Oil Trumps Drug Eradication in U.S. Priorities for Colombia
25 October 2002
stratfor.com
Summary
The Bush administration says more U.S. military aid is needed in Colombia in order to eradicate the drug trade and to defeat warring rebel and paramilitary organizations. But with oil security ranking higher than coca eradication in the Bush administration's list of policy priorities in Colombia, the implications are that battling the militants and protecting the oil sector will become enmeshed, bringing dangerous consequences for U.S. corporate and military assets in Colombia.
Analysis
The Bush administration asserts that Colombia needs a substantial boost in U.S. military assistance to help the government eradicate the illegal narcotics trade and defeat powerful rebel and paramilitary groups that finance themselves through it. In fact, Colombia's army has little chance of defeating the rebels and paramilitaries that control the Colombian drug trade without a very substantial and sustained increase in U.S. military aid.
However, the Bush administration's actions indicate that its higher priority is to protect key Colombian oil assets and to secure large rural areas believed rich in oil reserves so that U.S. energy companies can initiate large-scale exploration safely and quickly.
This order of priorities -- oil before drugs -- also suits Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez because oil accounts for 25 percent of his government's annual revenues, and steadily accelerating oil production is vital to Colombia's economic development and to Uribe's political success.
Putting oil security ahead of drug eradication in the expanding U.S. military relationship with Colombia has several implications.
First, the Colombian army's offensive deployments against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) rebel groups likely will be concentrated in areas where vital oil assets already exist, like Arauca Department, and also in unexplored areas believed to contain enormous potential oil reserves. It's estimated that Colombia has up to 37 billion barrels of oil reserves, but 80 percent of the most promising regions have not been explored.
Because the FARC and ELN roam freely in these areas -- and drug cultivation also is prevalent -- oil security, drug eradication and defeating the rebels all dovetail neatly into the Uribe government's offensive strategy. However, given Bogota's recent admission that major new oil finds must be made within the next 18 months to keep the country from becoming a net oil importer, oil security will be the paramount consideration in deciding where to attack the FARC and ELN.
Another implication is that U.S. Special Forces advisers who are training Colombian units tasked with protecting existing oil assets likely will come under attack by FARC and ELN units, given that the training will take place in rebel-infested Arauca Department. The Bush administration's assurances that U.S. military advisers will not engage in direct combat against the FARC or ELN are not credible, considering the FARC's frequent warnings that it regards all U.S. military personnel in Colombia as legitimate military targets. Based on the results of similar FARC warnings about local government officials, this means that FARC fighters are under orders to capture or kill U.S. military personnel as soon as possible.
A third implication is that both the FARC and ELN likely will intensify efforts to attack all U.S. expatriates and companies with operations in Colombia. Economic nationalism is an important element of the ideologies espoused by both rebel groups, and oil is considered Colombia's most important economic resource. As a result, U.S.-backed oil security measures and the growing presence of U.S. oil companies in Colombia likely will goad the FARC and ELN to target all U.S. assets and expatriates in Colombia much more aggressively.
Finally, although many Colombians welcome U.S. military aid, it's not clear that they fully understand the quid pro quo, which from the Bush administration's perspective, is a permanent and growing U.S. presence in the development of Colombia's oil industry.
These implications may not materialize for months, but Uribe still faces an immediate dilemma: Colombia's oil production and reserves both are falling because the FARC and ELN have discouraged new exploration by systematically targeting oil assets in isolated areas for sabotage, kidnapping and extortion. Simultaneously, the FARC and ELN have inflicted huge losses on the Colombian government in recent years by constantly sabotaging the 500-mile Cano Limon-Covenas pipeline that transports more than 100,000 barrels per day of crude oil and is jointly owned by Colombia's national oil company (Ecopetrol), Occidental Petroleum of Los Angeles and Spain's Repsol-YPF.
For instance, the pipeline was attacked at least 170 times in 2001, costing Colombia about $500 million in lost revenues and forcing Occidental Petroleum to declare force majeure at one point when sabotage disrupted its deliveries to the United States and other markets.
Occidental Petroleum since has asked the Bush administration to help Colombia secure the pipeline, in which Occidental has a 44 percent equity stake. The response was a $94 million plan to train and equip two Colombian army brigades that have been tasked exclusively with protecting the Cano Limon-Covenas pipeline and hunting down those responsible for the disruptions.
More than a year has passed since Occidental first made its request. But in November a group of 20 U.S. Special Forces advisers will arrive in Arauca to begin training more than 4,000 Colombian soldiers in counterinsurgency warfare. Over the next two years, up to 60 Special Forces advisers at any given time will be engaged in training these brigades in Arauca and will be headquartered at a base in Saravena, which the FARC has attacked several times in recent years, according to Colombian news reports.
Besides Occidental Petroleum, other U.S. oil companies that have lobbied the U.S. administration since 1996 to expand military aid to Colombia in order to guarantee oil security in that country include ExxonMobil, BP, Unocal, Texaco and Phillips Petroleum, according to recent news reports. Between 1996 and 2000, these companies spent about $25 million overall in lobbying the U.S. government to help Colombia protect its oil assets from rebel attack |
