Silence over Sudan costs everyone
By KELLEY TEAHEN
Columnist
The London Free Press (Ontario, Canada), November 30
I was all wound up to write a column excoriating
those immoral Canadians who've invested in
Talisman Energy Inc. and are making money off the
backs of the destitute southern Sudanese.
Then some little bell started ringing in the back of
my righteous brain. Something about RRSP season
a couple years ago. Something about a Canadian energy mutual
fund, about putting $50 a month into it over a couple years.
Something which, until that moment, had drifted from my active
memory.
So I phoned the guy who helps me figure out where to put RRSP
money each year and asked: surely I, of all people, didn't have
money in Talisman, right?
Busted.
Behold the not-so-proud owner of $1,335 of Clarica Alpine
Resources Mutual Fund, managed by AGF. The fund has about
$586,000 worth of Talisman stock in its portfolio.
In my little chunk of Alpine Resources, the Talisman investment
comes in well under 20 bucks.
Still.
It was a sharp lesson, first, about how anyone with any kind of
pension savings can be, wittingly or not, culpable in remote business
dealings.
And second, teeny though my Talisman investment may be, it's
forcing me to do something about this messy business.
I could transfer my investment to, say, the Royal Bank, a solid
company with no nasty Sudanese involvement -- and 6,000
employees headed for the axe at a time of record profits.
Back to Talisman.
Its president, Jim Buckee, believes it's beneficial for Sudan to have
Canadians helping develop these oil reserves, which may turn out to
be larger than Saudi Arabia's. Talisman, Canada's largest
independent oil and gas producer, is a key player in the Greater
Nile Petroleum Operating Company, which has set up the
extraction and pipeline equipment.
Other Canadian companies have been involved, including Calgary's
Denim Pipeline Construction Ltd. and Roll'n Oil Field Industries,
which worked on the $600-million, 1,500-kilometre pipeline.
This year the payoff began. The first cargo of 600,000 barrels of
crude oil reached Port Sudan Aug. 30 and Talisman's on-line
prospectus reports a $15-million cash flow from its Sudan
operations in the company's third quarter.
This good news is shared only by Sudan's National Islamic Front,
the northern-based government which came to power through a
1989 military coup and which continues the religious-based civil
war against the Christian and indigenous-African people of the
south. In this war, two million have died in fighting and from
war-induced famine.
The southern Sudanese don't object to oil being discovered in their
territory. No, that's a matter for rejoicing: this is among the poorest
patches of planet Earth and a few oil wells would do wonders to
give these folks clout and desperately needed capital.
But while the oil is being extracted in the south, it's pumped north
via pipeline to a facility near Port Sudan, Sudan's major harbour on
the Red Sea. All the profits are being pumped north, along with the
oil.
The Sudanese People's Liberation Army, leading the civil-war
efforts for southern Sudan, sees investors in the oil fields as allies of
Khartoum, the north Islamic government. Oil profits, the rebels say,
stoke the north's war machine and do nothing to improve life in
southern Sudan.
The oil literally fuels the north's air force, which has a habit of
dropping crude bombs on southern villages and hospitals. Its planes
also will bomb a village moments after a United Nations relief plane
has airdropped food, hardly coincidental as all UN flights must be
registered with the northern government.
As well, indigenous people living within four days' walk of the oil
fields were cleared out by the northern government two years ago,
supposedly to make development easier, but also to make it harder
for the liberation army to commit sabotage. The SPLA says
government forces murdered those who resisted moving.
Some shareholders are dumping their Talisman stocks to protest
against the company's Sudan involvement.
Others, like the Catholic Scarboro Missions, are fashioning
themselves as "active shareholders" and use their status to bring up
tough questions at annual meetings. To use Rev. Tim Ryan's words,
"we fight for what we believe in from within corporate structures."
To my shamed surprise, I, too, face this choice, to flee or fight.
Staying quiet, Talisman RRSP cosily in hand, is not an option for
me. Nor should it be, for anyone.
canoe.ca |
