No relief

JAMES MICHEL: NO RELIEF FROM OIL EXPLORATION

President James Michel, the SPPF nominated candidate for the next presidential election, the first round of which must take place by 4^th August, took television cameras with him when he went to visit the seismic survey vessel Geo Mariner that docked briefly in Port Victoria for bunker last week.

Michel, who did not further his education beyond modern secondary school many decades ago, and followed this by a few years as a book keeper with Cable and Wireless, was subsequently given considerable airtime by the state controlled television, SBC, to discuss the scientific technicality of undersea oil exploration with the SBC journalist for the benefit of its viewers. Yet, although the Government employs 3 UK-university trained geologists – and it appears all of them were on the vessel at the time - SBC did not see fit to interview even one of them and to afford us the benefit of their scientific knowledge of the whole exercise. It was left to the British geologist on board the vessel to make references and to praise our geologists – who obviously enjoy mutual respect.

Michel’s appearance on the vessel was of course one more photo-opportunity in his presidential election bid, which has been going at full swing since 2003 when he took over the presidency from Mr Rene. But the British geologist - whose interview by SBC journalist was screened after Michel’s photo ops and scientifically illiterate comments - dashed any hope that any oil find will come soon enough to bolster the SPPF candidate’s flagging election campaign.

The British geologist made it clear to all of us, that what they are about to start is a 3 year exercise before any decision can be taken to even attempt at drilling a single hole. Like the proverbial pudding, the proof of oil discovery is in the drilling. And once drilling starts, if it will start at all, it would take another three to four years before oil can be extracted for sale on the international market. So we are looking at an 8 to 10 year plan before any oil can flow.

Meanwhile, the economy of Seychelles continues to decline and Michel has no idea how to restore it back to the success it was before 5^th June 1977. That was the year he took an AK-47 to overthrow our democratic constitution and put a stop to economic prosperity.

If Mr Michel’s advisers had done their homework, they would have saved him this embarrassment. For the story of oil exploration in Seychelles is available in great detail in the SNOC website. Missing, however, was the visit Albert Rene – then the dictator of Seychelles – made to Saddam Hussein, the dictator of oil rich Iraq, in Bagdad in 1980. (See story inside). Interestingly, the SNOC website has not been updated since it was created in 2000 – three years before Michel assumed the presidency. Evidence if needed, to show that no politician in this election should base his or her hopes on Seychelles becoming an oil exporter soon. In this “election campaign”, it seems, the incumbent from the SPPF will grasp at straws.

The SNOC website said that interest in the continental shelf of the Seychelles dated as far back as the seventies, even before we became independent. In fact as far as 1973, Burma Oil – part of what later became a major oil giant – undertook geological survey of the sea bed around the Seychelles.

But the first definite foreign interest in the Seychelles offshore oil potential dates as far back as 1974 when Canadian geologist Norman Cowper arrived in Seychelles with a then very modern production sharing contract proposal – to explore for oil near the outlying island of Coetivy. But Cowper’s proposal could not be entertained because there was no law then governing oil exploration. It was only in 1976 that a law was passed bestowing the rights of all the minerals under the ground or sea bed to the government. By then Cowper had succumbed to illness and died.

The most active time in our oil exploration history, it appears, was in 1977 when three exploration contracts were signed with multinational oil exploration companies. One of which was with a consortium led by Burma Oil. But only one company, Amoco, from the Burma Oil consortium went as far as far as to drill holes more than three years later.

The next serious interest in exploiting oil around Seychelles came from the British owned oil exploration company Enterprise Oil. Enterprise started poring over data in 1987, decided to commit to drilling in 1990, and ended up actually drilling only one hole in 1995 before abandoning their concessions back to the government.

Interestingly too, after 29 years of SPPF control of the economy of our country – with a socialist-cum-communist economic agenda for 15 of those years - despite claim that we have the highest per capita income in Africa, we have not been able to generate the necessary resources to commission our own seismic study to provide adequate information for drilling purposes. Once again, we are reliant on an international oil crisis before an oil company showed any interest in exploring in our waters.

The Enterprise Oil experience should have taught SPPF candidate Michel, if his political advisors were competent, that any attempt to use the arrival of the seismic vessel for political propaganda would be seen for what it is – the SPPF candidate clutching at straws in a fast faltering political campaign. JJ would have been better advised to stick to picnics on the beach with supporters.