The Next Gulf

London, Washington and Oil Conflict in Nigeria - by Andy Rowell, James Marriott & Lorne Stockman

Published 2005 by Constable ISBN 1-84529-259-6

Is the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea facing new US/UK intervention?

Ten years ago the Nigerian government executed Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists. Their deaths brought the plight of their people and the role of international oil companies in Nigeria to the attention of the world. Since 9/11, Nigeria and the other oil-producing countries of the Gulf of Guinea have only grown in strategic and economic importance to both Europe and the United States.

Faced with growing instability in the Persian Gulf, the West is taking a much closer interest in the region's oil resources. Recent history suggests that the people of Nigeria will receive little benefit from the revenues from oil and gas, and that they will suffer instead from repression and pollution.

Andy Rowell, James Marriott and Lorne Stockman here set out how Western companies have cooperated with local elites in West Africa to maintain control, and they trace a long and ongoing history of colonial and neo-colonial exploitation. Far from the ringing declarations of th eG8 Summit, the authors reveal how America and Britain are planning a new century of plunder in Africa.