Talisman hires rights monitor in Sudan
By Alfred Taban
KHARTOUM, May 3 (Reuters) - Canadian oil firm Talisman (Toronto:TLM.TO - news) has hired a human rights monitor in a bid to answer claims that its Sudan operations are fuelling human rights abuse in Africa's largest country.
``We hired Wilson Anthony who comes from Pariang to tell us the truth,'' Ralph Capeling, top official of Canada's biggest oil and gas producer in Sudan, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday evening.
Pariang is one of two towns in Sudan's southwest Unity state where Capeling said Talisman has built two clinics, drilled four water wells, and built roads to benefit local people.
Talisman has been at the centre of a storm in Canada over reports alleging that Khartoum is using oil revenues to fuel its war against rebels in the mainly Christian, animist south and has depopulated areas where the oilfields are located.
``The population of Pariang has, for example, gone up by 25 percent, partly due to the fact that it is more secure,'' Capeling said, denying the claims.
He said he understood that rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), the government's main military opposition, had burned down huts in the area last year.
This was the first time Talisman had employed a human rights monitor, Capeling said, adding that Anthony, hired on May 1, is an ethnic Dinka from Unity state.
``The people who are opposing us should be supporting us, because we bring Western values to Sudan and if we were not here, some other country would be here which would probably not have such values or beliefs,'' Capeling said.
Talisman has a 25 percent stake in a 1,500 km (940 mile) pipeline that came on tap last August, pumping oil from the Heglig fields in south Sudan where rebels have been battling the northern Islamist government for the past 17 years.
Its Sudan output contributed to a huge jump in first-quarter earnings announced on Tuesday of $139.3 million, up more than 5,000 percent from year-earlier earnings.
The consortium that owns the pipeline also includes the state oil companies of China, Malaysia and Sudan, which looks to oil to reverse economic decline.
``If Talisman walks out due to regional or international pressures, there are dozens of companies that are waiting and will replace it,'' Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said in February.
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