China, Oil, and Ethnic Cleansing in Horn of Africa

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China, Oil, and Ethnic Cleansing in Horn of Africa

January 10th, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

by Thomas C. Mountain
foreignpolicyjournal.com
January 4, 2012

Chinese oil workers once again seem to be at the center of a nasty counterinsurgency in the Horn of Africa, in the Ogaden, located in south east Ethiopia.

The Ogaden is home to what is reported to be major deposits of gas and oil, though as in South Sudan, just how much is actually there is still just guess work.

In the 1960’s Western oil companies started finding lots of natural gas and maybe even oil in the region.

Then came various wars and then the US invasion of Somalia in 1992-3 and all the murder and mayhem this little war unleashed amongst the Somali people. So the western Big Oil mafia has stayed away.

By the beginning of the new millennium China had begun developing the Sudanese oil fields in the Abeye region and an oil pipeline to Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Shortly thereafter the Chinese began taking a hard look at next door Ethiopia and the enormous potential of the Ogaden gas and oil deposits.

Thus began the story of how China came to the Horn of Africa looking for oil and found itself in the midst of trouble.

To develop the Ogaden energy resources, China had to get into bed with a strong contender for the most hated man in Africa, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

Meles for his part has always been hemorrhaging hard currency, as much as 75% of such available, paying for imported fuel of which Ethiopia, a country of 80 million or so, has been completely dependent on.

Recently there have been reports that the Sudanese oil fields in Abeye have seen a decline in production and may see a major decline over the next decade.

The hard fact is that the Sudanese oil fields are China’s only majority owned and controlled oil or gas fields in Africa, and their exhaustion leaves China with a big hole in its African strategic interests in energy reserves.

With the possibility of major gas and oil deposits next door in the Ogaden, located in south east Ethiopia, China has bitten at the bait, and what has been happening seems to be the only really serious mistake China has been making in Africa.