Oil and Sudan

Oil, Genocide and Islam. Where does Malaysia stand on these issues?

By Hakim Joe

Talk about Sudan and many Malaysians will remember Darfur and the humanitarian catastrophe
where more than two hundred thousand of its inhabitants died during this civil conflict.

Talk about oil and many Malaysians will think about the Middle East nations and of course
Petronas. How many layperson will however will be able to connect Sudan with petroleum or the
fact that the very existence of oil in Sudan is causing these deaths?

Sudan has been an exporter of crude oil since 1999 and is currently the 17th fastest growing
economy in the world (even after being economically sanctioned by the Americans since 2006).
Predominantly of the Islamic faith, Sudan is basically separated into two regions – the Northern
Sudan where the Afro-Arabs Muslims live and the Southern part where the non-Arab Afro
Muslims reside, and the Darfur War is fundamentally an armed conflict between these two.

So, where does this lead to?

On Monday the 21st of June, 2010, Sweden’s international prosecutor, Magnus Elving, launched
a preliminary investigation regarding crimes against humanitarian law in Sudan during the years
1997 to 2003 involving a Swedish oil company with direct connections to its current Foreign
Minister, Carl Bildt (also Swedish PM from 1991 to 1994).

This Swedish oil company, Lundin Petroleum (formerly known as Lundin Oil) and its three
international partners “may have been complicit in the commission of war crimes and crimes
against humanity” in southern Sudan. This is based on an official report recently published
by ECOS (European Coalition on Oil in Sudan), a group of 50 European non-governmental
organizations that had worked in Sudan.

In the ECOS Report, this group has accused these four oil companies (of the Lundin Consortium)
of “having failed in their international obligations to prevent human-rights violations and
international crimes”.

ECOS also maintains that the Sudanese problems began when the Lundin Consortium signed
a 1997 agreement with Sudan’s Central Government for the exploitation of oil in an area (Block
5A) in which the Sudanese Government did not have complete control. ECOS charges that
the subsequent governmental efforts to secure the oil fields sparked conflict where the civilian
population was forcibly displaced and severely victimized, including the targeting of civilians,
destruction of shelters, pillage, killing, rape, abduction and torture (in other words a genocide).

It further alleges the Sudanese Central Government employed “artillery, ground troops, helicopter
gunships and high-altitude bombers against the civilian population”. ECOS (and the UN)
estimates that 180,000 people died and 2.5 million were forcibly displaced through such efforts,
and that they are in possession of documented evidence as proof.

Though not actually accusing the four partners within the Lundin Consortium of supporting
a genocide, ECOS alleges that “…nobody believes if they say they didn’t know what was
happening there [in Sudan]”.

In the 2003 HRW (Human Rights Watch) report on Sudan, a section of it was titled “Lundin:
Willfully Blind To Devastation in Block 5A”, the same geographic locale that ECOS cites.

So, who are the other three “criminals against humanity”, the so called joint venture partners
of the Lundin Consortium in Block 5A? Other than Lundin Oil AB as the major shareholder
(40.375%), there is Austria’s OMV (Österreichische Mineralölverwaltung – 26.125%), the
Sudanese state-owned oil company, Sudapet Limited (5%) and last but not least is Malaysia’s
Petronas Carigali Overseas (28.5%).

Petronas Carigali has since then purchased the 40.375% shareholding owned by Lundin
Oil and is now in possession of 66.5% of this joint venture to extract petroleum in Sudan.

Malaysia Boleh! 1Malaysia lagi Boleh!!!