07 Aug 2007: ISS Today: Malaysia Signs Gas Development Agreement with Ethiopia

7 August 2007: Malaysia Signs Gas Development Agreement with Ethiopia

 

The Malaysian oil company Petronas and Ethiopia’s Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME) have signed a gas development agreement that would enable the company to develop the natural gas reserve in the Calub and Hilala areas in east Ethiopia’s Somali State, The Reporter said Saturday. The English weekly newspaper reported that the agreement was signed by Petronas President Mohamed Hassan Marican and Alemayehu Tegenu, minister of MME, in Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur. Petronas has won the2006 international tender by the MME to award the Calub and Hilala gas fields in the Ogaden basin.

 

Commentary

 

The agreement between Petronas and the Ethiopian government covers gasfields discovered in the Ethiopia’s Somali Regional State some 35 years ago. Most foreigners are more familiar with the other name for this region: the Ogaden, an area of some 200,000 square kilometers bordering Kenya, Djibouti and, more significantly, Somalia and Somaliland.

 

There has long been speculation that the region is rich in oil, though there are commentators who ascribe such rumours to the hyperbole characteristic of oil-men. It is generally conceded that the Ogaden has payable gas deposits, but the oil may be imaginary, as an article in the Chicago Tribune averred this weekend. Nonetheless, blood has been spilled over rumours far less substantial. Indeed, on 24 April this year rebels of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), which has been waging a desultory separatist campaign against the authorities in Addis Ababa since 1984, massacred 65 Ethiopians and 9 Chinese nationals at a Chinese-run exploratory oil installation in Abole. The victims included security staff, guards, labourers and other workers; a number of Chinese were also taken hostage and released later.

 

The Abole atrocity marked a new spike in the Ogaden conflict and drew sharp condemnation internationally. The Ethiopian response has been to step up counter-insurgency operations in the region, where media access is now being forbidden. The operations of humanitarian organisations in this impoverished and difficult environment have also been curtailed by the authorities, especially after allegations began to emerge of scorched earth tactics being employed by the Ethiopian military. Given the widespread concern at the civilian losses caused in Mogadishu by Ethiopian forces trying to eliminate opposition to the Addis-sponsored Somali Transitional Federal Government, it is understandable that Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is eager to minimise the risk of another public relations disaster.  

 

Perhaps with this in mind, the Ethiopian government has now pardoned the opposition leaders who were condemned for treason and has also been quick to promise a substantial troop contribution for the Darfur hybrid force.

 

Nonetheless, the Ogaden issue slots easily into the broader conflictual configurations of the Horn of Africa. Prior to their defeat at the hands of Ethiopian-led forces, elements of the Islamic Courts movement in southern Somalia were resuscitating irredentist claims to the Ogaden. This, together with the support given to the Islamic courts and the ONLF by Eritrea, with which Addis is involved in a dangerous and protracted border dispute, probably weighed heavily in Ethiopia’s decision to provide overwhelming military support for Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government.

 

The consequences of that intervention have included some that were certainly unintentional. Defeated on the battlefield, Islamist militias have made common cause with other opponents of the Ethiopian occupation, and have received considerable political, financial and military support from Asmara. It is also likely that Somali fighters have joined forces with the ONLF to discomfort Ethiopia on a front close to home, and in conditions where it is more difficult for Addis to bring its military superiority to bear.

 

Meles has constantly harped upon the role Eritrea’s maverick regime plays in fomenting trouble in the Horn, and has been supported by controversial UN reports on arms flows to Islamist forces and others. By the same token, the UN has pressed Ethiopia to comply with the arbitration that has now defined its border with Eritrea, a move that would certainly help to draw Asmara’s sting. Yet such a concession, though made by Meles in principle, carries a domestic price he may feel unable to afford. Giving Badme and other symbolic areas to the Eritreans, with whom a bloody war was fought over this unpromising piece of real estate, is firmly opposed not only by his parliamentary opponents but by strong elements within the ruling alliance; a new Tigrayan party has now also been formed advocating a policy towards Eritrea that might almost amount to the dissolution of that militant state.

 

At present, and in gratitude for Meles’s support in the Global War on Terror, the US administration refuses to add to the pressure on Ethiopia to comply with its commitments on the border issue. Yet the longer this situation persists, and the further its ramifications spread throughout the other conflicts in the region, the greater the chance of another violent clash that will lead again to tens of thousands of deaths.

 

Richard Cornwell, African Security Analysis Programme, ISS Tswane (Pretoria)