Global Policy Forum

Violent clashes sparked by angry villagers demanding a better share of Gabon's oil resources have led to the temporary closure of operations by Canadian oil firm Panafrican Energy at one field in the southwest, sources at the Oil Ministry said on Monday. Two demonstrators were killed and seven more injured at the oil site in Ndolou a week ago, officials said, when clashes erupted between the Gabonese military police and protesters who were blocking an exit to the site.

The violence is somewhat out of character in this West African country, which is the continent's fourth-biggest producer, unlike the intermittent and ongoing unrest in Nigeria, Africa's top oil exporter. But the grievances of the locals is the same in both countries -- they want a bigger share of the oil spoils. Although the site at Ndolou is comparatively small, producing an average of just 3,400 barrels a day, local people hit by unemployment and poverty have been demanding more schools, health centres and roads.

Inspired by a strike called by an oil workers trade union, ONEP, Ndolou residents torched a Panafrican Energy boat and vehicle and threatened to ransack other installations. Company officials panicked and called for reinforcements from (the capital) Libreville to protect the wells," Koumba Souvi, governor of the department, was quoted as saying in the Gabonese press. No-one from the Canadian company was immediately available for comment but officials at the Oil Ministry in Libreville told IRIN on Monday that the situation in the south-west was back under control. Junior foreign minister Jean-Francois Ndongou told AFP news agency that the authorities and the company were examining the reopening of the site and looking at how to satisfy local demands.

It is not the first time villagers in Ndolou have complained about their treatment at the hands of oil firms. Back in 2001, residents handed over a list grievances to Panafrican Energy. In 1998, President Omar Bongo, who has been in office since 1967, ordered substantial aid for the Ndolou region, but such funds have yet to reach local coffers, according to Nicaise Moulombi, who heads an local green group, Croissance Saine Environnement (Healthy Growth Environment). "Money generated by oil just doesn't circulate nowadays," Moulombi told IRIN. "Three percent of people share out the country's wealth while 97 percent of the population live in dire straits... Ministers are becoming shamefully rich to the detriment of the majority of the population."

Gabon has a per capita income that is 10 times the average of sub-Saharan Africa, largely thanks to its oil and mineral wealth and to the fact that it has a relatively small population of 1.3 million. But the country is hostage to price fluctuations and Gabon's oil star is on the wane. It is a mature producer with an output of around 250,000 barrels per day and has been overtaken as the continent's third biggest producer by neighbouring Equatorial Guinea, which only discovered oil in 1995. Sociologist Fabien Renamy told IRIN that with the country's oil production down a third from its peak in 1996, the time is ripe to prepare for the post-oil period.

An hour's flight from Ndolou in Gamba, where Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell Gabon is based, the company has built roads, care centres and schools as well as launching agricultural and training projects. Gamba has swollen from a village of a few dozen huts in the 1960s to a town of 9,500 people today. But some oil executives think the government should step up to the plate and not put the whole burden on multinationals.

"Most of the oil companies operating in Gabon try to meet the needs of the local people, but these firms cannot substitute themselves for the state, which should be building roads and the like," one Shell Gabon official said, asking not to be named. "It's up to the state to meet people's needs."

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