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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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The scramble for oil in Nigeria's Niger Delta
| Panel |
50. The new scramble for Africa
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| Paper ID | 725 |
| Author(s) |
Obi, Cyril
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| Paper |
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| Abstract | This paper explores the intensified struggle for access to the vital oil and gas resources in West Africa, particularly in Nigeria's Niger Delta. It explores the conceptual, historical, geopolitical and strategic ramifications of the post-Cold War scramble involving western (including US) Oil Multinationals and national oil companies, and the growing involvement of Chinese and Indian companies in the struggle for the oil and gas resources in the oil-rich, but impoverished region.
It seeks an understanding of how the connection between increasing energy dependency in the advanced market economies and the increased demand for energy in the rapidly industrializing countries of the South, feeds into the representation of the Niger Delta region (as a part of the strategic Gulf of Guinea increasingly seen as an alternative to the volatile Middle East) as being critical to global energy security in a post-9/11 world. Another critical issue relates to the implications of the intensified 'globalization' of the oil and gas in the Niger Delta for the transnationalisation of the Niger Delta and the Nigerian ruling elite, and local struggles for 'resource control' that find forceful expression in the escalation of violence involving youth militia's and Nigerian security forces in the troubled region.
In conclusion, the paper analyzes the role of the Nigerian state, and the transnational 'securitization' of the oil in the Niger Delta in a global energy context where international demand for oil is virtually outstripping oil supplies, with regard to Nigeria's myriad socio-economic and political challenges, and the prospects for the future of Africa's largest oil producing and exporting country. |
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