region; Much has been made of the attempts to link these resistance groups into the GWOT, especially on the part of the oil companies, in order to use the power of the U.S. military to stabilize these areas and secure the energy flows However, as usual, the media tends to omit a lot of context and many facts in their attempts to sensationalize or shape the perceptions of their audiences. Efforts to link MEND and the other attacks against the oil majors to Islamist organizations continue to get perpetuated in the West. Yet solid evidence for these claims is always lacking the situation in the Niger Delta is that of ethnic - nationalist movements fighting by any means necessary for the “political objective of advancing the cause of self-determination and equitable sharing of oil-receipts.” It has nothing to do with international terror networks or jihadists.43 The volatility surrounding oil installations in Nigeria, and elsewhere in the continent, is used by the U.S. security establishment to justify foreign (and domestic) military presence in African oil producing states w