Peak Oil & oil depletion

A debate is currently raging among oil professionals, and it splits into two camps. This debate focuses on a day called Peak Oil, the day in the future when oil production reaches an all-time high, but can never again reach that figure.

In one camp in this debate we have a group who predict that the Peak Oil ‘topping point’ will happen quite soon. This group tends to be made up of ex-oil industry professionals such as geologists, senior management, etc., and many belong to the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO for short). Some look on them as scaremongers, others see them as whistle blowers.

In the other camp, we have a group who contend that the Peak Oil ‘topping point’ is much further in the future (2030-2040). This group is made up mainly of governments, oil companies, financial analysts, business journalists and the like.

At its most basic, the argument is about the amount of oil that remains to be recovered. The members of ASPO say one trillion barrels, and their opponents in the argument say two trillion. That difference has been described as seismic. If those who predict an early Peak Oil topping point are correct, peak oil will occur by the end of this decade.

The argument is over what is known as the Ultimate Recoverable Reserves, or to put it in the jargon of the oil business, the Ultimate. This figure is the total amount of oil that would ever be produced. It breaks down as oil already recovered plus proven reserves plus new discoveries.

Both sides of the argument are pretty much in agreement about the already recovered part of the equation. So, why are there such differences between the two camps in the amount of oil that is left? One big clue lies in a publication called the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, an annual report prepared by the giant oil company, which is regarded globally as the holy bible of the oil industry. If, however, you look really closely at the very small print which accompanies the review you will find the following:

The reserves figures shown do not necessarily meet the United States Securities and Exchange definitions and guidelines for determining proved reserves, nor necessarily represent BP’s view of proved reserves by country.

So, there you have it! BP don’t believe the figures in their own publication. With all the knowledge accumulated by BP over the company’s long history, they can do no better than come up with a report compiled using other people’s statistics. What has happened that makes one of the world’s major oil companies disown statistics published in their own review?

First, proven reserves! If you were to look at a bar chart detailing year by year the world’s proven oil reserves you would see that between 1985 and 1989 the big Middle East oil producers’ reserves increased by 300 billion barrels. This, not unnaturally, would lead you to believe that there must have been some pretty big oil discoveries during that period.

Not so—during this time span new discoveries amounted to only 10 million barrels.

Here’s what happened. Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia are all members of the oil producing cartel known as OPEC. In OPEC, production is by quota, that is, the more oil a country has the more it can produce, therefore the more they can earn by selling their oil.

All these nations, over this four year period, decided that there was more oil in their reserves than they had previously thought, and began increasing their reserves. It was a paper exercise with no scientific or geological input. They just said it was there and there it was. All this new oil came from already discovered oilfields. There’s a word for this sort of behaviour and the word is fraudulent.

Let’s fast forward now to January 2004, where we can find another clue which may lead us to believe that the amount of oil in the proven reserves may well be overestimated. Imagine the jolt that then chairman of Shell, Sir Philip Watts, delivered to investors when he announced the shock news that the company had over-estimated its reserves by more than 20 per cent, 23 per cent as it turned out. Several members of the then Shell board are currently the subject of lawsuits in the United States.

Now let’s move on to the US Geological Survey, which has a long and shady history concerning the amount of proven reserves and future discoveries. This is an organisation which has come out of the debate without any integrity whatsoever. Here’s why. In 1956, a world famous geologist, M. King Hubbert, polled 25 eminent contemporaries on what the ultimate figure for oil production in the United States would be.

Hubbert decided on 200 billion barrels, and using his own formula he estimated that oil production in the US would peak in 1971. Almost nobody believed him, and the US Geological Survey in particular was extremely virulent in its opposition to him, doing everything in its power to inflate the amount of oil left—by doing so they could make any problem go away. At one point they stated that there were 590 billion barrels in the United States’ ultimate recoverable reserves.

As it was, Hubbert was wrong. He was a whole year out! US oil production peaked in 1970, just one year prior to his prediction. Since then US oil production has steadily declined, as Hubbert predicted it would, despite the best efforts and employment of latest technologies to find new oil. Applying Hubbert’s formula on a wider scale does not make comfortable reading for the oil business.

Moving on to oil that is yet to be discovered leads us into the area in which the two camps have major disagreements. As stated earlier the members of ASPO say that there are one trillion barrels in proven reserves plus new discoveries. Those who opt for a later date for Peak Oil say two trillion. For the latter group there are many awkward questions.

If there are vast new fields to be discovered, where are they? Why is there no major increase in the amount of tankers being built to transport it? Why, if we are entering an era when oil production is on the increase, is there no major programme of refinery building to deal with the annually increasing demand for oil? Tanker capacity, refinery capacity and the global rig count all peaked in 1981, a quarter of a century ago!

For every barrel of oil now discovered, four are being consumed. The definition of a giant oil field is five hundred million barrels. In the year 2000 there were 16 discoveries of this size, in 2001 nine, in 2002 two, and in 2003 there were none.

Oil discovery actually peaked in 1965, the world’s biggest oil fields were discovered over 50 years ago, and the 1970’s excepted, there have been no huge oil provinces discovered since then. The last year in which more oil was discovered than we consumed was over 25 years ago, and since then there has been an overall and ongoing decline.

The planet has been scoured by geologists on foot, satellites have mapped it, and there are, according to the experts in ASPO, no more huge oil fields or provinces to be found. If they were there they would have been found by now. As BP’s former reserves coordinator, Francis Harper, told a conference on oil depletion at the Energy Institute in November 2004:

Worldwide, the frequency of finding giant oil provinces and super-giant oilfields has been declining for decades and will not be reversed. We’ve looked around the world many times. I’d say there is no North Sea out there. There certainly isn’t a Saudi Arabia.

the global number of oil rigs peaked in 1981

By extrapolating the ongoing downward trend of new oil discoveries those who argue for an early Peak Oil topping point estimate that there are only 150 billion barrels of new conventional oil to find, making for an ultimate recoverable reserve of approximately 2 trillion barrels at its highest. This differs significantly from those who favour a late topping point. TheUS Geological Survey, the same institution that rubbished Hubbert’s theory on America’s oil topping point carried out a world petroleum assessment in the year 2000 and came up with an ultimate recoverable reserve which varied between 2,248 billion to 3,986 billion barrels with a mean of 3,003 billion barrels, a difference between the camps of one trillion barrels of oil left to discover.

If the members of ASPO are not mistaken, then the markets are in a state of collective denial with no equivalent in the history of capitalism. As a society we have come to depend totally on oil. All our eggs are in one basket, and that basket could well be precariously The global number oil rigs peaked in 1981 Oil depletion balanced on the tail of an ostrich with its head buried firmly in the sand.

I’d like to take a short look at two dates in the history of oil production, paying particular attention to the years 1973 and 1979, because these two years may give an insight and foretaste of what’s to come when it dawns that the age of oil is in terminal decline. In 1973, following America’s direct involvement in the support of Israel during the Yom Kippur war, the OPEC countries, led by Saudi Arabia, imposed an embargo on oil in retaliation. The oil price subsequently more than doubled, and the effect was remarkable.

The embargo was actually quite short lived because the Saudis saw that there was the very real possibility of them creating a global economic depression that would cripple western economies, and thus damage their own, so out of self-interest they opened the taps again. The embargo, however, did create a severe economic recession. And all of this came to pass with a short-term reduction of only 9 per cent in the world’s oil supply.

The next great oil shock came in 1979, with the Iranian Revolution and the toppling of the Shah. It was prolonged by the outbreak of hostilities between Iran and Iraq in 1980. Again there was a hard economic recession. This crisis ended in 1981, and there were three main reasons for the price falling (it had reached $80 a barrel in today’s terms).

• Reason 1: The Saudis opened up their taps to increase production, helping to bring the price down.
• Reason 2: New oil from giant fields in more stable regions (incl. the North Sea) came on line.
• Reason 3: Large amounts of oil were released from government and corporate stockpiles.

Throughout this crisis, the total reduction in oil production was only 4 per cent, but remember these three reasons, because in any future oil supply crisis, these getout-of-jail cards will not be available because:

• 1: After Saudi oil production peaks, and some say it has already, they will not be able to increase the flow of oil.
• 2: There are no new super-giant oilfields or provinces left to be discovered.
• 3: Large stockpiles are no longer kept, the trend today being towards ‘just in time’ delivery.

Whenever the oil supply to the west is disrupted, or even perceived to be disrupted, something occurs in the stock markets for which there is a two word technical economic term. That term is known as widespread panic, and the real panic will come not with the day when oil production reaches its topping point, but some time after, when a significant number of oil dealers realise that ever-increasing demand is not being matched by ever-increasing production.

When it sinks in that we are now in an era of perpetually decreasing oil production, how the markets react will be crucial. It is quite possible, some say inevitable, that an economic depression could result from the dawning of awareness that the lifeblood of our society is in terminal decline. How bad could it be? Some believe it could be every bit as bad, or worse than, the Wall Street Crash of 1929, during which world trade fell by 62 per cent, millions were laid off, and in the discontent andanger which followed, fascism found a fertile breeding ground, ultimately leading to a war in which over 50 million lives were lost.

Among those at a conference on oil depletion in January 2005 in Edinburgh, sitting, listening and learning were five leading members of the British National Party. Their two great fantasies are the well known one of igniting a race war in this country, and also to take advantage of the chaos that might result in the wake of the day known as Peak Oil. As socialists we ignore the threat of oil depletion at our peril. Socialists must not sleepwalk into oil depletion.

There is one apocalyptic scenario concerning oil depletion, and that is that China, with no significant oil deposits of its own, will become increasingly involved in the Middle East as its economy expands. As one security analyst who preferred to remain anonymous put it.

I am afraid that over the years we will see China become more involved in Middle East politics. And they will want to have access to oil by cutting deals with corrupt dictatorships in the region, and perhaps providing components of weapons of mass destruction, ballistic missiles and other things they have been involved with, and that could definitely put them on a collision course with the United States.

Theoretically, oil depletion could be the spark that sets off WW III.

But what if those in ASPO are wrong? What if, in the face of the evidence, the day called Peak Oil will not occur until the 2030’s or 2040’s? Hallelujah, we’re saved. Sorry, but no. The fact is that the means to extract the oil is not there.

The oil industry has been feasting on the finds of the sixties, with an infrastructure funded in the 70’s.

In 1981, OPEC's Sheikh Yamani recognised the drive for alternatives to oil

Even if the oil is there, the capacity to get it to market is not. It would require investment of 2.4 trillion dollars over the next decade to bring it up to the required standard. In this scenario, I’ll leave you with a quote from Sheik Yamani when he cautioned OPEC about charging too high a price for oil. Though said in a different context, it could just as easily have been said regarding the lack of investment in infrastructure.

The stone age came to an end not for a lack of stones, and the oil age will end, but not for the lack of oil.

Energy alternatives

Let’s now consider alternatives to conventional oil. There is a lot more oil in the world, but it is what is known as unconventional oil. This is oil that does not flow easily, therefore drilling for it is not an option. Two of unconventional oil’s main sources are the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, and huge deposits of what is known as shale oil in the United States.

Neither will fill the energy gap after peak oil, because the technologies needed to extract the oil at a rate needed to fill that gap do not exist, or are far too costly, both in the financial and environmental sense of the word. To extract bitumen from Alberta’s tar sands requires vast amounts of water, either to wash it in giant washing machines if it is mined on the surface, or to melt it underground as superheated steam. To extract one barrel of oil on the surface would require washing two tons of sand.

Power for the whole operation, it has been proposed, would be provided by purpose-built nuclear reactors, and the whole process would release vast amounts of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, plus all the leftover washed-out, sludgy sand. All in all, an environmental disaster.

With shale oil, the problems are, if anything even greater. After the first great oil shock of 1973, billions were spent trying to make it commercially viable to extract, all to no avail. Francis Harper has said,

I discount shale oil in my or even my children’s lifetimes.

OK, then, what about the current government’s favourite option—nuclear.

The Government’s own advisory body on sustainable development, the Sustainable Energy Commission, in March 2006 came out strongly against the nuclear option on five main points:

• 1. No long-term strategy for dealing with highly toxic nuclear waste.
• 2. Uncertainty over the cost of the new nuclear power stations.
• 3. The danger of taking the nuclear option that the UK would be locked into a centralised distribution system for the next half century.
• 4. By taking the nuclear road efforts to improve energy efficiency would be undermined.
• 5. The threat of terrorist attacks and the danger of radiation exposure if countries with lower safety standards decide to opt for nuclear power.

So, all in all, a pretty damning report from its own advisory body, then.

And then, for a one-two double blow to Blair’s vision of a nuclear Britain, the Environmental Audit Committee in April 2006 came out against nuclear reactors, saying they cannot come on line in time to plug the energy gap. All this without decommissioning costs, currently estimated at 70 billion pounds for the current bunch of reactors. Finally, plans are afoot to privatise British Nuclear Fuels. Just what we need—a nuclear Railtrack.

Gas, like oil, will eventually run out, but later than oil. Gas is more mobile than liquid oil, and when peak production does occur, it quite soon falls off a cliff. The USA and China have huge deposits of coal and the temptation for them to turn to coal will be almost irresistible, but burning coal will also do nothing for the state of the atmosphere. We really must get away from burning all fossil fuels, leaving most of the coal, gas and remaining oil in the ground.

These are only some of the alternatives, most of them unconscionable to use, but there is hope, and that is in the area of renewables. We’ve all heard of solar panels, but there is so much more in the way of alternative, renewable technologies out there.

There’s wind power, wave power, micro-wind turbines, solar panels, for the generation of electricity, hydrogen cells to power cars, all of which are featured in the SSP’s draft manifesto to be voted on at the March conference. However, it appears not to mention oil depletion, though it does stress the need to cut back strongly on the burning of hydrocarbons and coal, as well as promoting a free, efficient public transport system.

For transport, a fraction of the amount the government is willing to spend on nuclear power would surely allow research and development to make possible mass production of hydrogen cells small enough to be fitted into most vehicles at comparable cost to the internal combustion engine.

How often have we heard the mantra that renewables cannot fill the gap? True, there is no one renewable that can provide for all energy needs, but neither does that apply now. There are what are called energy hubs. The nuclear hub generates electricity, the gas hub heating, the oil hub transport, with some interchangeability between the hubs. However, renewables in combination can work on a small scale, and, in fact, there is living proof that they do right here in Britain – in the town of Woking in Surrey. Woking Borough Council has reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 77 per cent since 1990. How has this remarkable reduction occurred?

It has been achieved using a hybrid-energy system which utilises private wires, Combined Heat and Power Plants, solar PV and energy efficiency, plus some absorption chillers and fuel cells. Housing estates have been made into their own little energy worlds.

If the national grid collapsed tomorrow, never to rise again, the inhabitants of Woking would still have an all-year-round electrical supply. In the winter the Combined Heat and Power units generate heating and lots of electricity when the solar cells are not working at their optimum. The solar cells generates lots of electricity in the summer when the heating is not needed, meaning the CHP can’t generate lots of electricity. The systems works in perfect harmony. If it can be done in one small town, why can’t it be done in all of them?

In 1981, Sheik Yamani warned his fellow OPEC oil ministers that the West would, if coerced by high oil prices, be able to find alternative sources of energy within ten years. If it could be done then in ten years, surely with another quarter of a century’s advance in alternative energy technologies it could be done in even less time now!

Summing up

Whatever its future, oil was the commodity that greased the wheels of the twentieth century and was at the centre of much of its wars. At the start of the twenty first century it is still at the centre of its wars, but it will be well in decline by the end of the century. It’s obvious that any sustained interruption to the global oil supply would have tremendously serious social and economic consequences. In a way, however, it doesn’t matter a damn about whether the oil will start to run out tomorrow or 40 years from tomorrow. It will run out. It is finite. While we may ignore climate change at our peril, the end of oil is going to force us to address the problems of burning hydrocarbons.

The society we have built, on an endless supply of cheap oil, will come to an end, and before it does, we in the Scottish Socialist Party should be positioning ourselves as the party of alternative energy. Indeed, I believe that with the possibility of the twin horrors of oil depletion conflating with climate change, that we should be pushing it to the top of our agenda.

Some will say that there has always been climate change, and that is true, and that perhaps the whole greenhouse gas scenario is exaggerated. Okay, suppose for a minute that we are in a natural phase of climate change. Should we be exacerbating its effect by pouring out gases which nearly all scientists agree trap heat in the atmosphere? If you saw a house on fire would you throw water on it or petrol?

We in the SSP should be pushing green alternatives, and I don’t mean sticking £30 a year on the road tax for owners of 4x4s. Let’s leave that sort of tinkering round the edges to the Greens. They will have to learn the hard way that you cannot reform capitalism. If ever there was a time when you had to be red to be green it is now.

We, as socialists, should start now to promote investment on a large scale in alternative sources of energy and development of renewables technology. Think of the benefits of no longer being shackled to the supply of a commodity from politically unstable regions.

Think of no need to invade countries on pretexts to secure the supply of society’s lifeblood, because we could be self sufficient in energy supply. Imagine an end to needless and illegal wars. What if the day called Peak Oil does occur by the end of this decade—then, economic turmoil is unavoidable when the penny drops some time after it that the days of cheap and plentiful oil are over for good.

Should this happen, and I don’t want to sound too cynical here, there would be room for us to advance the cause of socialism.

Great social change and revolution do not spring from wells of contentment, and people neither forget nor easily forgive those who have led them to disaster. We cannot ignore the possibility that capitalism itself may come under severe pressure, but neither can we ignore the possibility that Far Right elements could also make great strides in a world in chaos, feeding on the resultant turmoil and anger.

We could not, and should not, in that scenario, stand by looking on.

Remember this, if you think that all this sounds a bit fantastic—we are not talking about a possibility, we are contemplating a certainty—the day in the future when oil no longer rules the world.

In conclusion, I would like to quote from a lad who was quite brainy – Albert Einstein. The quote from Albert I have in mind is something which I think reflects profoundly on the answer to the problems of oil depletion, climate change and plugging the energy gap, and, to be honest, much else besides, and as socialists we should carry his words in our hearts. What he said was this,

You cannot solve the problem with the same kind of thinking that has created the problem.

Rod Macgregor

For more information on Peak Oil, go to ASPO‘s website

Comment: 2008, July 14

Two sections deleted at request of author due to them being out of date.

Nothing better illustrates the hypocrisy of imperialism and its apologists at the United Nations than the nuclear issue. The break up of the Soviet Union and the subsequent diplomatic thaw ended the Cold War. The peace dividend that was supposed to flow from this would allow the finger to be taken off the trigger of the nuclear arsenals of the 5 acknowledged nuclear states. We were told that Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) was no longer an option. However, a Marxist understanding of the nature of capitalism in its imperialist stage meant the preparation for war would continue.

In the past few years, the nuclear debate has moved back to the centre of international politics. Membership of the nuclear club is the must-have status symbol of every aspirant, ‘wannabe’ imperialist state. Pakistan and India are engaged in a sub-continental arms race, Mordechai Vanunu exposed the nuclear ambitions and capabilities of Israel, Saddam Hussein was thwarted in his drive to build the first ‘Arab’ bomb and now there is a stand off between the UN and Iran over the latter’s nuclear developments. All indicatethe seriousness of the situation.

In 1970, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) came into force, with the backing of the United Nations. 187 countries have signed the treaty, including the original 5 nuclear states – US, UK, France, USSR and China. The UN website describes the NPT as

a landmark treaty, whose objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament. The Treaty represents the only binding commitment in a multilateral treaty to the goal of disarmament by the nuclear-weapon States.

These are worthy aims, but the reality of the last 35 years is very different and is a case study exposing the lie of the neutrality and objectivity of the UN.

This glowing testimony to the NPT is exploded by the global experience of the last 3 decades, exemplified by current developments.

Exposing the lie

Over the years, the 5 nuclear states above have all been complicit in providing states in their ‘sphere of influence’ with the necessary technology, which has not prevent(ed) the spread, but has actually fuelled the proliferation of nuclear weapons. This continues today. Although not signatories to the NPT, India, Pakistan and Israel have escaped UN sanctions and anything but the mildest official criticism over their development and testing of nuclear weaponry. Where are the UN Security Council resolutions, the call for political and economic sanctions against these regimes that brazenly flout this landmark treaty?

Contrast this with the imperialist priority given to preventing both Iraq and Iran from acquiring such technology. Like UN Security Council resolutions, the NPT is rolled out as justification for isolating and vilifying ‘rogue’ states. While the members of the ‘axis of evil’ are threatened, cajoled and invaded, Western imperialism’s client states can ignore the NPT with impunity. The stench of nuclear hypocrisy is overpowering.

While the US and UK ramp up the pressure on Iran and its nuclear ambitions, by threatening action at the UN and pressurising the IAEA to do likewise, Tony Blair is bragging about upgrading Britain’s nuclear capability both in terms of energy production and weaponry. This is in blatant opposition to the NPT which commits signatories to furthering the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and a binding commitment….to the goal of disarmament by the nuclear weapon states.

Nuclear addiction

In the last month, Blair and, Defence Secretary, John Reid, have already pledged themselves to maintaining Britain’s nuclear ‘deterrent’. They are already looking at what will replace the Trident nuclear missile system. So, far from upholding the spirit of disarmament in the NPT, they are actually looking to upgrade. While lecturing the North Koreans and Iranians on the folly of possessing nuclear capability, they are preparing to spend an estimated £20billion enhancing their own.

Blair & Chirac: nuclear mates

This addiction to weapons of mass destruction is not just confined to Britain. At the start of the year, French President, Jacques Chirac declared he was prepared to use nuclear weapons against any incident of state sponsored ‘terrorism’ against France. Like Blair, these comments come at a time when France is also engaged in a debate about upgrading its own nuclear capabilities. The Labour government is also trying to rehabilitate the ‘N’ word in relation to Britain’s energy requirements. Blair is strongly indicating that he is in favour of a building programme of new nuclear power stations.

The impending energy crisis provoked by a thirst and dependency on fossil fuels is concerning the dependent Western economies. The use of oil, gas and coal is no longer guaranteed for a variety of reasons. The biggest suppliers of gas and oil are in the area of the world destabilised by imperialist intervention, inevitably leading to price rises and supply restrictions.

Palpitations

Combined with that, major oil producers such as Iran and Venezuela are flexing their political muscles that come with substantial oil reserves, and threatening to withdraw supplies to the US. Likewise, Russia recently caused palpitations in Europe when it raised gas prices to Ukraine. Until the election of Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine had enjoyed Russian gas at favourable rates; as the political regime changed in Kiev so Russian gas prices have increased.

Iraqi oil production levels are still a long way from the rosy predictions of the neo-con mates of Bush. These uncertainties are compounded by the environmental consequences of the continued burning of fossil fuels. It is inconceivable to think that new nuclear power stations are being planned for Britain, while there is still no solution as to how to dispose of the toxic waste that this source of power produces.

This waste remains dangerous for thousands of years. Combine this with the ‘war on terror’ and the panic over ‘dirty bombs’, and it is inconceivable that the government could promote the building of such explosive targets.

The world is threatened by any or all of the regimes of Bush, Blair, Chirac, Putin, Sharon, Musharraf, Ehud Olmert or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Humanity remains in danger whilst any of them have their finger hovering above the nuclear button. Ultimately, it is not them as individuals who threaten the existence of the world, but it is the system of capitalism and profit which endangers the planet.

Unless we challenge the very system that puts that interest of profit before the interest of humanity, then the horrors of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island will inevitably be repeated.

Smart Bombs and Dumb B's = war by Rae Bridges

More than 5 years ago, on 7 May 2000, British troops landed in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. This was the first major intervention by the British army in sub-Saharan Africa since the end of its bloody campaign in Kenya, in 1964.

At the time, Blair’s government claimed that its only aim was to rescue British citizens whose lives were allegedly threatened by a rebel offensive against the capital. This pretext sounded rather hollow, however, in view of the many similar offensives which had already taken place since the beginning of the country’s decade long, on-going and brutal civil war. In fact, within days, Blair was explaining that the army would need to stay for at least a month, to facilitate the build-up of a UN peace-keeping contingent. Soon, however, this one-month mission was extended to a 9-month, during which the British contingent became actively involved in the war, under the pretext of ‘helping’ UN troops to disarm the rebels.

Two years later, when the new rulers, brought to power by London, declared the civil war officially over – whatever this really meant on the ground – a British contingent was still there. And far from pulling out, part of it stayed on, this time on an open-ended mission, ostensibly aimed at training a new Sierra Leonean police force and army.

Sierra Leone

Five years on, the British forces are still in Sierra Leone. Officially, Britain is now only providing advisors and ‘army trainers’. But their real function is certainly better reflected by the fully manned British warships which are constantly anchored off Freetown’s shores, ready to fulfil Britain’s commitment to deploy its forces within 48 hours, if needed. Blair, who boasts of have restored ‘peace and democracy’ in Sierra Leone, has never bothered to explain why such an idyllic state of affairs should require a heavily armed task force on the ready. Obviously, just like in Iraq, the interests of imperialism in general and British capital in particular have something to do with it.

While thanks to Blair’s military venture, western companies are in a better position today to take the lion’s share of the country’s natural resources, the population of Sierra Leone has gained nothing – except the right to return to the ruins of a country devastated by the civil war and to slide even further into poverty as a result of the systematic looting of the country by imperialism.

British warships off Freetown

A civil war fuelled by poverty and western plunder

It should be recalled that civil war in Sierra Leone began in 1991. As is often the case in sub-Saharan Africa, because of the artificial nature of the national borders inherited from the colonial days, this war started as an offshoot of another civil war, which had been fought on and off in neighbouring Liberia, for more than 8 years.

As in Liberia, the cause of the civil war in Sierra Leone was a combination of three factors: the catastrophic slide of the population into poverty since the mid-1970s, the collapse of the corrupted western-backed cliques in power and the resulting implosion of the state machinery itself, particularly of its backbone, the army.

During the total 11 years of civil war in Sierra Leone, the capital, Freetown, changed hands no less than nine times – and each time, so did the nominal rulers of the country.

At its peak, the war involved 4 main local armed factions. Two of these factions – the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) – had been set up by young nationalists and former army officers in an attempt to bid for power. Another faction was the rump of the regular army, although it was itself divided into many rival sub-factions, as many unit commanders tended to have their own agendas. The fourth faction, the so-called Kamajors, was a British-backed tribal militia.

This war also involved a large number of ‘official’ foreign troops. The first foreign contingent to intervene, in the early 1990s, was the Nigerian-led ECOMOG, a multinational force originally set up under western pressure by the Economic Community of West African States, to intervene in the Liberian civil war. However, throughout the war, acting more or less behind the scenes, under the auspices of the western powers, were small armies of highly-trained, heavily-armed mercenaries, provided by organisations such as the British based Sandline and the South-African-based Executive Outcomes. With the intervention of the British army in 2000 and the subsequent build-up of the UN’s 17,500-strong UNAMSIL contingent, the total number of more or less independent protagonists in the war rose to seven, not counting the various mercenary outfits.

Predictably, apart from Freetown itself, much of the war was fought over who would control the country’s main natural resources – its diamond fields and rutile mines (Sierra Leone has the world’s largest known deposits of this mineral, from which titanium is derived, and used in the manufacture of paint and special alloys).

For the Sierra Leonean population, the particular uniforms worn by the soldiers did not make all that much difference. All these forces behaved in the same way, with the same aim – to terrorise the population into backing them. The foreign troops had aircraft and helicopters, whereas the local factions did not. The former avoided direct contact with the population, whereas the latter systematically forced young boys to join their ranks. But ECOMOG’s rifles and incendiary grenades or the anti-personnel bombs of the British and the mercenaries, caused as many casualties among the villagers as the machetes of the local factions.

London’s ‘solution’

By 1996, taking opportunity of another coup led by a general who was willing to toe the western line, the western powers pushed forward their own chosen strongman. This was Ahmed Tejan Kabbah, a seasoned politician and former UN official. In 1996, during a relative respite in the war, a presidential election was organised at Britain’s behest and Kabbah was elected. This election was a farce, as large parts of the country were held by the rebel factions and did not take part in the vote, while 25% of the population had taken refuge in neighbouring Guinea. Nevertheless it allowed the western leaders to portray Kabbah as a ‘democratically elected leader’ and to provide him and his Kamajors militia with their political and military support.

However Kabbah had no real basis of support among the population, let alone among the remaining ‘official’ Sierra Leonean army. He was soon overthrown by a military coup and forced into exile. And his two subsequent attempts to resume his position in Freetown met with the same failure to restore some order in the country, despite the protection of ECOMOG, the Kamajors, the various mercenary forces as well as the first contingent of ‘peace-keepers’ sent by the UN.

It was this failure to maintain Kabbah in power which prompted Blair to send the troops in 2000 – all the more so as, the last thing he wanted, of course, was to leave the country, which was after all part of the traditional backyard of British capital, in the hands of a US-dominated UN!

In fact British ‘advisors’ had been occupying every level of Freetown’s administration – from the military to revenue and finance – since Kabbah’s second return, in 1998, with Keith Biddle, formerly of the Greater Manchester and Kent police forces even acting commander of the Sierra Leone Police. Hardly surprising that many commentators now claimed that Britain was resuming colonial control of the country.

Finally, after a new agreement was signed with the various factions, a second ballot was held in 2002 in which Kabbah was ‘re-elected’ by a ‘landslide’ in ‘free and fair elections’, even if much of the population was still in refugee camps or internally displaced and unable to register to vote.

Today, the war is said to be over. The UN troops have been reduced to 3,000 and are due to leave the country by the end of this year – although no date is set for the departure of the British task force. But has ‘normal life’ been even partially restored by this huge outside intervention? What about the 50,000-200,000 victims of the war (nobody really knows how many) out of a population of less than 6m? What about the barbaric mutilation suffered by civilians as a result of rebel factions’ ‘special’ punishment, which took the form of amputations of their hands, feet, arms and legs? Do these victims all now have artificial limbs and medical care, or even schools, hospitals, roads, water, electricity? Do they all have homes to live in?

The answer is no.

Statistics show that today, 70% of the country’s population are living in extreme poverty. That average life expectancy is 37 years, supposedly up from 34 years in 2003; infant mortality is 70 times higher than in Britain. Only 36% of the population can read and write yet still only 40% of children attend school. Only half the population has access to clean drinking water, etc.

only 50% of the population has access to clean drinking water

In fact, after having been ranked as the world’s poorest country (177th rank) for seven years in a row by the UN, Sierra Leone has managed to climb to 176th rank this year, but only as a result of Niger’s acute famine crisis!

Such is the great ‘success’ achieved by Blair’s on-going military intervention. But even this is only part of the picture. The truth is that the entire country, with most of its infrastructure, has been destroyed and nothing is done about it.

No plans for the population

What Blair means by restoring ‘peace and democracy’ in Sierra Leone certainly does not include making plans to meet the needs of the population, let alone implementing them – British imperialism has only contempt for the masses, whether in Sierra Leone or in Iraq.

Electricity supply provides a graphic illustration of this. There are only three places in the whole of Sierra Leone which get 24-hour electricity, all in and around Freetown: the government’s complex, the British army compound and UNAMSIL-ville, the UN compound.

As to ordinary households, they are lucky if they get electricity one hour per week! Nevertheless, they do receive electricity bills. And the National Power Authority actually increased charges for the second time this year in October, by 30%, without first notifying anyone!

The problem is that the infrastructure managed by the National Power Authority is in a near terminal state, despite cash injections from donor states, like $10m from South Africa. Freetown’s only oil power station cannot even provide half the capital’s requirement, in spite of recent upgrading. And then, there is the state of disrepair of the distribution network, resulting in massive energy losses.

The power supply problem is to be solved however, but not quite yet! The World Bank only approved a grant of $12.5m in June this year to finance the Bumbuna Hydroelectric Project, intended to supply Freetown, in particular. So, although this project was originally meant to be completed by October 2005, construction will only start next year. In the meantime, the South African state power utility, Eskom Holdings, is in talks to take over management of the National Power Authority, undertake refurbishment and provide technical support – but this will not come for free for consumers, of course.

To make up for the erratic supply of electricity, the people who can afford it, buy little generators – known ironically as ‘Kabbah Tigers’ – which cost 160,000 leones, or around £32 (£1=5,000 leones). But the ‘legal’ (if this means anything) monthly minimum wage is £7.50! Which will not buy a sack of (imported) rice! So even owning an inefficient ‘Kabbah Tiger’, worth the equivalent of nearly 5 months wages, is the privilege of the relatively ‘rich’, just as buying the low-grade fuel used to power these generators as well as all vehicles, at around £2/litre from mostly illegal suppliers over the Guinea border.

The country’s road network is another case of total disregard for the needs of the population. Whole sections of roads are still destroyed, having been blown up during the war, or, simply, for lack of repairs for over a decade. As a result, agricultural products from the rural areas cannot reach the capital where they are need. While food prices are going through the roof in Freetown, threatening the poorest with starvation, rural farmers can hardly scrape a living. But there is no question of using the Navy’s idle heavy-duty helicopters to carry food supplies into the capital until the roads arerepaired, nor has the Royal Engineer Corps been mobilised to repair these roads!

Neither have the western forces mobilised their resources to put together a refuse disposal system in the capital as a matter of urgent health and safety. Today, vast mountains of uncollected rubbish are piled up all over Freetown. In a satirical stab at the City Council, a local paper, the Concord Times warned:

Freetown residents are at present working towards setting up a Special Court to try all those who bear greatest responsibility in keeping the city filthy. Those whose efforts have brought the battalion of flies and mosquitoes to inflict mayhem will be tried come 2007 when the court starts sitting.

This being an allusion to the UN Special Court meant to prosecute those bearing ‘greatest responsibility’ for war crimes – and to the coming elections in 2007, when the population will have a chance to pass its judgement on the present regime.

Meanwhile, in Freetown, an army of expensive 4x4s, driven by UN, NGO or British personnel, are pushing their way to the front of the queues of the local mostly unroadworthy vehicles and flaunting their privilege by raising clouds of dust in the faces of the majority who have to walk everywhere they go, not always on two feet and certainly without shoes.

The ‘rebuilding’ of Freetown

However, UN and British forces do contribute in their own way, to the ‘rebuilding’ of the capital by generating a flourishing ‘industry’ – prostitution – to which many young women resort for lack of any other means to survive.

So far, this ‘industry’ has resulted in numerous extremely nasty scandals, as a consequence of the way in which successive units of soldiers from all over the world have regularly sexually exploited vulnerable and impoverished women and girls.

Strangely enough, even though £20m was allocated by the UN towards HIV/Aids projects, there are no statistics as to the incidence of infection – although it is thought to be around 7% of the population. Which merely reflects the fact that there is nothing which even vaguely resembles an organised health care sector.

Of course, UNAMSIL has been forced to recognise its corrupting influence. It recently launched a project dubbed ‘girls off the street’ to cut down the rate of prostitution. The project aims to train these girls as commercial transport drivers and motorcycle riders to ‘transport goods and persons’ around the country. However, the UN’s contribution exposed the cynicism of its alleged goodwill: two taxis, some motorbikes and around 2m leones which is equivalent to around £438!!

It is not just women who are being exploited under Blair’s occupation of Sierra Leone, children are as well. Of course, child labour is a common feature in most poor countries. But it reaches an extreme in the streets of Freetown, where little children, bare-footed, sickly, and in rags, try desperately to sell a handful of nuts, fruit or corn, or a carefully tied plastic bag of water, origins unknown – because access to drinkable water is another unresolved problem.

Other small children who cannot be more than ten years old sit by the roadside, armed with hammers, breaking large pieces of granite into smaller pieces. This child labour is, among other things, an essential contribution to Freetown’s ‘booming’ building industry! These children must load the broken gravel into baskets and strain their puny neck muscles to carry this weight on their heads to the sites where higgledy-piggledy housing is being erected – without any regulation – because access is by foot only, for lack of a proper road.

Three years after the war was declared over, many houses still stand in ruins, shelled, burnt, marked by gunfire, in any case in bad need of refurbishment, if not complete reconstruction. But the construction work which is being done is not for the poor population. This construction is largely being undertaken by Chinese companies, with a boldness to jump in where other countries fear to tread as the British Financial Times remarked upon in their survey of Sierra Leone published in February this year.

For instance there is the refurbishment by the Beijing Urban Construction Group of the 60,000-seat national stadium complex, the government complex and the army headquarters… One should also mention the 11-acre Bintumani Hotel site, where a ‘Chinese themed’ upgrading continues (on a 25-year lease signed with the government) which includes the construction of a big casino. Another 250-bed luxury hotel complex and conference centre is to be built according to an agreement signed with the Sierra Leone National Tourist Board, in May 2004, as well as a sports stadium in the southern provincial capital of Bo – ‘spectacular’ buildings which will do nothing to solve the housing crisis for the poor.

Ahmed Tejen Kabbah

Under the legalistic fig leaves

Last June, the UN’s Special Court started trials for those accused of war crimes – supposedly, those who bear ‘the greatest responsibility’ for organising atrocities since 1996. Only 13 people were indicted. But, among them, 2 are already dead, one is missing and another, the Liberian warlord Charles Taylor, has been given political asylum in Nigeria. So only 9 accused will be put on trial. Yet this Special Court has managed to spend $81m in 3 years, much to the disgust of a destitute population, when such funds could have been spend on clean water, housing, health care, etc…!

Ironically, one of the first accused to stand in the dock was not a rebel faction leader, but a member of Kabbah’s government, who was indicted as co-ordinator of the pro-Kabbah Kamajors militia. Needless to say, this helped make the Court’s American chief prosecutor extremely unpopular with the regime and he has now decided to stand down. But then, of course, this court, like similar tribunals in Rwanda, is primarily there as a fig leaf aimed at putting all the blame on just a few individuals, while deflecting scrutiny from those in power.

The parallel South African style ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ has a complementary purpose. It grants amnesty to the accused in return for a ‘confession of guilt’, thereby, no doubt, allowing these individuals to be recycled into respectable figures who can then be co-opted by the regime, regardless of their past crimes. This legal charade is all the more cynical because, at the same timeas these sanctimonious proceedings are progressing, the country is sliding into a corruption swamp, despite the appointment of various anti-corruption bodies.

Corruption is legendary in Sierra Leone, as it is in so many poor countries. Today’s British-backed regime is no exception. With diamonds and other attractive minerals involved, there is huge scope for personal gain, including from the granting of mining and prospecting licences. According to a twice weekly local publication called Peep! which exposes misuses of power, Things have gone from bad to worse, ironically since the Anti Corruption Commission has started! This is confirmed by the executive director of the ‘National Accountability Group’ who is quoted as saying: If you’re put in a government office and you don’t steal, your whole family gets angry with you. And the conspicuous wealth flaunted by government officials, which is certainly not commensurate with their salaries, is even more sickening in the context of this devastated country. However, exposing the reality of corruption is a dangerous thing to do under president Kabbah.

Actions against journalists have been going on for some time. In 2002, the daily African Champion Newspaper was shut down for 2 months and its editor banned from journalism for 6 months, for accusing Kabbah’s son of corruption and claiming he was protected by his father. The same year, Paul Kamara, editor of the newspaper For Di People was jailed for 2 months and his paper banned for 6 months for calling an Appeal Court Judge a swindler.

Last year, Paul Kamara, again, was given a 4-year jail sentence for slandering the president. He had claimed that Kabbah should not have been allowed to stand for president, since his name had never been cleared of a fraud scandal, which took place in the late 1960s, when he was permanent secretary at the trade ministry.

Far worse even, the acting editor of For Di People, Harry Yansaneh, was beaten up in July this year by thugs allegedly acting on the orders of a ruling party MP. He later died of his injuries. His murderers were found guilty of homicide, but were then somehow freed on bail. So much for Kabbah’s Blair sponsored ‘democracy’!

Open for business

As in most poor countries, the only game in town for the regime is to attract foreign investment. So, despite the county’s general economic bankruptcy and deprivation, Kabbah relaunched the privatisation drive interrupted by the war. Plans have been drawn up to sell off 24 state-controlled companies, including finance, transport, utilities and commerce. The target for completion, originally 2006, is now 2010, while the Commission in charge of the job complains that it would require at least $12.5m in ‘sweeteners’ in order to attract buyers. As a result, the only candidate for privatisation, so far, is the Rokel Commercial Bank – which was formerly owned by Barclays, until it sold it to the government for a nominal £1, in 1998. But since this bank was put up for sale in December 2004, there have not been any takers.

To make the country even more attractive to potential ‘investors’, the Sierra Leone Export Development and Investment Corporations, shortened to a catchy ‘Sledic’, offers them a 7 day fast track registration. Foreign companies are offered an attractive package devised with the help of the World Bank. For instance, investors in large-scale agriculture get a 10 year exemption from the standard corporate tax rate of 35%, with no minimum capital requirements. Besides, materials required for ‘tourism businesses’ and equipment for mining operations are duty-free.

Only a few areas have so far attracted the interest of foreign companies: mobile telecoms (!), agriculture and fisheries, rutile and, of course, diamonds. Mobile telecoms has the advantage of requiring only minimal existing infrastructure, which is why this industry has been blossoming right across Africa, where it has often replaced fixed lines. However, in Sierra Leone, even this minimum barely exists. As the manager of the main mobile operator, the Kuwaiti-owned company Celtel, complains:

Energy supplies are getting worse, so we have to run two generators at every site. Then we have to run a fleet of 20 vehicles on the worst roads in Africa…

As for agriculture – this is a Kabbah’s big headache, since he promised that every single person in the country would have enough to eat by 2007. He has since qualified this by saying he had not meant that he personally was taking responsibility for feeding everyone! Just as well, since the initiative to prop up cash crops like coffee and cocoa, is certainly not going to feed anyone at all. That said, rice production, in which Sierra Leone used to be self- sufficient, is supposed to be improving.

The really big business, of course, is in rutile and diamonds. Rutile used to be the country’s biggest export earner before the civil war – although no-one knew for sure, since an unknown part of the diamond production was smuggled out of the country – and the Sierra Rutile Limited used to be the country’s largest employer. Today, all of Sierra Leone’s rutile operations, together with its smaller bauxite resources, have been regrouped into the Titanium Resources Group, a London-listed company, controlled by a very shadowy business character -Jean Raymond Boulle, a British citizen based in the French tax haven of Monaco. Boulle’s name has been associated, one way or another, with just about every recent African civil war in which mining resources were at stake – such as Angola and Congo-Zaïre, for instance.

Under Boulle’s auspices, Sierra Leone’s rutile mines were reopened officially at the beginning of November, thanks to EU and US loans. Full production should resume later this year. As to diamonds, last year’s outputreached 32% of the 2m carats which used to be produced annually in the 1960s. While small scale digging of the alluvial diamond deposits has resumed, Koidu Holdings is the only ‘industrial scale’ diamond mining operation exploiting the Kono diamond fields in the north east at present. In fact, Koidu Holdings is just a front controlled by what was formerly Branch Energy, the British-based company linked to the mercenary outfits, Executive Outcomes and Sandline. Jan Joubert, the South African chief executive of Koidu Holdings, admits himself that, together with some of his staff, he used to work for Executive Outcomes. It seems that in exchange for the ‘services’ provided by the mercenaries to the Kabbah regime, the 25-year lease obtained for the Koidu area as well as exploration licences for gold and diamonds elsewhere are finally bearing a lot of ripe fruit for these soldiers of fortune and their corporate sponsors.

There are still others are in the diamond game. The British-Canadian company Mano River Resources is said to be close to entering a joint venture with mining giant BHP-Billiton to blast out diamonds in Kono. In addition, the Sierra Leone Diamond Company claims to have 20 mineral prospecting and exploitation licences for the entire northern third of the country covering a total area of 36,365 square kilometres. This company has an address in London’s Berkeley Square, is registered in Bermuda and is controlled by another shadowy businessman – Vasile (Frank) Timis who has been accused of all kinds of nefarious dealings to do with Regal Petroleum and mining operations in his native Romania.

However, behind the (relatively) small players of the diamond industries, the real big beneficiary remains De Beers, simply because of its 50% control of the diamond market.

The rutile and diamond industries are usually hailed by all and sundry as the future for Sierra Leone. However, not only do they provide no benefit whatsoever to the Sierra Leonean population (except for the handful of local capitalists and politicians), but they are a real calamity for the population of the large areas concerned.

In the case of rutile, for instance, the mineral is mined by ‘dredging’ – i.e. by flooding large areas with artificial lakes and extracting the mineral from these lakes. And the regime connives with the companies to confiscate the lands of local farmers who are left without any compensation. This is probably why the Boulle’s company is officially allowed to maintain a heavily-armed, uniformed private army to guard its operations… against the population!

In the case of diamonds, the 4,500 people who live close to the Koidu kimberlite pipe that Koidu Holdings started blasting two years ago, have to evacuate their homes whenever blasting is taking place. But to date, they have still not been offered resettlement (only 10 substandard, incomplete houses have been built without any facilities), Sierra Leone despite a 2-year long campaign against this company’s destruction of their environment and disruption of their farming activity and their lives. Which is no surprise, of course.

UN 'peacekeepers'

The explosive factors remain

So what is the balance sheet today for the population after 5 years of British intervention and 3 years of ‘peace’ in Sierra Leone? What do Sierra Leoneans have the British government and the UN to thank for? It is hard to avoid parallels with Iraq under occupation and particularly the occupation of southern Iraq by the British.

Kabbah’s regime would certainly not have come to power nor survived until this date without the western intervention and the continuous presence of British troops. Nor would it have any chance to remain in power for any length of time without the 9,000 plus police trained by the UN and equipped jointly by the UN and Britain, or without the new Sierra Leonean army trained and equipped by Britain.

Even then, the ‘peace’ – meaning only political stability at the top – is far from guaranteed. While over the past 3 years there has been no visible sign of a significant-scale armed rebellion, there has been at least one unsuccessful attempt by armed men to break into an armoury in Freetown. And it is probably not for nothing that the new British-trained army chief of staff felt it necessary to tell his officers just this October that they had better stay out of politics, forget their tribal loyalties and where they come from, or resign.

Obviously, coups by disgruntled or ambitious army officers are far too common an occurrence for anything to be taken for granted. Whether the present status quo will be maintained is an open question, especially given the instability of the whole region. After all, nearby Ivory Coast is in turmoil and the recent election in neighbouring Liberia may well only conceal an on-going stand-off between rival armed factions.

As to Kabbah’s regime, after only 3 years of existence, it already has all the features of the old corrupt dictatorships of the past. This does not stop Blair from boasting of having brought ‘peace and democracy’ to Sierra Leone, just as US leaders claim forneighbouring Liberia. Never mind the fact that behind the thin veil of ‘institutional democracy’ lies an institutionalised corruption backed by repressive methods. Never mind either, the acute deprivation of the population and the total collapse of the country’s social and structural fabric.

The truth is that the endemic poverty which was the breeding ground on which the civil war of the 1990s fed, still prevails. Only now, it is compounded by the hatred generated and suffering caused by the war among the population. But why should that bother Blair and the other imperialist leaders as long as a western-backed regime manages to impose just enough political stability to allow imperialist companies to loot the country’s resources? Until, that is, the day that the very same factors produce another catastrophe.