Into Africa . . .: and out of OPEC -- new thinking on oil.(growing importance of the Gulf of Guinea)

For decades, the U.S. has poured massive economic, military, and diplomatic resources into developing and securing oil from the Persian Gulf. This effort may have succeeded in guaranteeing (most of the time) affordable oil in the West, but that hasn't stopped the region from becoming an increasingly hostile cauldron of anti-American dictatorships. The U.S. would be well advised to begin diverting some of its attention to a different gulf -- the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa, a region that doesn't attract the headlines of the Middle East or feature an influential cadre of diplomats, journalists, and experts devoted to the idea of its eternal importance, but that can still be a crucial piece of a new global U.S. energy strategy.

A lazy attachment to the global status quo shouldn't keep the U.S. from re-evaluating its fundamental energy assumptions, including the supposed indispensability of Saudi oil. Saudi Arabia will always be an important oil power, but that doesn't mean that its leverage can't be significantly reduced, including by a cluster of countries that many people would have trouble locating on a map. Toward that end, the U.S. should make the Gulf of Guinea a strategic priority, promoting free markets and the rule of law there, encouraging American investment, providing a security presence, and -- perhaps above all -- getting over a sneering tendency to dismiss the strategic significance of anything African.

After all, the Persian Gulf itself was a developmental backwater as recently as the 1960s, when few could imagine the importance it would attain over the next 30 years. The Gulf of Guinea is in a similar state today, a Third World afterthought primed to become a major market player. With the end of the Cold War, it has a greater openness to the market, making access easier for American companies. Meanwhile, technology unheard of 20 years ago has led to the rapid discovery and exploitation of new sources of oil there. These trends combine with several other features of the region to make West African oil a natural for the U.S.: Much of it is offshore, providing something of a buffer from political instability; it is easily delivered, via a quick jaunt across the Atlantic without straits or canals; and it is low in sulfur, providing the high gasoline yield preferred by U.S. refineries.

All these factors suggest that the West African market, stretching from the Ivory Coast down to Angola, is ready to bloom. Paul Michael Wihbey of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies is a leading evangelist of West Africa's potential, and has created an African Oil Policy Initiative Group to try to wake up policymakers to the region's emerging importance. A soon-to-be released white paper reports, "At 1.5 million barrels per day, the amount of West African oil flowing to the United States approximates or exceeds the volume of U.S. imports from Saudi Arabia. Nigeria is the world's sixth-largest oil exporter and fifth- ranked provider of crude to the U.S. at over 900,000 b/d [barrels a day], while Angola, despite years of civil conflict, may produce close to one million b/d in 2002."

Potential is almost everywhere in the region, even in the smaller nations. Until recently, no one would have mentioned Equatorial Guinea and oil in the same breath, but this country may soon be producing as much oil per capita as Saudi Arabia. The tiny island nation of Sao Tome and Principe is now believed to be sitting on reserves of 4 billion barrels of oil. A Chad-Cameroon pipeline will be pumping 250,000 barrels a day next year, and will actually be too small for potential volume. According to a U.S. National Intelligence Council estimate, 25 percent of American oil will be imported from sub-Saharan Africa by 2015.

As Wihbey points out, if you want evidence of the strategic importance of West Africa, look no further than Chinese president Jiang Zemin's recent itinerary. In April, he visited Nigeria, bearing promises of trade, aid, and development projects. China has demonstrated the wherewithal to deliver on promises in the region: Three years ago, it ...