Oil money for health and education

The island nation of Sao Tome and Principe says it would use oil money from offshore reserves that it plans to drill under a treaty signed with Nigeria, for improving health, education and fighting diseases like malaria, news agencies said. Rafael Branco, Sao Tomé and Principe's Minister of Public Works and Natural Resources was quoted by news agencies on Friday as saying his government's priority was to channel the new funds into "sectors that deal with the conditions of our people - health, education, fighting disease like malaria." Nigerian newspapers quoted Branco as saying: "If everything goes as planned, in three or four years we'll have the first oil." Nine new oil wells were being developed and would be managed by a Joint Development Authority, This Day reported. President Fradique de Menezes had on Friday said in Portugal that under the treaty with Nigeria which shares its offshore boundary, Sao Tomé and Príncipe would receive 40 percent of expected oil revenues while Nigeria would take 60 percent, the Inter Press Service (IPS) said. Drilling will begin on the island's continental shelf in the zone between Nigerian and Sao Toméan territorial waters in the Gulf of Guinea. Various companies - Shell, Exxon-Mobil and Environmental Remediation Holding Corporation (ERHC), Portugal's Petrogal and the Norwegian Geo-Services have submitted bids. The discovery of offshore oil reserves had generated expectation among the impoverished local residents but de Menezes warned that "people must be aware that we are not going to open a window to hand out dollars," IPS said. Sao Tome and Principe lies in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of West Africa near Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Gabon and Nigeria. A Portuguese colony since 1470, it declared independence in 1975. The country has 128,000 people living on several islands and is among the 30 poorest nations in the world, depending heavily on foreign aid.