Drilling Rights Problems as Oil is Discovered in Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone’s Min­is­ter of Mines and Polit­i­cal Affairs, Alhaji Alpha Kanu has dis­closed that there is plenty of oil in Sierra Leone that would serve the needs of the peo­ple of Sierra Leone. Hon Kanu spoke on Thurs­day Octo­ber 8^th at a reg­u­lar news brief­ing held by the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion and Communication.

Sierra Leone is known for its poten­tial in min­eral resources like dia­mond, gold and baux­ite, and the lat­est reports about oil dis­cov­ery in the coun­try is seen as good news for the socio-economic devel­op­ment of the coun­try. How­ever, dia­mond accounted largely for the country’s decade long civil war that saw the destruc­tion of lives and prop­erty, and the maim­ing of inno­cent peo­ple. Over forty thou­sand Sierra Leoneans were killed dur­ing the country’s civil war.

Speak­ing to news men in cen­tral Free­town, Sierra Leone’s cap­i­tal, Hon Alpha Kanu said only one well has so far been dug but that its con­tent indi­cate, the coun­try has oil. The dis­cov­ery of oil in Sierra Leone, Kanu said has helped in the upper bracket of a rich iden­tity that should put us all above petty squab­bles in the national inter­est. Oil has also been a major source of con­flict in coun­tries like Nige­ria in the West African region and the Arab world.

There is sad story how­ever behind the dis­cov­ery of oil in Sierra Leone as it is con­fronted with prob­lems between two com­pa­nies com­ing to drill oil in the shores of the coun­try and it is believed the Min­istry of Mines may have a stake in the whole process of ensur­ing an enabling busi­ness cli­mate for com­pa­nies want­ing invest in Sierra Leone in that regard.

Inves­ti­ga­tions revealed that one oil com­pany, the Oranto Oil Com­pany owned by a Niger­ian has been get­ting prob­lems with its Blocks allo­cated for gov­ern­ment. Accord­ing to inves­ti­ga­tions con­ducted by New­stime Africa the gov­ern­ment of Sierra Leone, through some under­hand moves at Mines min­istry had taken ten per­cent of its (Oranto Oil Com­pany) drilling base (Block 5) and given to an Amer­i­can oil com­pany called Anadaco Oil Com­pany.
This was almost the same sit­u­a­tion that occurred between African Min­er­als –and Lon­don Min­ing in which the for­mer Mines min­is­ter allegedly went to Roma­nia and col­lected some kick­backs from share­hold­ers of the for­mer in order to give them out­right con­ces­sion.
This lat­est devel­op­ment regard­ing the Oranto Oil Com­pany is reported to have angered some Nige­ri­ans who are seen as key impor­tant part­ners of busi­ness in Sierra Leone. Nige­ria played a major role in bring­ing to an end to Sierra Leone’s decade long civil war.

© 2009, John Baimba Sesay. All rights reserved. Discuss this article on the Salone Forum Salone Forum

Tags:  drilling, Ernest Bai Koroma, oil, Sierra Leone

By John Baimba Sesay