Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power (20 page)

During the late 1990s, after Equatorial Guinea’s big contracts were signed but before oil and cash flowed, Obiang traveled to Washington, D.C., for annual World Bank meetings. His country’s decades-old struggles against poverty were about to end—he needed to think about how to manage the great sums that would soon come his way. Obiang was in some respects naive about global affairs, but it did not require an advanced degree in political science to notice that small, weak countries with huge amounts of oil tended, as Kuwait had done, to ally themselves protectively with the United States, a superpower with a thirst for hydrocarbons and a military large enough to deter any power that might bully its oil-supplying friends. By opening Equatorial Guinea’s fields exclusively to American companies, Obiang hoped in time to coax Washington into strategic partnership. The president and his companions walked one afternoon past the grandiose main branch of Riggs Bank, at 1503 Pennsylvania Avenue, across from the Treasury Building and diagonally opposite the White House. The bank’s gray ionic columns stood several stories tall and created the impression that this might be the American president’s own financial institution—or, at a minimum, that it was deeply connected to the corridors of American power. “We should put our money here,” Obiang told his companions. At the time, they still did not have much of a check to write. They opened a Riggs account with a $5,000 deposit.
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Two years later, in 1997, with Zafiro in production, $1.2 million a month began to flow into the Washington, D.C., bank. Riggs’s executives woke up to the gusher they had struck. It kept growing.

“Equatorial Guinea has gone from being a very small, insignificant relationship to the largest single deposit relationship at Riggs,” a manager named Ray Lund wrote to senior colleagues in 2001. With ExxonMobil now operating and profiting from Zafiro, Equatorial Guinea had $200 million on deposit and expected additional cash flow at a rate of about $20 million a month for the foreseeable future. “Where is the money coming from? Oil—black gold—Texas tea.”
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O
biang had been denied high-level meetings with Clinton administration officials. Equatorial Guinea’s human rights performance, he was told, was the obstacle to such access. Africa Global, a small Washington lobbying firm, advised Obiang that the election of George W. Bush as president of the United States presented an opportunity to rehabilitate Equatorial Guinea’s reputation and to establish a deeper partnership in Washington based on oil interests. Obiang agreed to pay Africa Global hundreds of thousands of dollars to help him navigate the American capital and secure meetings at the highest levels of the new administration. One of his lobbyists secured an appointment at the State Department’s Africa bureau on February 22, 2001, a few weeks after Bush’s inaugural.

“Obiang has been waiting eight years” for the Democrats to leave office, said the dictator’s representative. “He hopes he can now meet with senior levels of the new administration.” After a State cable about the lobbyist’s meeting circulated in West Africa, the American ambassador in Cameroon wrote to Washington to say that “we would be delighted if he [Obiang] were received at a higher level,” although it would be better if “we [the American government] can get the credit instead of a lobbying firm.”
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Henry Hand, a desk officer in the Africa bureau at Foggy Bottom, took a call a few days later from a Halliburton executive. The executive said his company “was being hounded by Africa Global to intercede with the Vice President’s office” to obtain an audience with Cheney for Equatorial Guinea’s president. “They declined to do so,” Hand reported. On March 2, the desk officer rode over to Equatorial Guinea’s threadbare embassy on 16th Street. Obiang’s ambassador to the United States explained to him that Africa Global has “a very ambitious agenda” for the leader’s upcoming private trip to Washington—the lobbying firm would be seeking meetings with Bush, Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

“As I left the embassy, oil company representatives were arriving for a meeting, having been convoked by the ambassador” to advocate for Obiang’s access, Hand reported. Nor was Africa Global confining itself to the federal government: The desk officer reported two weeks later that Obiang had apparently secured a meeting with Washington, D.C., mayor Anthony Williams “who may declare March E.G. month!”
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The main practical item on Obiang’s agenda was “the establishment of an [American] embassy in Malabo.” But no meetings with Bush, Cheney, or Powell actually materialized in the days ahead. “He is reportedly irked,” Hand recorded. “The energy companies are increasingly unhappy with Africa Global, which they feel is doing a poor job of getting across Equatorial Guinea’s message. The lobbying firm has been very heavy-handed in leaning on these firms [ExxonMobil, Marathon, and Hess] in an attempt to get high-level meetings, after raising Obiang’s expectations for such meetings to unrealistic levels.”
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The best Africa Global could do, it turned out, was an under secretary of state—hardly an insult, but not a cabinet officer, either. Alan Larson, Bush’s under secretary of state for economic, business, and agricultural affairs, who oversaw energy issues at the State Department, rode to the Equatorial Guinea embassy on March 19 to hear what Obiang had to say.

The president opened by stating that he would like to return to Washington on an official visit, so he could “convey his concern over the lack of a U.S. embassy in Malabo to the highest level of the U.S. government.” His country, he continued, “had received much assistance from private American companies” and it was “unreasonable” that there was no embassy. He understood that there were budget issues vexing the United States, but federal tax revenues received from the American oil companies making profits in Equatorial Guinea were “more than sufficient to pay for a new mission.” The decision to close the embassy in 1995, after the witch doctor incident involving Ambassador Bennett, was “based on erroneous human rights reports.” State Department public reporting on human rights violations in Equatorial Guinea—which continued to highlight torture and detention of Obiang’s political opponents, as well as the abysmal conditions at Black Beach—was misguided; it was the product of a temporary American diplomat in Malabo who had “no conception of the real situation. . . . Only officials posted in [Equatorial Guinea] would be able to understand the true situation.”

Larson replied that the Bush administration was “very interested” in working with Obiang “on encouraging the growing bilateral business relationship.” President Bush and Secretary Powell “had made it clear that promoting respect for human rights and democracy would be a continuing theme of our foreign policy,” but the administration was nonetheless “prepared to work” with Equatorial Guinea’s government. On the question of a U.S. embassy in Malabo, the State Department would be “reviewing the issue,” Larson said.
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On Capitol Hill, among human rights activists, Republican-leaning global Christian groups concerned with governance and development in Africa, and the democracy-promoting enthusiasts of the neoconservative school, Equatorial Guinea was “the kiss of death,” recalled a senior Bush administration official involved. But the oil companies joined Africa Global in pressing Obiang’s cause. ExxonMobil, Marathon, and Hess worked through the Corporate Council on Africa, an industry trade and lobby group, to campaign at the White House and State for approval for a new U.S. embassy in Malabo. The oil companies argued through their Washington lobbyists that the American embassy in Malabo had been shuttered before the discovery of oil, when virtually no U.S. citizens resided in the country, whereas now there were upward of six hundred Americans living in Equatorial Guinea, shuttling in and out on rotation. Passport and visa paperwork had to be handled in Cameroon, and there was no permanent diplomatic liaison to address even routine business issues. Still, the Africa hands on the National Security Council, where the decision would ultimately be made, hesitated. They knew George W. Bush would be accused of selling out human rights for oil profits if the administration reopened the embassy.

Obiang wanted military training, too. His government had received a State Department license to hire Military Professional Resources International (M.P.R.I.), a government-connected security contractor based in northern Virginia, to improve the virtually nonexistent capabilities of Equatorial Guinea’s tiny coast guard and navy. It was unusual for State to approve any license for military training for a regime with a human rights record as bad as Equatorial Guinea’s, but maritime defense work had been rationalized as necessary to protect huge American oil investments offshore. Now Obiang wanted to expand M.P.R.I.’s training to include his military and internal security forces and to contribute to regional campaigns against maritime piracy and illegal fishing. Obiang had told Larson that he needed additional military assistance to “protect [Equatorial Guinea’s] sovereignty and the U.S. investment.”

He sent his foreign minister and energy adviser to Washington to explain that his request reflected Equatorial Guinea’s “concern over security issues, particularly the safety of offshore oil installations, but also stems from the president’s desire to emulate the United States in areas such as democratization and respect for human rights.” The Bush administration stalled some more.
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The administration did allow Obiang a steady stream of official meetings when he visited America for cancer treatment or other private reasons. On September 7, 2001, Obiang again met Under Secretary of State Alan Larson. United States investment in Equatorial Guinea, all in the oil and gas sector, “is having a great impact on the country,” Obiang pleaded. But he needed help. His country had been called the “Kuwait of Africa,” he said, but with a mere 10 percent royalty rate on oil production in the early phase, “this does not accurately reflect the revenues that the government receives.” The country was still waiting for ExxonMobil to cross the break-even point in the recovery of its investments, after which Equatorial Guinea’s take would rise; the country was not yet as wealthy as it would be.

Larson agreed that the “investment of U.S. companies” in Equatorial Guinea “strengthens the bilateral relationship” with America. He warned, however, that the more prominent Equatorial Guinea became as a global oil supplier, “there will also be increased scrutiny from human rights groups around the world.” There was nothing the Bush administration could do about that—it was a fact of global life in an age when the power of nongovernmental campaigners and media was increasing. Larson “encouraged Obiang to continue to work constructively” with ExxonMobil, Marathon, and Hess, “who have shown so much confidence in [Equatorial Guinea] to invest so much there.” On the question of the royalty rate and other financial matters, Larson “assured” Obiang that the American companies would “deal squarely” with Equatorial Guinea.
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Al Qaeda terrorists struck Washington and New York four days later. Obiang was still in town, ensconced at the luxury Willard Hotel, which is located on Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Capitol. He was smuggled out of the hotel through the garage. Terrorism fears now joined oil dependence as glue in the emerging U.S.-Obiang relationship. The Bush administration soon briefed Equatorial Guinea on “increased Al Qaeda operations under way throughout the world and the possibility that Al Qaeda might target petroleum facilities.”
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Obiang readily invited American diplomats to talk with him about security issues. His regime lived in perpetual insecurity, plagued by internal coup plots and menaced by much larger neighbors, particularly Nigeria, that might covet the country’s oil wealth. Rising fears within the Bush administration that seaborne Al Qaeda–inspired terrorists might attack American offshore oil platforms would draw Malabo and Washington toward a security partnership, some of Obiang’s advisers believed. Equatorial Guinea’s production, moreover, was expanding by the month. The country pumped out just fewer than 300,000 barrels per day in 2002 and expected more than 350,000 barrels per day in 2003. This would mean, a State Department cable noted, that Equatorial Guinea “will become the third largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa, after Nigeria and Angola.”
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Hardly anyone had noticed the country’s emergence on world oil markets. The Bush administration at last overcame its hesitations; the White House approved the embassy and prepared for its reopening.

G
eorge Staples arrived in November 2001 as the new American ambassador. He was a career foreign service officer, an African American who wore wire-rimmed glasses and who spoke Spanish, French, and Turkish. Staples had divided his tours among the Carribean, Latin America, the Middle East, and the Continent. He had served a previous tour in Malabo, as a political officer, during the 1980s.

On January 23, 2002, Staples flew to Equatorial Guinea for the first time after a fifteen-year absence. The country he saw dazzled him—road construction under way, new hotels, the modern corporate enclaves of ExxonMobil and Marathon, and small supermarkets. Obiang remembered Staples from his earlier tour, when they occasionally bumped into each other while jogging on the airport road. They met now at the president’s palace above Malabo harbor. The atmosphere in the receiving room was formal; bodyguards and aides stood by in attendance. The president greeted Staples warmly; they spoke in Spanish.

“America is our friend, versus Spain and some other Europeans who have other agendas,” Obiang said. “The American companies made this possible,” he said, referring to his country’s boom. “The Europeans lied to us. We’ve never stopped believing this.”