Talisman energizes Sudan 'genocide': protesters - Calgary Herald, July 1
By Gary Norris
TORONTO (Canadian Press) - Talisman Energy Inc. of Calgary is sponsoring
genocide in Sudan, a group of protesters outside the Toronto Stock
Exchange said Wednesday.
The oil and gas producer responded that the group's view of the conflict
in the African country is "very simplistic" and that "development has to be
better than the absence of development."
Sudan's government "is counting on the Canadian company Talisman
Energy to generate oil revenues for its continued military campaigns
against its own people," the Southern Sudanese Community Organization
of Greater Toronto said in a news release ahead of the demonstration by
about 50 people.
"Sudanese blood is on the hands of Canadians who independently or
through their mutual funds own Talisman Energy shares," asserted
spokesman Manock Lual, citing a figure of 1.9 million people killed in
Sudan's civil strife since 1983, mostly women and children.
Lual said the northern-based National Islamic Front government plans to
sustain a campaign of starvation, torture, slavery and killing against
Christian and animist southern Sudanese by using revenue from drilling
operations and an oil pipeline from the south partly financed and created
by Talisman.
"Sudan is a very complex place," Talisman president and chief executive
Jim Buckee responded from Calgary.
"It has suffered from war - devastation. . . . Development gives the
option of moving forward."
Talisman is one of Canada's most internationaloil producers, with
operations in Africa, the Far East and in the North Sea.
The Sudan oil project - 40 per cent owned by China's national petroleum
company, 30 per cent by Malaysia's national oil company, 25 per cent
by Talisman and five per cent by the Sudanese national oil company
Sudapet - "will go ahead with or without us, albeit better with us, we
hope," Buckee said.
"The presence of Talisman is beneficial in that it brings a western
involvement into the affairs of the state."
Sudanese government officials "want peace, they talk about peace and
reconciliation, they keep inviting people to discuss peace," he said,
adding that "there's lot's of bad stuff to be dished around on all sides."
Southern Sudan, Buckee said, is a turbulent welter of 300 tribes, with
some of the biggest at each other's throats, and three million of five
million southern refugees have fled to the north.
Buckee said Talisman, with "some hundreds of millions" sunk into the
Hegglig oilfield which has proven reserves of 800 million barrels, is "an
easy target because we're visible in Canada."
He added that the Sudanese government's take from the project, about
75 per cent of the net proceeds after cost recovery, is among the lowest
in the world - "certainly a lot better than the regime in Canada."
Talisman shares were up $1.40 at $40.05 on the Toronto stock market
during the protest.
The demonstrators want Canadians "to call their mutual fund managers
and specifically request that they de-list Talisman from their portfolio if
they want to ensure that the genocide in Sudan does not continue to
enjoy their financial support," said Thomas Kedini, a member of the
Southern Sudanese Community Organization.
"We hope that a public outcry against this policy will force Talisman to
reconsider their involvement with this despotic regime and sever their
relationship with the project."
Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy urged Canadian companies in
March to uphold codes of conduct in doing business with Sudan's
government. This followed a demand from a church coalition that
Axworthy ban Talisman from helping Sudan develop its oil resources.
"We in any country have to respond to the government in power - that's
not endorsement or anything, that's just the way it is," Buckee said
Wednesday.
"There has been a low-level civil war going all the time, and that's pretty
terrible. We're saying you've got to move on, you can't just stay there
slugging it out."
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