Piracy a threat to Cameroon oil business

Originally published in Malaysia Sun

Piracy in Cameroon has cut off some oil production, causing worries about future investments from overseas oil companies.

The African country has recently been embroiled in piracy in the Gulf of Guinea, which has led to insecurity in the oil industry.

As much as 95 percent of Cameroon's oil comes from a basin in the Gulf of Guinea, where attacks on commercial shipping have made the area increasingly dangerous.

Seven Chinese fishermen were kidnapped last month and a Nigerian boat was hijacked off the coast of Cameroon.

On each occasion, pirates demanded more than $1 million to release the ships.

Crude oil production in Cameroon has gone down to average just over 73,000 barrels a day with spending in the oil sector dropping by more than one-third.

Comments

[njimaforboy]

Our sources are telling us that Paul Biya and the armies of La Republique are the ones commiting all these acts of Piracy. It is reported by some insiders that they have Direct orders from Mr. Biya to commit these acts of Piracy.

Other sources close to La Republique are saying that the government is using these diversion tactics to thwart anxiety and tension away from the upcomming 2011 eclections.

Unconfirmed sources are also reporting that the same unit in the army of La Republique was also responsible for the armed robery that took place at a bank in Limbe.

Many Cameroonians are questioning the cognitive status of Paul Biya and fear the worst is still to come.

It has been reported by sources close to Biya that ever since he killed his first wife, sometimes he is seen staring blankly into space or talking to himself. Most Cameroonians on the street are very worried and concerned about the future of Cameroon, none out of 100 Cameroonians interviewed knew who will be President when Biya dies.

[Va Boy]

Njimaforboy, I know who will be president. Entrepreneuronline is that mystery successor. Do not tell anyone.

[Diebody]

Why should anyone from Southern/West Cameroon care who will be president in La Republique?

Whoever it is will still be stricken with the leprosy of indifference to suffering, urinary incontinence, pilfer, and prevarication. The muslims from the north and the Bamileke would do well to liberate themselves from those poisoned manioc eaters of the South. Let the confusion and this neocolonial punch find its own natural death.

Let's not talk of After-Biya and Etoudi. That is fruitless. Let's talk about us. We're no longer children. We've watched this sissongo nightmare for just too long.

[Diebody]

'Piracy' results from neo-liberalist violence. There can never be neo-liberalism without violence of any sort. Piracy will increase on the Gulf of Guinea, with the growing number of university graduates from communities in these areas and regions. They can’t sit still and see their resources pilfered by thieving governments and foreign corporations.

In fact predictions indicate that the instability will only increase with more graduates and given the powerlessness of governments to guarantee the interests of communities or of oil companies. This is not the 1960’s. This is the 21st century. African young people are not as dumb as some Asian commentator's think. What you call a 'pirate' could as well be a young person who sees his community and local environment being trampled and polluted by those that have stolen from them their property rights. There is such a thing as environmental justice and indigenous property rights. And most of these 'pirates' know that.

Educated young people + state and corporate injustice = anarchy.
And no sort of neo-liberal violence will bring the situation to heal until justice is done and seen to be done.

'Pirates?' No one within the communities where these young people operate call them 'pirates'. Only those that don't live there, those that feel that natural resources are the property rights of governments, corporations, and the world at large...

[Va Boy]

Diebody's assertion that the real pirates call themselves "authorities" and the owners have been mislabeled as pirates is interesting and has some merit.

[Diebody]

The PIRATES in the South West or the Gulf of Guinea is the CAMEROON GOVERNMENT, and the FOREIGN CORPORATIONS with which they exploit the petroleum. They will not play that game for forever. Their idea is that locals and indigenous people will be dupes for 1000 years so they fill their pockets as much as they can. No, the more locals move abroad and learn about justice, property rights, and social equity, the more they will question the foreigner squatting and shitting in their backyard...

Not so in the 21st century. Sooner or later a young man is going to ask questions. And another will ask why their brothers/sisters died at the University of Buea, and there will be so many questions that kamabrous won't answer in the gulf. But what are kamabrous? Can they stand a very sophisticated modern assault on water from a small dedicated die-hard group? Time will tell. People will learn and organize - from without.

Someday, mind my words, that gulf will be a gulf of flames until the real inhabitants will run its resources rather than someone from the forest south.. and another who'll readily sign the death of any local of any Sarowiwa. There will be flames until the intruder is evicted with all violence that is possible...

Each time you read the word "pirate" in the Gulf of Guinea, simply substitute it with "indigenous/legitimate owners."

How can an outsider considered you a "pirate" in your own backyard?

It's time we keep our different dictionaries...

[njimaforboy]

I stand by my story. The focus has to be on the root cause of the many problems facing Cameroon ,
Paul Biya.

It is very important to create awareness of what may happen after the deluge.

It is a good thing to talk about us, i also think it is very important that we do not shy away from evil. Some forms of evil may be addressed with humility, but Biya an La Republique has to be confronted with force.

We will not loose focus, we will not loose sleep,
we will confront this evil ( Paul Biya and La Republique ) with all the resouces at our disposal.

[Diebody]

The costs of operating on someone's land or waters without local consent can in the end nullify any benefits... this is rational logic.

But La Republique operates on the logic of irrationality...
like landlubbers when faced with water...

How can they not meet their waterloo anytime they are engaged by small local bands in the gulf? the bands only get stronger with time, until someday, they will ask: whose waters are these? who grew up on these waters? who's drinking the champagne that accrues from the thousand years of sediments under these waters?

why don't we have clinics against malaria? why's someone far away buying castles in France, with proceeds from our soil, when we can't afford aspirin, quinine, school fee, road transport?

who's the boss here?

[Chief Ayuk Arrey]

All these attacks are orchetrasted by Biya and La Republique to blackmail the Southern Cameroons across the International Community. But it won't work.
Biya and his SECT,CPDM are the caused of all that Cameroonians are going through,including Genocide.

[Diebody]

I wholly agree Chief Ayuk Arrey.

We need to take the offensive media-wise.

If 100,000 Southern/West Cameroonians invade the blogosphere and in a very rational manner, no one will listen to La Republique...

There is a way of doing it. We will strip la Republique to it's underwear...