ACAS Blog Series: The Geopolitics of Petroleum
By Meredeth Turshen | June 2009
Oil issues include a very wide range of problems: food security, scarcity of resources (sometimes referred to as the problem of peak oil), global climatic changes as a result of hydrocarbon consumption, human rights, and resource wars over oil (in Sudan, Chad, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Nigeria, and Western Sahara, inter alia). As the price of oil rose to over $100 a barrel last summer, oil issues came to dominate U.S. foreign policy (competition with China for oil, the Bush Administration’s position on Venezuela, and OPEC), as well as domestic policy (tax policy, energy conservation initiatives, preservation of wilderness, etc.). Some issues have been extensively debated (for example, peak oil), but others—such as the impact of the high price of oil on the oil-importing economies of Africa—have scarcely been mentioned in analyses.
Keywords: Afghanistan | Chad | China | Iraq | Nigeria | Opec | Somalia | Sudan | U.S. foreign policy | Venezuela | Western Sahara
Action Alert: Sudan
By ACAS | March 1997
A military tribunal in Sudan, which has been set to try 31 persons accused of attempting to overthrow the government, ordered the defense council today to submit their final defense statement immediately. When the defense council asked for time to prepare the statement they were told that the tribunal should finish by the end of the day–and that they will file the trial for judgment whether the defence statement is submitted or not.
Keywords: Sudan
