Sanctions swinging in Washington wind
Upstream, June 1
The administration of George W. Bush is discovering, as does every new guard in Washington, how difficult it is to carry out campaign promises and the best of plans laid in the heady days after an election victory.
In Bush's case, the lesson was brought home with an ironic twist last week when Jim Jeffords defected from the Republican Party, leaving the Democrats in control of the upper house. The result may be a paralysis in policies ranging from energy development to environmental protection.
Even before the defection, the Bush administration faced the possibility of a blow to its much-vaunted policy of doing away with the regime of sanctions erected in recent decades.
There has been a momentum building up over the past year in favour of dispensing with the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) aimed at preventing non-US companies from investing in upstream projects in the two countries. The logic behind dismantling ILSA is strong. The attempt in 1996 to impose US laws on other countries drew a storm of protests from around the world -- and most non-US companies and their governments ignored it.
Indeed, ILSA -- though it may have imposed a higher oil and gas development cost on Iran and Libya -- has mainly been notable for the extent to which it has been ignored. The principal effect has been to keep US oil companies out of two of the world's most important oil and gas producing countries.
A Bill introduced last week in the US House of Representatives to roll over ILSA for another five years in August has majority support at least at this legislative level. So Washington now knows it will not be in for an easy ride to soften sanctions.
However, all is not lost for Bush on the energy front, at least as far as ILSA is concerned, with the White House counting on the return to power of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami after the 8 June election to help swing back Congressional opinion in Washington. One suggestion is that a compromise involving a two-year extension of the sanctions is being examined. In any case, ILSA has proven to be such an exercise in futility that it is difficult to envisage it being around for another five years.
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US policy in the African melting pot
Upstream, June 1
By Barry Morgan
Charm offensive: US Secretary of State Colin Powell may have won friends with his tour of Africa, which included a visit to a Soweto clinic for AIDS sufferers, but the energy game is never a simple one to play
President George W. Bush's administration is struggling to get to grips with the tangled web of Africa's petropolitics as part of the US energy policy rethink. But Washington is in danger of losing the plot as underlying ethnic rivalries cloud the picture
Evidence is emerging that Africa will form a key component in efforts by the Bush administration to reassess the role of energy in US foreign policy. In addition to boosting oil imports from Angola, Washington wants Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo to raise output to meet growing US demand.
However, knocking heads together to achieve this goal is a major challenge for Vice President and ex-Halliburton chief Dick Cheney as Capitol Hill struggles to get to grips with the continent's notoriously fickle petropolitics.
It all feeds directly into critical security concerns, which this week preoccupied Secretary of State Colin Powell on the second leg of his much-publicised African tour.
In Nigeria, for example, Washington's efforts to shore up Obasanjo's faltering federal government may yet backfire as ethnic Ibo groups in the south-east of the country intensify their secessionist campaign and communities in the oil-producing Niger Delta press for control of local resources.
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