Somaliland hopes oil will replace goat dependence

[Xaaji Xunjuf]

By Ed Stoddard

 

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - Wanted: investors for small African nation with good oil and mineral potential - no seat at the United Nations but history of independence in rough neighborhood.

 

The break-away nation of Somaliland is a tough sell but the announcement this week that serious hydrocarbon exploration is about to kick off there shows that oil talks, regardless of political status.

 

For Somaliland, an internationally unrecognised state of 3.5 million people that declared independence from Somalia in 1991, it promises to be a game changer.

 

"We need to find a way to earn hard currency besides selling goats, sheep and camels to Arabs. This is the only way we earn hard currency now," Hussein Abdi Dualeh, the minister of energy and mining, told Reuters on the sidelines of an African oil conference in South Africa organised by Global Pacific & Partners.

 

Ophir Energy Plc, Australia-based Jacka Resources and Genel Energy, which is headed by former BP chief executive Tony Hayward, are all about to start exploration in Somaliland.

 

Dualeh said the investments would be worth tens of millions of dollars, small change in the global oil industry but a windfall to a government that only has a budget of $120 million.

 

Gas discoveries off Mozambique and Tanzania and oil finds in Uganda and Kenya have sparked a hydrocarbon scramble into previously unexplored parts of Africa.

 

Oil companies often go where other investors fear to tread, including other unrecognized statelets such as Kurdistan.

[Xaaji Xunjuf]

Ophir Energy PLC

Australia based jacka resources

General energy

 

All have exploring licences in Somaliland lets see how it goes lets explore the virgin soil of Somaliland.

[GaraadMon]

Replace the role of a renewable resource with a non-renewable resource? Sounds like an incredible economic policy.

 

The energy minister is essentially saying they're sitting on their asses until they gain access to oil revenues. Not a good look for a government.