Oil, copper and gold exports to start in 2005

President Maaouiya Ould Taya has announced that Mauritania will start to diversify its mineral exports next year, when its first offshore oilfield comes on stream and exports of copper and gold from a new mine in the western desert are stepped up. Ould Taya made the announcements in a speech last Thursday as he inaugurated a new water supply project in Kiffa, a town 600 km east of the capital Nouakchott. Since independence from France in 1960, this desert state of 2.5 million people has relied mainly on exports of iron ore mined in the northwest of the country and fish caught in its rich Atlantic waters. However, the Australian company Woodside Petroleum announced in January that it would go ahead with the commercial development of its Chinguetti offshore oilfield at an estimated cost of US$600 million. Ould Taya said the Chinguetti field, which is expected to produce 75,000 barrels per day, would ship its first export consignment of crude oil at the end of 2005. This is earlier than expected. Ian Jackson, director of Woodside's Africa Business Unit, predicted last month that Chinguetti would produce its first oil in March 2006. Ould Taya also said Woodside would begin the commercial exploitation of its nearby Thiof offshore oilfield in 2006. The Australian company is due to start drilling a series of 21 new exploration, appraisal and development wells in Mauritania's offshore waters next month. The oil and gas information group Rigzone has estimated that oil exports will add about $100 million to Mauritanian government revenues by 2008, increasing them by a quarter. The president also announced in Kiffa that an international consortium of mining companies from Australia, Canada and the United Arab Emirates would dramatically increase production from an existing copper and gold mine near Akjoujt, 256 km northeast of the capital, at the end of this year. A new processing plant at the mine would produce 120,000 tonnes of copper and 60,000 troy ounces of gold per year, he said, adding that prospecting for diamonds, iron ore and other minerals was still going on in other parts of Mauritania. Ould Taya said revenues from the new sources of mineral wealth would be managed transparently to improve basic social services such as health and education. But the president warned his countrymen not to turn up their noses at the many blue collar jobs that would be created by the oil and mining industries. If they did so, the companies involved would simply bring in labour from abroad to fill the gap and Mauritanians would lose out and become strangers in their own country, he said. Most of Mauritania's inhabitants were originally nomadic herdsmen and farmers, but drought and overgrazing in recent years has driven large numbers of people who once dwelt on the southern fringes of the Sahara desert, into the shantytowns which have sprung up around Nouakchott.