[Previous entry: "Chemtrails Are Over Las Vegas"] [Next entry: "Britain: Stiffer laws and armed police will never stem the rise in crime"]

11/21/2005:

"Angola's oil riches fail to reach the poor"

Sonair, the airline of Sonangol, Angola's state-owned oil company, Sonangol, operates direct flights between Houston and Luanda. Foreign oilmen are whisked from the airport to pink villas in fenced compounds or via helicopter directly to offshore the rigs floating in Angola's the country's prolific deep-water fields.

The vessels which that drill for, pump, store and offload crude in waters of up to two kilometres deep cost billions of dollars and resemble spacecraft in their technological sophistication.

Angola, already sub-Saharan Africa's second-largest oil producer after Nigeria, is also one of the world's fastest-growing oil provinces, pumping 1.3 million barrels a day. Riggers compare it in significance to the North Sea at its peak.

While "offshore Angola" is prized for its isolation from the onshore conflict afflicting Nigeria or the Middle East, conditions in much of the country are dire.

A large portion of Luanda's population inhabit hovels pieced together from cement and tin, red earthen bricks or cast-off materials such as car panels.
gulf-news.com