Darfur rebel leader plans attacks on Chinese oil firms
December 7, 2007 (LONDON) — A key rebel leader in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region has singled out oil companies as military targets, particularly from China, posing a threat to the Asian nation’s crude imports and adding to the mounting challenges it faces over its involvement in Africa.
China National Petroleum Corp., or CNPC, is the largest oil producer in Sudan. India’s Oil & Natural Gas Corp. (500312.BY), Malaysia’s national oil company Petroliam Nasional Bhd., or Petronas, and domestic state-owned Sudapet are also present in the country.
The Chinese Foreign ministry had no immediate comment and CNPC declined to respond. The Chinese embassy in Khartoum didn’t return a request for comment.
At risk is some of the half-a-million barrels of crude pumped daily in the troubled northeast African country, of which more than 200,000 barrels are imported by China, making Sudan its fourth-largest provider of crude.
Nur heads the Sudan Liberation Movement, a group fighting the central government to obtain equal rights for Sudanese citizens, including those in Darfur, and his threat against oil companies follows one from the other main rebel organization, the Justice and Equality Movement, or JEM.
In October, JEM claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of workers from an oil field run by CNPC in neighboring Kordofan.
“Anybody, Chinese, or others, any company” that produces oil in Sudan and who “supports and finances the regime to continue killing our people, will not be safe,” Nur said in interview conducted in recent days in Paris.
“Oil companies are gravely mistaken if they think security agreements with the sole government in Khartoum are enough to protect their operations,” he added.
He singled out China’s trade with Sudan, which he said is a pact in which the Asian nation conducts oil extraction in return for providing weapons.
“Any weapon that kills our people comes from China. Any weapon in Darfur comes China. Chinese aircraft, Kalashnikovs, Chinese vehicles,” he said.
More than 200,000 people, most of them civilians from Darfur, have died since ethnic African rebels in the region took up arms against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government in 2003, accusing it of decades of discrimination and neglect.
Sudan’s government is accused by the U.S., the U.K. and others of retaliating by unleashing a militia of Arab nomads known as the Janjaweed – a charge it denies.
United Nations data show transfers of military weapons and small arms from China to Sudan stood at $23 million in 2005, the last year for which data are available, making China the largest reported supplier of such weapons to Sudan.
In a U.S. Public Broadcasting Service report last year, Ken Bacon, president of the nonprofit group Refugees International and a former Pentagon official, said he has seen evidence of Chinese-marked shells being used in the Darfur conflict.
Nur refused to say whether his group’s planned attacks would involve sabotage or kidnappings. He claimed to have thousands of fighters and more of reservists at his disposal, adding he has representatives all over the country.
Wolfram Lacher, an analyst at risks consultancy Control Risks, questioned “Nur’s ability to order attacks on oil companies, as his military capabilities and geographical reach beyond Darfur appear to be limited.”
He does, however, have political influence over a large proportion of Darfur’s internally displaced refugees, he added.
The threat adds to mounting challenges faced by China as it deepens it ties to resource-rich Africa.
In April, a raid by an ethnic Somalian rebel group on a China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (SNP), or Sinopec, drilling site left 74 dead, including nine Chinese oil workers, in eastern Ethiopia.
Chinese investment also became a presidential elections issue last year in Zambia after the deaths of workers at explosives and mining operations run by the Chinese.
SUDAN KEY TO CHINA
China’s interests are significant in Sudan, where the Greater Nile Petroleum Operation Co., is the largest overseas project for any Chinese firm in terms of production. CNPC owns 40% in the venture. Darfur rebel group JEM took the credit for recent kidnappings from the project, southwest of the capital Khartoum.
The Sudan Liberation Movement has to date refrained from attacking oil companies but Nur said in the interview that a deadlock in negotiations with the government and ongoing massacres mean he is left with no choice but to target Khartoum’s financial interests on the ground.
“The problem is that our people are being killed (or) put into concentrations camps. We need to stop the final solution.”
In October, both rebel groups refused to join negotiations in Libya, accusing the North African country of bearing responsibility in the Darfur conflict by arming some local militia.
Nur also refuses to enter peace talks with Khartoum before he gets guarantees that atrocities will cease on the ground and that a peacekeeping force will have a mandate to stop them.
Were negotiations to start, he said, they would be the first step toward the creation of a secular, multi-ethnic Sudanese government that contrasts with today’s Islamic, Arab-dominated regime.
Part of the remit of the new government would include the better distribution and use of the country’s oil revenue, he said.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Sudan has proven reserves of oil of 5 billion barrels and targets a doubling in its daily oil output next year to 1 million barrels.
(Dow Jones)