Talisman fights back on Sudan displacement claims - Releases aerial images
Financial Post, April 19
By Claudia Cattaneo, Calgary Bureau Chief
TALISMAN DISMISSES HUMAN MIGRATION CLAIMS: Talisman says images of Heglig oil field, a key location examined in their concession in Sudan using satellite images shot over the past 3 years, shows there was no evidence of appreciable human migration, contrary to "highly exaggerated claims" of widespread displacement.
CALGARY - Talisman Energy Inc. says it has new evidence in the form of satellite images of its vast oil concession area in Sudan shot over the past 35 years that refutes "highly exaggerated claims" of widespread population displacement.
Canada's largest independent oil and gas company took the unusual step of acquiring the images -- some of them shot by U.S. spy satellites -- then hiring a British aerial reconnaissance expert to analyze them, so it could gain comfort that "some of these more outlandish claims were untrue," Jim Buckee, president and chief executive, said yesterday.
The company also wanted to contribute to a more informed debate about its operations in Sudan and arm its employees with the facts, he said. It will make the large photos available for viewing in its corporate headquarters in Calgary and likely on its Web site.
"There has been lots of opinion, emotion and stories. There are very few facts, and these provide the best scientific evidence available about the population movement in the areas of our operation," Mr. Buckee said. "I suppose that there is displacement in various parts of Sudan. This, at least, refutes the fact that tens of thousands of people were forced from their homes in our area. This shows it's absolutely not true."
Talisman has been stung by one of the largest campaigns ever organized against an oil company since gaining an interest in a remote oil project in the impoverished east African country nearly three years ago.
Human rights organizations and activists charge oil is fuelling Sudan's bloody civil war and want the company to get out until there is peace. The controversy has depressed the stock price of the former stock market darling, even though Talisman's Sudan operations represent a fraction of its overall oil and gas production.
Geoffrey John Oxlee, a British expert hired to examine the satellite images, said in a report there is no evidence of appreciable human migration from any of the seven sites he examined.
On the contrary, he noted, analysis revealed "once the sites were developed, then people did come into the area, and in fact it looked as if people developed around the oil sites rather than going away from it."
Mr. Oxlee, former head of the U.K. Joint Air Reconnaisance Intelligence Centre, said he is prepared to stand by his conclusions in court, if needed.
The imagery covers the project's entire concession area, which sprawls over 19,000 square miles in south central Sudan. Mr. Oxlee focused his analysis on seven areas where there are Talisman operations -- Bamboo, Heglig, El Toor, Munga, Unity, Parayang and Bentiu. The rest of the concession was not closely analyzed because it was "clearly empty."
The images were taken in the 1960s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000, with the early ones shot by the USA CORONA military intelligence satellites, and the later ones by civilian operations.
But Eric Reeves, one of Talisman's fiercest critics, said there are "plenty of smoking guns" to prove the exact opposite.
The U.S. professor pointed to reports by Canadian envoy John Harker, Amnesty International and the United Nations, and mountains of eyewitness accounts, all of which paint a picture of scorched earth warfare, bombing, looting, abduction and massive displacement around such oil fields as Heglig and Unity.
"I am no anti-technology nut, but if I have to choose between people on the ground interviewing people and looking at the burned remains of villages, on the one hand, and reconnaissance photography on the other, I will choose the people on the ground. They both can't be right. They are painting massively different pictures."
Mr. Reeves said he would not put it beyond Talisman to have done a very careful job of selecting only favourable images.
"Are they presenting it all? Are there competing sets of images?" he asked.
Mr. Oxlee said it is very difficult and expensive to doctor the pictures and alterations are easily detected.
Talisman's images "are genuine pictures," he said. "Having looked at hundreds of thousands of satellite pictures, there's no way these pictures have been doctored. Absolutely none. We do check these things out."
Mr. Oxlee said satellite imagery, which is reasonably high resolution, provides a low-cost, reliable method of monitoring the progression of a large area over time. There are extensive data banks of such images available for commercial use, he said. The company said it spent $150,000 on the exercise.
ccattaneo@nationalpost.com
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