Some technical data on Resource Scramble in the Region

[Mintid Farayar]

DUBAI-based Zarara Oil & Gas is poised to begin exploration of one of the hottest plays in Africa, the under-explored Lamu basin transition zone on the Kenya-Somali maritime boundary where piracy is rife and the threat of abduction is rising. Original licencee Sohi Oil & Gas (SwissOil) has farmed down a 75% operating stake to Zarara, while retaining 15%, preparing the ground for a 2D seismic survey before the end of the year on transition zone L-4.

 

This will most likely be over the old Pate-1 location where a one-well and 3D commitment looms, and later on nearby block L-13, on the Somali border.

 

Interest in the play is intensifying as Zarara's marine acreage abuts Anadarko Petroleum's deepwater holdings, where the US mid-tier operates five licences spanning Kenya's entire offshore from the Somali to Tanzanian maritime borders and where about 3600 kilometres of 3D seismic is currently being shot.

 

Chinese contractor BGP and Geokinetics remain front runners for the L-4 job, where a high-pressure dry gas discovery and the Dodori condensate find were logged in the 1970s, but L-13 still has significant security issues due to instability in neighbouring Somalia, said a senior Sohi executive. Last week saw an incident north of Lamu in which a British couple were attacked by Al-Shabaab militants comprising Kenyan and Somali nationals.

 

The husband was shot dead while the wife was kidnapped and taken to Somalia.

 

A man accused of being the prime suspect in the kidnap of the British woman and the murder of her husband days ago, has been arraigned in a Lamu court.

 

To combat this threat, the Zarara-SwissOil alliance is in talks with Nairobi start-up Offshore Security (OSL), founded in 2010 by retired Kenyan Naval commander Major General Pastor Awitta.

[Jacaylbaro]

Source ?

[Mintid Farayar]

Subscription Oil & Gas Industry Journal... Not open-source, unfortunately.

[Somalia]

The rigs are on ships due to arrive, any other info would be insider trading I'm afraid.

[Dhagax-Tuur]

If one ever doubted the ideology of 'global resources for the rich and powerful of the world' then the following might enlighten you a bit.

"It was always inevitable, on a finite planet, that there would be a limit to economic growth. Industrialisation has enabled us to rush headlong toward that limit over the past two centuries. Production has become ever more efficient, markets have become ever more global, and finally the paradigm of perpetual growth has reached the point of diminishing returns.

 

Indeed, that point was actually reached by about 1970. Since then capital has not so much sought growth through increased production, but rather by extracting greater returns from relatively flat production levels. Hence globalisation, which moved production to low-waged areas, providing greater profit margins. Hence privatisation, which transfers revenue streams to investors that formerly went to national treasuries. Hence derivative and currency markets, which create the electronic illusion of economic growth, without actually producing anything in the real world.

 

For almost forty years, the capitalist system was kept going by these various mechanisms, none of which were productive in any real sense. And then in September 2008 this house of cards collapsed, all of a sudden, bringing the global financial system to its knees.

 

If one studies the collapse of civilisations, one learns that failure-to-adapt is fatal. Is our civilisation falling into that trap? We had two centuries of real growth, where the growth-dynamic of capitalism was in harmony with the reality of industrial growth. Then we had four decades of artificial growth – capitalism being sustained by a house of cards. And now, after the house of cards has collapsed, every effort is apparently being made to bring about ‘a recovery’ – of growth! It is very easy to get the impression that our civilisation is in the process of collapse, based on the failure-to-adapt principle.

 

Such an impression would be partly right and partly wrong. In order to understand the real situation we need to make a clear distinction between the capitalist elite and capitalism itself. Capitalism is an economic system driven by growth; the capitalist elite are the folks who have managed to gain control of the Western world while capitalism has operated over the past two centuries. The capitalist system is past its sell-by date, the bankster elite are well aware of that fact – and they are adapting."

 

Excerpt of a very interesting article by Richard K Moore.

 

Source: globalresearch.ca