Reply #11: KENNETH T. DERR, 67 certainly has:

[reorg]

Retired Chairman of the Board, Chevron Corporation; Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Chevron Corporation, 1989-1999; joined Halliburton Company Board in 2001. (http://www.halliburton.com/about/board_of_dir.jsp)



Oil exploration - a brief history

Oil exploration in Sudan started in 1959, when Italy's Agip oil company was granted concessions in the Red Sea area, carrying out seismic surveys and drilling six wells.

Following Agip into the Red Sea came Oceanic Oil Company, France's Total, Texas Eastern, Union Texas and Chevron. All yielded nothing for the next fifteen years. The only successful results were achieved by Chevron in 1974, 120 km southeast of Port Sudan, where dry gas and gas condensate were found at Basha'ir-1 and Suakin-1 wells.

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Exploration for oil in southern and southwestern Sudan began in 1975, when the government of Sudan granted Chevron a concession area of 516,000km2 in blocks around Muglad and Melut. Chevron started geological and geophysical surveys in 1976, and drilled its first well in 1977, which was dry. In 1979, Chevron made its first oil discovery in Abu Jabra #1, west of Muglad, where an 8 million barrels reserve and a 1,000 barrels per day (b/d) production rate were estimated. Unity field Chevron's most significant discovery was made in 1980 in the Unity/Talih oilfield, north of Bentiu in Western Upper Nile.

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Fear and anger about the Central Government’s apparent intention to get complete control of the oil led to increasing resentment in the South. In March 1983, the tensions were sparked by a mutiny in Bor into renewed civil war, and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) was founded by Southern army commanders.

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The Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) began attacks on oil installations almost immediately, as well as on the giant canal project in southern Jonglei, where the French CCI company was operating the world's largest excavator. The canal has never been completed. Chevron's work came to a halt in February 1984, following an attack by the SPLA, in which three of Chevron's employees were kidnapped on the island base at Rub Kona and later killed. Three weeks before the attack, the Chevron spokesman in Khartoum said he was confident that extensive work doing deals with local chiefs, deploying antropologists and other specialists, had the security question "all sewn up". The company misread the fluidity of Southern politics and the limits of the chiefs' powers in the face of guerrilla activity. It seems Chevron was given absolute assurances which meant nothing when put to the test.

Nimeiri tried to recruit and mobilise a local Nuer militia ("Anya-Nya Two") to help defend the Bentiu area against the largely Dinka SPLA. Chevron was not convinced, and closed down its operations. When it resumed in the late 1980s, however, Chevron itself tried supporting a militia of ethnic Baggara (cattle-herding "Arabised northerners") in an attempt to secure the area.

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In 1988 Chevron decided to resume its activities and developed a six-year exploration and drilling programme set to run until 1994. However, seeing the intensification of the civil war that followed the 1989 NIF coup, Chevron quit Sudan in 1990 and relinquished all its concessions. It had spent more than $1billion.

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The tax breaks offered by the US government enabled them to cover their losses, and they seem not to have fought very hard to keep their oil concessions, even though they knew other companies were prepared to move in. Oil prices were falling, too, and threatened to fall below the cost of extracting Sudan's oil.

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(from Sudan Update - Raising the stakes - Oil and conflict in Sudan, 99 p. - with timeline until 1999)

www.sudanupdate.org/REPORTS/Oil/Oil.pdf