Word: oil
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...have wanted to pay the cost of searching for oil or gas in the region, or risk drilling wells in volatile countries such as Uganda, Mozambique or Somalia. But better technology, lower risk in some of the countries and higher oil prices in recent years have changed the equation. Wildcatters and majors such as Italy's Eni, Petronas of Malaysia and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) have all moved on East Africa in the past few years...
...They're hoping to mimic London-based Tullow Oil, which discovered some 2 billion bbl. of oil in landlocked Uganda over the past four years. Last month, Texas-based oil company Anadarko Petroleum Corp. announced that it had tapped a giant reservoir of natural gas off the coast of Mozambique. "Anadarko's find went off like a bomb here in Houston," says Robert Bertagne, a Texas-based oil wildcatter. "It was, 'Wow, we are finding large quantities of gas, and that means we have hydrocarbons in the area.' Once you have a discovery, more people are going...
...Much of East Africa's hopes are focused on a fault line running from Somalia to Madagascar known as the Davie Fracture Zone. It's there that Bertagne's analysis - using Cold War-era sea-floor mapping originally intended for use by Soviet submarines - has prompted speculation about oil deposits rivaling those of the North Sea or Middle East. There's still a lot that's unknown: North Africa has seen 20,000 wells sunk over the past few decades, while drillers have sunk 14,000 wells in and off West Africa. In East Africa, the total is about...
...That's changing. Kenya issued six exploration licenses between 2000 and 2002 and two more to CNOOC in the next four years. In 2008 and 2009, it issued 18 new licenses. "Despite a long history of unsuccessful exploration, the oil companies are investing in Kenya," says Mwendia Nyaga, managing director of the National Oil Corporation of Kenya. "The question is not if any hydrocarbon deposits exist, but where they are." (See "Borders of Sudan's Oil-Rich Region Shrink...
...doesn't help that the region is so geologically complex - with lots of fractures and offshore oil deposits likely deep underground. Or that many of the countries likely to have deposits have seen wars and unrest. Somalia remains a no-go zone, and Ethiopia's eastern Ogaden region is beset by a violent rebel insurgency. And while Mozambique's civil war may have ended in 1992, it has taken years for the country to fully recover. (See pictures of Somalia's pirates...