Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0329/03296.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 43KB | 656 lines

$Unique_ID{COW03296}
$Pretitle{286}
$Title{Somalia
Chapter 3C.   Energy Supply and Potentials}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Donald P. Whitaker}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{percent
government
total
imports
foreign
late
1970s
export
exports
increased}
$Date{1981}
$Log{Figure 10.*0329601.scf
}
Country:     Somalia
Book:        Somalia, A Country Study
Author:      Donald P. Whitaker
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1981

Chapter 3C.   Energy Supply and Potentials

     In 1981 Somalia's basic sources of energy were domestic wood and charcoal
and imported petroleum. Oil shale deposits had been discovered in the north,
but their potential had not yet been assessed. Drilling for hydrocarbon fuels
carried out in several parts of the country had resulted only in trace finds
of natural gas. There were no reports of coal or lignite. The known deposits
of uranium had no direct bearing on the domestic energy situation. The most
significant unexploited domestic energy source was the large hydroelectric
generating potential present in the flow of the Juba River, but its
development was in a preliminary stage in 1981.

Electric Power

     All public electric-power generating facilities have been state-owned
since 1970, when the country's largest power plant and distribution system (an
Italian-owned enterprise at Mogadishu) was nationalized. In 1981 public
facilities consisted of about eighty widely separated oil-fired thermal and
diesel plants that were completely dependent on imported oil for operation.
Because of the great distances between most plants, interconnections were
uneconomical, and individual towns and localities were served only by local
grids. This situation had led various industrial and public sector operations
to install their own generating units. However, the remoteness of some plants
from fuel sources and poor access road conditions reportedly resulted in fuel
shortages from time to time and reduction or interruption of power supply.

     In late 1981 information on generating capacity and use of electric power
was available only for Mogadishu. At the time of its nationalization in 1970
the Mogadishu plant (an oil-fired installation) had an installed capacity of
7,100 kilowatts. Increased demand resulting from the rapid growth of the city
and its environs and the establishment of new industries in the area led to
installation of additional generating units that more than doubled the
installed capacity to 17,980 kilowatts in 1978. Capacity was again almost
doubled in 1979 to 34,480 kilowatts when a power plant newly constructed at
Gesira, a suburb of Mogadishu, went into service. This plant had been equipped
with diesel generators in order to use residual fuel from the nearby oil
refinery that opened in 1978. Electric power production by the Mogadishu
facilities rose from 21 million kilowatt hours in 1970 to 47.9 million in
1979. In 1970 lighting needs accounted for almost four-fifths of total
consumption. Slightly over one-fifth was consumed in the operation of
industrial and other equipment. This proportion remained relatively constant
through 1979.

     The National Electric Energy Authority, the government corporation
responsible for public power generation and supply, planned to expand and
modernize the generating facilities in the three northern towns of Berbera,
Burco, and Hargeysa and at Kismaayo and Baydhabo in the south. Feasibility
studies were reportedly completed in mid-1981, but further action was
dependent on securing the foreign financing needed to carry out the projects.
The major program for increasing the country's power supply during the 1980s
was the development of hydroelectric generating facilities at the proposed
multipurpose dam near Baardheere on the Juba River. An installed capacity of
about 100,000 kilowatts was planned. The estimated overall cost of the project
was relatively enormous for Somalia (US $640 million in early 1981, mostly in
foreign exchange). Foreign funding, which had not yet been assured in late
1981, was the absolute requisite for proceeding with the undertaking.

Petroleum Supply and Domestic Resources

     Somalia was entirely dependent on imports to meet its petroleum needs in
1981. Until their nationalization in 1970, three foreign-owned firms imported
and distributed all petroleum products. Thereafter, until the rift between
Somalia and the Soviet Union in 1977, the later was the sole supplier to the
state-owned successor distributing operations. Saudi Arabia subsequently
became the chief oil source until late 1978 when Iraq began providing crude
oil for a newly opened refinery at Gesira built under a joint Somali-Iraqi
government project. The new plant had a design capacity of 10,000 barrels a
day, or 500,000 tons a year, and was equipped to produce gasoline, kerosine,
and various other fuel oils. During 1979 it operated at about 40 percent of
capacity, producing 223,259 tons of refined products. Output was expected to
expand; but after the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war in September 1980, Iraq
suspended deliveries, and Somalia was again forced for the time being to
import refined products. The refinery was reportedly back in operation,
according to information available in mid-1981, although the source of its
crude petroleum was unknown.

     The possibility of finding petroleum and/or natural gas deposits in
Somalia is sufficiently promising that foreign oil companies have engaged from
time to time since the end of World War II in exploratory drilling. The
principal active operations in 1981 were by a subsidiary of Atlantic Richfield
Company (ARCO) of the United States; Deutsche Texaco, the West German
subsidiary of the American Texas Corporation (Texaco); and a joint venture by
Cities Service Company of the United States and AGIP (Afrique), owned by the
Italian government. ARCO received a two-year exploratory rights concession
covering 124,230 square kilometers in Galguduud and Mudug regions in October
1979. Through mid-1981 one well had been drilled and had proved to be dry.
Deutsche Texaco signed a similar agreement in December 1979 for a concession
in Jubbada Hoose Region covering 34,965 square kilometers; drilling had not
yet started in mid-1981. At the latter date only preliminary work was under
way on the Cities Service-AGIP 42,406 square kilometer concession in northeast
Somalia.

Transportation

     At independence Somalia inherited a poorly developed transportation
infrastructure consisting of a few reasonably good local roads in the more
populated areas in the south and northwest and four undeveloped ports having
only lighterage facilities. During the next two decades considerable
improvement was made with the help of substantial foreign aid in the form of
loans, grants, and technical assistance. By 1981 all-weather roads connected
some of the more important towns and the northern and southern parts of the
country, and modern facilities had been installed at three principal ports.
Regular domestic air service was also in operation (see fig. 10). But the
country still lacked much of the road infrastructure essential to open up
still largely undeveloped areas and to tie together isolated economies in
various administrative regions.

Roads

     According to Somali government statistics the country's road system in
1978 totaled 19,380 kilometers. About 11 percent (2,153 kilometers) were
hard-surfaced, 36 percent (7,247 kilometers) had gravel or earth surfaces, and
the remaining 53 percent (10,280 kilometers) were essentially rudimentary dirt
tracks. At the start of the First Five Year Plan 1963-1967 there were only
about 600 kilometers of asphalt-surfaced roads (of which over half consisted
of a road from Mogadishu to the Ethiopian border built during the
Italo-Ethiopian War of the 1930s). The rest served mainly the banana
plantations along the Juba and Shabeelle rivers. At that time the gravel-earth
roads of the north were mostly impassable during the rainy season.

[See Figure 10.: Transp