CANADA-SUDAN: Activists Condemn Oil Company’s Operations in Sudan

By Pratap Chatterjee Reprint | | Print |

Pratap Chatterjee

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 25 1997 (IPS) - Canadian activists have accused Arakis Energy Corporation, a Calgary-based oil company, of supporting the tough military regime in Sudan that has ruled the country since 1989.

Arakis set-up offices in Calgary in 1995 after resigning from the Vancouver stock exchange amid a stock market scandal, recently finalised a billion dollar contract to exploit oil in the Al- Muglad rift basin between Sudan’s Arab North and the black African Southern regions that have been locked in civil war for years.

The military government currently is under United Nations Security Council sanctions for massive human rights abuses including the arbitrary killings of villagers, the abduction of scores of children and torture of suspected government opponents. The US State Department also lists the country as a sponsor of terrorism.

This has caused Sudan to suffer severe financial dificuluties with institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Washington wary of advancing any loan momney to Khartoum.

Last year Arakis attempted to get financing for its Sudanese oil project through a joint venture with Occidental Petroleum of Bakersfield, California, which won a special exemption from the Clitnon administration. When the exemption came to light, Khartoum vetoed Occidental’s participation.

Arakis’ had better luck at the end of 1996 when the Sudanese regime approved a deal with the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and Petronas Carigali Overseas of Malaysia who together agreed to pump in a total of 700 million dollars in capital into the pipeline.

In the last nine months work has carried on apace with Arakis and the government working hand in hand. “The relationship between Arakis and its Sudanese hosts is self-evidently symbiotic,” writes Martin Cohn, a reporter of the Toronto Star, who recently visited the drilling site.

“The oil camp opens its doors to military men as well as nomads. Arakis services broken military trucks, provides electricity lines to their barracks and even pipes in water to army camps,” he adds.

The relationship has been roundly condemned by Candanian activists like Gary Kenny of the Toronto-based Inter-Church Coalition on Africa, an umbrella group that represents seven mainstream churches like the Catholics and the Presbyterians.

“Arakis likes to boast about the support it is providing to schools and medical clinics near the oil fields. In fact, they appear to be token gestures designed to deflect attention away from the fact that Arakis is a business partner of a dictatorial, racist and barbarous government,” he says.

In the last few months rebel forces led by John Garang have scored a series of militrary successes and advanced into the eastern provinces through which Arakis’ 1500 kilometre-long pipeline to Port Sudan on the Red Sea is due to be laid.

These rebels have blacklisted Arakis. “They have offered direct help to the fanatics in Khartoum to murder, enslave and oppress our people. They will be treated as enemies,” said the opposition Demoractic Alliance commander Abdel Osman in a recent broadcast from his base in Eriteria.

Other opposition to the project has increased. The Dinka and Nuer, the two major ethnic groups in the south, reportedly have refused to cooperate with the project. The communities say compensation for ecological damage and for the displaced should be discussed first.

Unconfirmed reports from rebel sources slaimed that the government, or Arakis, may have employed mercenary troops supplied by the South African company Executive Outcomes.

Arakis spokeswoman Kristine Dow, however, says that the company has had nothing to do with mercenaries. “Sudapet (the Sudanese government oil company) is in charge of security. We have hired some Canadian security personnel but nobody from Executive Outcomes,” she told IPS.

“The (Sudanese) army does help us with security but we don’t provide them with any special support. Our clinics are open to everyone and if a military truck were to break down, I wouldn’t be surprised if we helped them. We try to be good corporate citizens,” she said. “But we are not worried about the rebels. They are hundreds of miles and a big swamp away.”

Dow also disagrees with the position of the US State Department. “We think that they are over-reacting to the situation. Their view appears to be based more on propoganda than reality,” she added.

She says that the Canadian company avoids doing business with companies in the United States. “We never know when the State Department might pull the plug.”