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Strategies & Market Trends : Strictly: Drilling II -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zeev Hed who wrote (16971)	8/6/2002 6:24:28 PM
From: Douglas V. Fant	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36161

Oil is the key to peace in Sudan So Bush is helping to end one of Africa's most brutal civil wars Jonathan Steele The Guardian (UK) Tuesday August 6, 2002 In Africa's largest country, racked by one of the continent's longest civil wars, America is doing the right thing for once. With minimal fanfare, US officials have been working for a peace settlement in Sudan. Their efforts may soon be crowned with unexpected success. A preliminary accord between the government and rebel southerners was signed last month and cautious hopes are growing that full agreement will be reached at talks that resume in Kenya next week. Oil is the main factor that has prompted a Republican administration to take a deeper interest in Sudan than Bill Clinton did. The country is rich in reserves - and, with the Middle East looking increasingly unstable and potentially anti-western, the big oil companies see Africa as offering better assurance of future supply. Angola has been on tap for years, but if they can get peace in Sudan and (their next goal) a more sensible White House policy towards Libya, Africa will have become a major source of carbon-based energy. Under Clinton the US was unmistakably partisan in Sudan's 19-year civil war, which has left at least 2 million dead. It channeled funds and military supplies through Uganda to John Garang, the head of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, and Madeleine Albright as secretary of state held a well-publicised meeting with him. The shift to peace-brokering under Bush is remarkable. Sudan's government is still portrayed as Islamic fundamentalist and remains on the State Department list as a sponsor of terrorism. Rightwing Christians continue to make great play with charges that the largely Arab government in Khartoum encourages raiders who abduct and enslave black southerners. Alongside the magnet of the oil, US specialists believe new realities make peace more desirable and possible than it was two years ago. After Angola, where a peace agreement is in place at last, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which signed a deal with Rwanda last week, Sudan has Africa's third-worst war. Success there could have a ripple effect across east Africa and the Horn. Regional actors have also become more eager to stop the war. Uganda is less wedded to supporting the SPLM. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are quietly pressing Khartoum to go along with Washington and improve its peace offers. The pressure is working. The government accepted a US initiative to send a mission under a former senator, John Danforth, last autumn to arrange a ceasefire and peace deal in the Nuba mountains, just one part of the vast battlefield. The ceasefire he organised, unlike previous ones, is being monitored by international observers. The major advance that Danforth produced was a government promise to share oil revenues once peace is restored, and immediately to start ending discrimination against non-Muslim southerners living in the north. The old cliche that Sudan's north-south civil war is a struggle between Islam and Christianity or Arab and African was always simplistic. In the south there have been fierce tribal rivalries between Nuer and Dinka, and earlier government peace plans offered the south religious freedom and no imposition of sharia law. What is new on Khartoum's side is the focus on civil rights and good governance in the north and its willingness to share power and oil money with southerners. The current government offer of six-and-a-half years until a referendum on secession is actually longer than the four years it proposed in 1997, which Garang rejected. But time is less important than having power-sharing and reforms start immediately under the supervision of outside monitors. These are major concessions, which the government hopes will convince southerners not to vote for secession. The SPLM faces its moment of truth. Garang, who held his first meeting with the Sudanese president last month, has never been a secessionist by conviction and he is being tempted by seats in the central government and the south. "There is no reason why Garang cannot play a role both on the national and regional level," Sudan's vice-president, Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, told me in London recently. International pressure on Garang not to be a perpetual spoiler is also intense. Next month's talks have no certainty of success. Finding formulas to share the oil wealth will be complex. But the hardest issues of principle - self-determination and the separation of state and religion - have been agreed. Both sides belatedly accept that, without peace, the country's huge oil fields will remain untapped or burn up in the flames of war. Strapped for cash to finance the fighting, the government made a poor deal with the oil companies when it signed the first contracts for exploration and development. The companies argued they were taking huge risks. With peace, Sudan should get more equitable terms. At that point, America's oil links may place it on the opposite side.

To: Zeev Hed who wrote (16971)	8/6/2002 7:34:39 PM
From: Box-By-The-Riviera™	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36161

thought you left for IHOP or whatever its called? lots of controversey going on.... i read from afar only. how's it going?

To: Zeev Hed who wrote (16971)	8/6/2002 10:37:12 PM
From: SOROS	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 36161

QUESTION FOR ANYONE: If you were approached and offered to take over a company -- totally, everything you would own like a private family owned business -- with these numbers, would you? Net income is about 6.5 billion each year -- that's your profit! You are MAKING 6.5 billion each year -- "spending money", as it were. Answer would be a resounding YES at this point. But, you have a few more questions. What is the business worth? What if I wanted to sell out? Well, the property, plant and equipment are valued at about 50 billion. I'll take it. Sell it, and retire rich! But, maybe a few more questions. If I don't sell, how much are those assets depreciating each year? About 3 billion, but that's just for bookkeeping. I'll still take it. One more thing. The guts are worth about 50 billion, but what about cash and other assets like inventory and money others owe the business? Well, that about 28 billion. I can call it quits for almost 80 billion? I'll take it! Oh, I forgot. If I take this business, will I owe anyone anything? You don't have to sell. Remember, you are MAKING 6.5 billion in PROFIT each year! Why not just live on that? Well surely if I am going to RUN the business, I'll have to keep up the property and expand. How much will that cost me each year? You'd need to spend about 8 billion, but you will also have some investment income. So you're telling me if I run the company, I basically have to spend all my profit on upkeep and expansion -- it's a wash? Well . . . in a word, yes. But you are helping thousands of people with jobs and boosting the economy. Plus, you can issue stock to yourself and get personally very rich! You said this would be like a private company, and I would own it all alone -- all the assets and the liabilities. Okay. I forgot. Let's stay within the rules. Forget about stock. You never answered the question about how much I will owe others if I take this company over. Not much. How much? Very little. How little? About 50 billion. Not a penny more! Let me get this straight. The business is worth about 78 billion, but of course, that is only if someone would buy it. I'm guessing the buyer would have to have plans to run the same type of business or the property and inventory would be worth much less than 1/2 of that? That's probably a safe assumption. So, if I cannot find a suitable new buyer, I'm taking a company that I have to run on borrowed money forever or risk having something worth less than what I would owe? Sort of like owning a new car that a used car dealer would give me $20,000 for but my payoff on the note is $30,000? Do I have that right? Well, if you put it that way, but this is America. No one figures things that way. Look, I'm GIVING you the business. Do you want it or not? Because there are million of people willing to hand others cold, hard cash for pieces of paper that simply say they have "invested" in this company. I don't have to make it private and give it to you. Take it or leave it. Wait a minute. If you give the company to me, won't you owe those people with stock some money? You don't worry about that. Do you want the company "as is" or not? Well, WOULD YOU TAKE IT?