US military commander to visit African oil producers

A senior US military commander and an influential Republican senator will visit oil-producing Gabon and the potentially oil-rich state of Sao Tome and Principe this week to discuss security, oil and environmental issues, a US embassy spokeswoman said on Monday. The US delegation, led by General Charles Wald, the deputy commander of US forces in Europe, and Chuck Hagle, a Republican senator from Nebraska who sits on the Senate's foreign affairs and intelligence committees, would arrive in Libreville on Tuesday for talks with President Omar Bongo, she told IRIN. General Wald, whose remit extends to Africa, last month visited Nigeria to discuss ways of stepping up security and fighting terrorism in the oil-producing regions of West Africa. Nigeria is the continent's largest oil producer, churning out 2.5 million barrels per day, and almost two-thirds of that output goes to the United States. Shortly after Wald's visit, US instructors were reported to be training Nigerian counter-insurgency troops in the oil producing Niger Delta. This area has been plagued by skirmishing between ethnic militias and by the wholesale theft of crude oil by organised gangs in recent years. Armed militants in the Delta killed two US employees of the US oil giant ChevronTexaco and five Nigerian oil workers when they ambushed their boat last April. Oil production has been declining in recent years in staunchly pro-western Gabon. It currently averages about 250,000 barrels per day. However, the country lies close to two rising stars in the African oil industry - Equatorial Guinea and Sao Tome and Principe. Equatorial Guinea, which the US Department of Energy lists as the third largest recipient of US investment in Africa after South Africa and Nigeria, produces 350,000 barrels of oil per day and will shortly become a major gas producer. Sao Tome, a small twin-island state, 120 km off the coast of Gabon, is gearing up to become a major oil producer within the next two to three years as international oil companies explore promising offshore waters which the country has agreed to share with Nigeria. The US embassy spokeswoman said Wald and Hagle would visit Sao Tome after Gabon. The US government is currently paying for feasibility studies on the construction of a deep water port in the former Portuguese colony and the extension of the single runway at its international airport.