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06/04/2005:

"A rich country being stripped of its wealth"

It has got a sad record of disease, brutality and corruption, and fewer inhabitants than Sheffield. But Equatorial Guinea is one of the key targets of the west's new "scramble for Africa". So much so that a gang of British businessmen, including Sir Mark Thatcher, were accused last year of financing an armed coup to get their hands on its wealth.
This mini country located under the armpit of the West African coast has immense quantities of oil; it is currently exporting $4.5bn worth (about £2.5bn) a year. Yet such an astonishing bonanza appears to have done most of the country's citizens no good. The IMF reported bluntly in May: "Unfortunately, this wealth has not yet led to measurable improvements in living conditions."

Who then, is getting the benefit? One of the answers can be found in Equatorial Guinea's recent big British deal.
BG Plc, formerly British Gas, takes full-page prestige advertisements in New Statesman, the Labour magazine, to boast that it intends "to play an important role in securing Britain's energy supply".

The company says it hopes to make considerable profits on what is being touted as the fuel of the future. It is buying up nearly 60m tonnes of liquefied natural gas - the entire planned output for 17 years of Equatorial Guinea's new LNG plant - an amount that is worth about $15bn at today's prices.

The company will not disclose what it will be paying for the gas, despite having signed up to the Blair government's idealistic scheme, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, under which companies and governments are urged to come clean about oil payments.
Full: guardian.co.uk