Quote:
Originally Posted by Olefin
And given the fact that the Mombasa refinery and port is what is keeping the US forces in the Middle East a going concern
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Are you saying that the overall premise of the American presence in Kenya is that Kenyan oil is what's sustaining the US in the Middle East?
That's an...interesting...take. Let's park for the moment the fact that according to wikipedia oil doesn't appear to have been discovered in Kenya until 2012 (as I said, I haven't read the African sourcebook so presume there's some sort of butterflying away of that) and isn't scheduled to hit full production / exportation until 2024. Full production looks like it might be in the region of 46,000 barrels per day (i.e. three to four years from now).
https://kenyanwallstreet.com/kenyas-...0-bpd-in-2023/
In 1998 (the closest I could find to 1996) Saudia Arabia was producing just short of ten
million barrels per day.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/...rrels-per-day/
So parking the fact that Kenya was really producing zero barrels per day in 1996 and using the best case (2023) figure of approx 50,000 (rounded off), Kenyan production was approx half of one per cent of Saudi Arabia's (and that's
only Saudi Arabia - that doesn't include Kuwait, the UAE, etc which probably adds
at least another four to five million barrels).
I realise that refineries in the Gulf have suffered damage, but as has already been mentioned, there's still sufficient production / refining facilities available in the Gulf to allow export (RDF Sourcebook pg12). Even a 99% reduction in production would still leave somewhere around three times Kenya's full 2023 production. So I find the idea that Kenyan oil 'is what is keeping US forces in the Middle East a going concern' to be quite implausible.