Cover Story   Last Updated: Apr 30th, 2006 - 13:03:39  
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        WASHINGTON LOBBYIST TOLD JAMMEH THAT THERE IS NO OIL IN THE GAMBIA
By Mbaye B. Sarr & Mohammed L. Sillah
May 1, 2006, 11:16

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  An Investigative Report 
   
Late December 2003 President Jammeh told Gambians that he had found a pleasant surprise for Gambians and that the country would soon become one of the richest in the world. Though he did not make his message definitively plain, he left many with the belief that it has been discovered that the country was sitting on some vast deposits of one or the other form of precious metals. To keep up the suspense, the Gambian leader told his eager subjects that he would not say more until June 2004. This plunged Gambia into a protracted morbid excitement that left its people in the grips of rabid anticipation. The economy, already in stagnation, had been in the throes of near catastrophic decline. The dalasi in 2002 had lost half its value and prices of basic goods and services had sky-rocketed to levels beyond the reach of the average citizen. Hard times were setting in and there was no light in the tunnel of the near future. President Jammeh then heralded a new policy he called
 “Operation No Compromise.” The view of the policy was that the fall of the Gambian dalasi was due to speculation and mindless profiteering by businessmen and not due to Government Economic Policies. The ruling party militants, escorted by armed security officials, raided markets and other business centers to force down prices, seizing goods and arresting reluctant business people. Stores were raided to stop suspected hoarding meant to keep up prices but the decline kept on being persistent.  
   
Perhaps it was because of this that President Jammeh decided to spin up this trick to make citizens persevere in the face of the hardships in anticipation of a brighter future. When June came and mass excitement was at its height, President Jammeh revealed that The Gambia was sitting in vast deposits of high quality oil even more, in terms of both quantity and quality, than Kuwait was sitting on. He said that production would start before the end of that same year and that it was left to Gambians to do away with their disreputable work-shyness, make use of the opportunities and enrich them. If they did not and instead let foreigners to exploit the resources, then they would have no one to blame but themselves. Oil fever took over the Gambian psyche with full force. “Do not sell your landed properties, I advise you, as you may be selling oil wells mistaking them for residential or agricultural estates”, he told Gambians. To reinforce the point President Jammeh took out a CD
 disk and wagging it in the air as he would the Holy Koran in other circumstances. Gambians waited and waited until they started forgetting about the oil saga, in the characteristic short memory of illiterate populations. The talk of oil started to wane, and the only oil people then talked of, was that of cooking oil whose price was escalating. Skeptics then were joking, “There was the fish, chicken and beef ready, but there was no Yahya Jammeh-oil to fry them in.” The skeptics’ joke was confirmed by a statement made to Jammeh by his Washington Lobbyist Richard T. Hines when he visited Banjul in June/July 2004. Mr. R.T. Hines clearly told Jammeh that there is no oil in the Gambia. In fact he told the US Embassy that he thought he had upset Jammeh by making that statement.
   
December 2004 came and went but there was still no sign of any move towards oil exploitation as the President had promised six months earlier. No oil platforms, no construction of offices for oil companies and no clear evidence of even the existence of any oil.   
   
Nothing was said of the oil again all throughout the year 2005. But then in January 2006, or there about, a before that Mr. Ousman Jammeh, now carry the hitherto unknown official designation “Petroleum Commissioner”, announced that the Gambia Government had made a breakthrough in  its efforts to identify a reliable and suitable partner for petroleum exploration. Government, Mr. Jammeh said, after much difficult negotiations, has signed an agreement with a Canadian oil company called the Buried Hill Energy Ltd. A relapse of the oil fever returned, but this time in a much smaller feat. Some were able to make difference between the previously used word “exploitation” from Mr. Jammeh’s “exploration.” The Gambia Journal has ever since being trying to Goggle the name of this company and to try to track it down. It is only recently that we were able to come across information on this little-known company.    
   
The time it took to unravel the nature of the mysterious Buried Hill Company, itself alone tells of the Company’s dubious nature. Little is known about the Calgary based company that was founded about two years ago  It turned out that Mr. Haines, the Company’s Chief Executive and owner who was said to have visited The Gambia in January, is said to specialized in dealing with tyrants of rogue states like the Gambia. Mr. Haines, who has been in the oil business for many years, was once a President of the now defunct Gulf stream Resources. He has been known to have hired the services of a law firm that has been using former Canadian Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien to meet various corrupt heads of states to open up doors for the company. Someone in the know told the Gambia Journal that “Buried Hill Energy is one of those small companies who hire big names (door-openers, so to say), to get into countries and sign contracts with Heads of States, then use those contracts to raise
 funds.”  He added, “It is an old trick with lots of people in the oil business who do not have enough funds to develop projects on their own.”
   
After the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with Mr. Haines in January 2006, the “petroleum commissioner”, Ousman Jammeh told the press that it will provide “the atmosphere for Buried Hill Energy to come and invest lots of millions in The Gambia to explore the Country’s petroleum resources.” Our source however stressed that the company is “a joke” and has no such funds and capacity. Mr. Jammeh had also told reporters that the Gambian President had been always waiting for the right company and that they thought they had found one in the Buried Hill Energy. Dilating further Mr. Jammeh said he is glad that oil exploration in the country has aroused the interest of oil companies. Information from our source however dismissed this as “pie-in-the-sky dream of President Jammeh.” To substantiate his position our source said if Buried Hill Energy was a serious company and was not desperate enough, it would not have ventured into contested areas, as shown in a 2005 article
 whose copy is shown below: 
     
01/03/2005 Dictator was lobbied by Chrétien
  By Alan Freeman
The Globe and Mail
  In the fall of last autumn, former prime minister Jean Chrétien slipped into Ashkhabad, capital of one of the world's most repressive and authoritarian regimes, for a meeting with Turkmenistan's president for life, Saparmurat Niyazov. 
Mr. Chrétien met for close to an hour with the onetime Communist strongman who prefers to be known as Turkmenbashi the Great, leader of a personality cult so extensive that statues of his likeness dot the capital and the months of the year have been renamed in honour of him and his family. 
Mr. Chrétien, in his new role as counsel for the Calgary law firm of Bennett Jones, was accompanied at the meeting by his client, Roger Haines, a Calgary oilman anxious to gain a foothold in the oil-rich Central Asian nation. 
In January, Mr. Chrétien's lobbying efforts on behalf of Mr. Haines were rewarded. Buried Hill Energy, a newly minted oil-and-gas firm headed by Mr.Haines, was granted rights to the Serdar oil-and-gas concession by Turkmenistan in a potentially oil-rich part of the Caspian Sea. 
It looked like another success for Mr. Chrétien, who has been crisscrossing the world since leaving office, often on behalf of Canadian resource companies. 
He has traveled to China, Russia and Niger. He has frequently visited Kazakhstan, as an adviser to PetroKazakhstan Inc., a Calgary-based oil firm.
But his foray into Turkmenistan, which has been unreported until now, is the most controversial. 
  Human-rights advocates question why Mr. Chrétien would even think of going to Turkmenistan in the first place. 
  Turkmenistan is “unbelievably awful,” said Rachel Denbar, acting executive director for Europe and Central Asia at Human Rights Watch, the advocacy
group. “It's up there with North Korea and Burma. It has literally stripped its population of every essential civil and political freedom.” Ms. Denbar said that Western government leaders generally avoid the country and that Mr. Chrétien “of all people, should know” of Turkmenistan's awful human-rights regime. 
  In fact, the website of Canada's Foreign Affairs Ministry states categorically that “Turkmenistan has one of the worst human-rights records in the world and it continues to deteriorate. . . .” 
The department made it clear that Mr. Chrétien was acting in his private capacity when he visited Ashkhabad in September, and that he was not
accompanied by any Canadian government officials. 
  There are other negative rumblings about the deal Mr. Chrétien helped to broker. The oil concession granted to Mr. Haines, for instance, sits in waters that are also claimed by Turkmenistan's neighbour, Azerbaijan, which immediately cried foul. 
  “This is our deposit. We discovered it, we prospected for oil there and we intend to develop it on our own,” according to a senior official from Socar, Azerbaijan's state oil company, which even has a different name for the concession: Kyapaz. 
Azerbaijan's newly opened embassy in Ottawa has protested against the Canadian company's actions and warned that any agreements to explore the deposit made with Turkmenistan is “null and void.” 
The dispute, which has been simmering for years, is one of the sharpest in the oil-rich Caspian, whose waters are shared among five neighboring countries that have been feuding about dividing the sea since the collapse of the Soviet Union. 
  The Turkmenians have reacted by warning the Azerbaijanis to mind their own business, accusing them of “the double standards that have become popular [in the West]” and warning ominously that their actions could lead to “a boomerang effect.” 

  A spokeswoman for the Foreign Affairs Department said Canada has not taken any position in the border dispute and hopes it can be resolved between Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan in a peaceful manner. 
She added that Canada has raised “serious concerns” about Turkmenistan's human-rights record through the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and that Canada's relations with the country are “very limited.” 
  Mr. Niyazov was clearly thrilled with Mr. Chrétien's visit. According to the stilted language of the official Turkmenian government website, Mr. Chrétien lauded Turkmenistan for choosing “the strikingly right way that promoted achieving the present great results. 
  “The ex-premier of Canada said that we have managed to work out the optimum model of the socioeconomic development of the country, taking into consideration its great natural potential and advantageous geopolitical position,” the website glowed. 
  A lawyer with Bennett Jones who traveled with Mr. Chrétien to Ashkhabad confirmed that Mr. Chrétien was in the country for two days and one night
but couldn't confirm that he had spoken in those terms. 
  “The experience in Turkmenistan was very positive and the government was very hospitable and received us in a very positive and businesslike manner,” the lawyer said. He added that Mr. Chrétien has “no pre-existing relationship” with Mr. Niyazov and had never met him before. 
Under Canadian conflict-of-interest rules, Mr. Chrétien must abide by a two-year cooling-off period after leaving office, but the restrictions apply only to taking jobs with companies with which he had ”direct and significant” official dealings in his final year in office. 
As for the Serdar concession, the lawyer said that “we're very much at the early stages,” and no definitive agreement has been arrived at. 
He said the company that was granted the concession, Buried Hill Energy Turkmenistan, is not a Canadian company and that it has different investors from Buried Hill Energy Canada, a Calgary-based firm, although Mr. Haines is involved in both. Mr. Haines was reportedly traveling and was not available for an interview. 
  Bob Eber, program director of the Caspian Energy Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think-tank said an oil company like Buried Hill should be “very reluctant” to go ahead with exploration in the Serdar field because of its uncertain ownership. 
“I would really advise against getting involved in this particular field,” he said. 
  Furthermore, our source asked us to take note of another article, also from 2005, in which one Mr. Gary Griffin, also of Buried Hill Energy, intimating that the company was planning to go public on London’s Alternative Investment market. The source said that “that is where you go for high risk, no track record and questionable credit. It is a place that you will never find an Exxon, mobile, Conco, Chevron, Shell, BP, etc. If Mr. Haines and his Buried Hill Energy Company are desperate perhaps they are just a little more than the former Canadian Prime Minister. Though Canada has lawyers restricting the commercial activities of its former Prime Ministers, Mr. Chrétien was able to technically go around the laws while placing his country in risky international crises as the following article shows: 
   
Canadian oil firm sparks Azeri anger 
March 09, 2005 16:49:16
  Canadian oil firm sparks Azeri anger
By ALAN FREEMAN
  The Globe and Mail
  TODAY'S PAPER
  Wednesday, March 9, 2005 - Page A11
  The decision by a small Alberta oil-exploration firm represented by former prime minister Jean Chrétien to pursue exploration of a disputed Caspian Sea oil field has prompted retaliation against Canada by Azerbaijan's parliament.
  The Azeri National Assembly refused last week to pass a law that would enforce a treaty signed last year between Canada and Azerbaijan, aimed at avoiding double taxation and preventing tax evasion.
  Reports from Azerbaijan say the legislators were protesting against the actions of Buried Hill Energy of Calgary. The company was recently
granted rights to explore the Serdar oil field in the Caspian Sea by the government of Turkmenistan.
  Like Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan became independent in 1991 after the breakup of the former Soviet Union. It is one of the world's most repressive countries.
  Buried Hill, founded by Calgary oilman Roger Haines, was granted the concession after a visit to Turkmenistan by Mr. Chrétien. He was representing the firm in his role as counsel to the Calgary law firm of Bennett Jones.
  An official of the Azeri embassy in Ottawa said legislators from both the ruling party and the opposition were upset by the involvement of
Buried Hill in a part of the inland sea that is disputed territory.
  The official said they were also angry about the activities of a Yukon-registered gold-mining firm, Sterlite Gold Ltd. in another contested region, this one claimed by both Azerbaijan and Armenia.
  "The MPs decided to delay consideration of the legislation. . . . The perception in Azerbaijan is that the Canadian government should do more to stop Buried Hill," the Azeri official said. He added that Canadian officials have told him they cannot control the activities of a private Canadian firm.
  Efforts to reach officials of Buried Hill were unsuccessful. An official of a Toronto law firm representing Sterlite said the company has no employees in Canada and that its top executives are based in Armenia.
  A spokeswoman for the Foreign Affairs Department in Ottawa said the Canadian embassy in Ankara, which handles diplomatic relations with Azerbaijan, had been asked to look into the matter.
  The spokeswoman sought to distance the Canadian government from activities of Buried Hill, insisting that Canada had not been asked to
support its activities and had advised the Calgary firm of the dispute involving the oil concession. She said Canada takes no position on the border disagreement involving Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.
  Canada has tax treaties with 92 countries. The pact with Azerbaijan would limit the rate of withholding tax on dividends, interest and royalties and is designed to encourage business between the two
countries by avoiding double taxation and evasion.
  Oil exploration and production, involving substantial foreign investment, has driven economic growth to levels near 10 per cent a year.
  So it is rather evidently clear that Mr. Haines and his Buried hill company are not for real. The question is how much of this do the Gambian authorities know and who is fooling who? When President Jammeh whipped up the oil fever in 2004, he might have been taking the Gambian people for a ride amidst growing economic difficulties and rising tensions. Did that fever spilled over to the outside world catching Buried Hill Energy in its wake, or is Mr. Haines in the know and only wants to get a dummy-contract that will get him funds that he will divert for other purposes. Or was it not a mutually beneficial hoax that the two men have conjured up?

  Copyright © 2005 The Gambia Journal LLC. All Rights Reserved. Power by Btcsoft,Inc

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