Speaker 1: We've been focused on Guyana this season, and for good reason.
Speaker 1: It's on track to become the world's largest oil producer
Speaker 1: per capita in the next decade. But it's also important
Speaker 1: to note that what's happening in Guyana is pretty illustrative
Speaker 1: of what's happening all over the world right now. There
Speaker 1: is a global oil rush and it's hitting the Caribbean
Speaker 1: region and Africa particularly hard. Today, I'm bringing you a
Speaker 1: conversation with reporter Jeff Goodell at Rolling Stone, who's just
Speaker 1: written a scorching piece on what's been happening in Namibia,
Speaker 1: particularly with respect to a company that seems to have
Speaker 1: claimed on paper that there are billions of barrels of
Speaker 1: oil on its land, but never actually proven that there's
Speaker 1: anything there that never stops them from drilling though right
Speaker 1: next to a UNESCO World Heritage Site, no less, and
Speaker 1: those completely unnecessary exploratory wells have caused plenty of environmental damage.
Speaker 1: Jeff went to Namibia to figure out what the heck
Speaker 1: has been going on. He's going to talk us through
Speaker 1: all of it, how it fits in with what we've
Speaker 1: been seeing in Guyana, and how it all relates to
Speaker 1: the global oil rush. After this quick break.
Speaker 2: My name is Jeff Goodell. I am a writer at
Speaker 2: Rolling Stone and the author of a number of books
Speaker 2: about energy and climate change.
Speaker 3: We're talking because you just wrote this massive feature about
Speaker 3: oil exploration in Namibia and a little bit in Botswana
Speaker 3: in Africa in general, and I am fascinated by this story.
Speaker 3: So I guess I wanted to know how you first
Speaker 3: started looking into this, What first popped onto your radar
Speaker 3: that made you go, oh, this is something worth looking into.
Speaker 2: Well, I got tipped off by foundation who told me
Speaker 2: that there was this drilling going on around the Okabango Delta,
Speaker 2: which is a in ESCO World ariatage site, you know,
Speaker 2: and they were interested in life conservation and things, and
Speaker 2: like you and many journalists, we get pitched stuff all
Speaker 2: the time. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, it
Speaker 2: sounds great, but you know, I got lots to do, right,
Speaker 2: and so I kind of didn't think about it. And
Speaker 2: then then I was just sort of googling around one
Speaker 2: day and thinking more about it, and let's started to
Speaker 2: look into it a little bit and it became really
Speaker 2: interesting to me very quickly. Because this company called Recon Africa,
Speaker 2: which was based in Vancouver. They were kind of, you know,
Speaker 2: a small kind of or oil and gas exploration company,
Speaker 2: and there was some really good reporting that had been
Speaker 2: done by National Geographic that suggested that, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: this was not all up and up, and maybe there
Speaker 2: was some other game being played here besides straightforward oil
Speaker 2: and gas drilling and exploration. And it just piqued my interest,
Speaker 2: and the more I looked into it, the more complex
Speaker 2: and fascinating it became. I pitched my editors and said, yes,
Speaker 2: let's go go have a look. And that's what I did.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And I don't want to spoil the story
Speaker 3: for people, because I want them to go and read it,
Speaker 3: but to the extent that you can share a little
Speaker 3: bit about what you found without without ruining the story
Speaker 3: for people. Yeah, can you walk us through what you
Speaker 3: found when when you got on the ground in Maybia?
Speaker 2: Well, I think you know. The first thing I should
Speaker 2: say is, right before I left, I I called this
Speaker 2: Harvard geologist named Paul Hoffman, who is a very, very
Speaker 2: very one of the most sort of famous geologists in
Speaker 2: the world as far as geologists are famous, who who
Speaker 2: is most known for kind of this idea of snowball Earth,
Speaker 2: this idea that at several points in earth distant past
Speaker 2: it was more less covered with ice in it. It's
Speaker 2: very controversial theory, but he he is the one who
Speaker 2: kind of proved it, and he proved it by studying
Speaker 2: the rocks in Namibia for about forty years. And he
Speaker 2: knows the rocks in Namibia the way you know most
Speaker 2: people know their children's faces or something. And I called
Speaker 2: him and he basically said, I explained the story to
Speaker 2: him and I was interested in drilling. Did he have
Speaker 2: any advice for me about traveling in Nmidia and this
Speaker 2: and that? And he said, you know, there's no oil
Speaker 2: there And I said, well, what do you mean? And
Speaker 2: he said, whatever they're saying. I know this place and
Speaker 2: there's basically no oil there. And I was like, well,
Speaker 2: then what are they doing? And he said, well, you know,
Speaker 2: one thing you're going to learn is that a lot
Speaker 2: of oil and gas company or companies are better at
Speaker 2: drilling into their investor's wallets than they are into the
Speaker 2: rocks in the ground.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And with that, I got on a plane and went
Speaker 2: to Namibia. And so my time there was about trying
Speaker 2: to understand what was going on on if there was
Speaker 2: no oil there then what were they doing? And if
Speaker 2: there was oil, there was this guy, Paul Hoffman, this
Speaker 2: man who understands maybe better than anyone. Was he completely wrong?
Speaker 2: And was that a remarkable kind of discovery? They were
Speaker 2: recon Africa was claiming there was one hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: billion barrels of oil that had been produced in this
Speaker 2: basin that they that they had so called discovered. And
Speaker 2: as you know, one hundred and twenty billion is a
Speaker 2: pretty big number. And so that got all their investors
Speaker 2: in a tizzy.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I mean that's that would make it, you know,
Speaker 3: bigger than almost any other oil field on Earth. Just
Speaker 3: to put it in context for people like they're like, hey,
Speaker 3: we discovered the new Saudi Arabia and no one else
Speaker 3: knew in existed full time.
Speaker 2: Yes, So the first thing I did when I got
Speaker 2: there is, you know, one of the things that makes
Speaker 2: this story different than a lot of other stories is
Speaker 2: where the they this company, recon Africa, at least about
Speaker 2: nine million acres of land in Botswana and Namibia, and
Speaker 2: a lot of it is very close to the ok
Speaker 2: of Ago Delto, which is this UNESCO World Character Site,
Speaker 2: which is a kind of pristine ecosystem that is you know,
Speaker 2: renowned for the number of elephants that live and migrated
Speaker 2: through there, for its wildlife population of lions and you know,
Speaker 2: all the sort of big mammals that people pay a
Speaker 2: lot of money to go on Sofari to see. But
Speaker 2: it's also just this, you know, this kind of miraculous place,
Speaker 2: this delta where the water runs down out of the
Speaker 2: highlands of Angola and creates this unique ecosystem that is
Speaker 2: very that is basically unpolluted and untouched, and then that
Speaker 2: water disappears into the Kalahari desert and just sort of vanishes,
Speaker 2: and it's this is amazing place. So the first thing
Speaker 2: I did was go see this amazing place, which I'd
Speaker 2: never been to before. And sure enough, it was, you know,
Speaker 2: astonishing in its diversity of wildlife and in its sort
Speaker 2: of sublime beauty. And the notion that all this was
Speaker 2: going to get you know, screwed up and polluted because
Speaker 2: of these you know, wildcat explorers who were drilling upstream
Speaker 2: of this was you know, pretty shocking in the sense
Speaker 2: of like, what the hell are we doing? You know,
Speaker 2: what is going on here? So it wasn't just the
Speaker 2: climate aspects of it. It was also just this incredible
Speaker 2: wonderland of wildlife that was at risk.
Speaker 3: Right, And I think, like I think that there's a
Speaker 3: tendency for people to think, oh, well, if they're drilling
Speaker 3: but there's not really any oil, then like no harm,
Speaker 3: no foul, Right, But that's very much not true. So
Speaker 3: can you kind of talk through, you know, what impact
Speaker 3: does the drilling have frerespective of whether there is actually
Speaker 3: this large amount of oil to be tapped there, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously, if if there were one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty billion barrels of oil there, it would turn into
Speaker 2: you know, you know, it would there would be drilling everywhere,
Speaker 2: and it would turn into you know, a kind of
Speaker 2: environmental nightmare. But you're right, a lot of people think, oh,
Speaker 2: so what's the harm. They were exploring for oil, but
Speaker 2: no big deal. They didn't they didn't find it, and
Speaker 2: so who cares? Well, it matters a lot because an
Speaker 2: ecosystem like the Oka Bango delta is very fragile and
Speaker 2: it's all built around this sort of flow of water.
Speaker 2: And as even drilling these four or five wells that
Speaker 2: they have drilled, they're you know, they're using drilling MUDs
Speaker 2: that have god knows what kind of chemicals in them.
Speaker 2: They're pumping up water from below that has all kinds
Speaker 2: of chemicals in it that are not mixed in the
Speaker 2: surface waters. They're cutting roads through these pristine areas, changing
Speaker 2: wildlife migration patterns, you know. And then there's the whole
Speaker 2: sort of economy of drillers and kind of get rich
Speaker 2: quick people who you know, invade this area trying to
Speaker 2: exploit this, and so it's like, you know, even this
Speaker 2: level of modest exploration in a pristine place like that
Speaker 2: has profound implications.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, Can you talk a little bit more about
Speaker 3: this company that is exploring in in Nibia because I
Speaker 3: found that really interesting too. Again, I think like a
Speaker 3: lot of people think, oh, it's just the oil nators
Speaker 3: doing this, but this is a pretty small, pretty new
Speaker 3: company that has kind of pulled off something that's that's
Speaker 3: sort of shocking. I would say, you know that they
Speaker 3: that they've managed to convince so many people to believe
Speaker 3: in this projection. Like it's one thing, if you know,
Speaker 3: axel On or Shell says there's one hundred and twenty
Speaker 3: billion barrels of oil somewhere, but this is not one
Speaker 3: of those companies no, it's not.
Speaker 2: It's basically, you know, a handful of Vancouver mining financiers
Speaker 2: headed by this guy named Craig Steink, who is a
Speaker 2: Canadian and you know, he and some of the other
Speaker 2: people guys, they are all guys, and they're all like,
Speaker 2: you know, middle aged white guys. Basically you know, made
Speaker 2: a little bit of money in cracking the premium basin
Speaker 2: and in parts of Canada and have basically spent the
Speaker 2: last ten years trying to kind of export fracking around
Speaker 2: the world basically, and you know, they fracking as a
Speaker 2: you know, North American invention that was sort of you
Speaker 2: know exploited here, and these guys figure out, oh, well,
Speaker 2: we can do that in other places. So they've trotted
Speaker 2: around to Mexico and France and Poland and other places
Speaker 2: trying to frack in basins there and they've been basically
Speaker 2: shut down in all those places or else the gas
Speaker 2: fields turned out to be dry or the gas too
Speaker 2: difficult to get for whatever reasons. But they've perfected this
Speaker 2: idea of you know, hyping up the possibility of these
Speaker 2: discoveries and then selling you know, creating a corporation that
Speaker 2: they then put on the Vancouver Stock Exchange or some
Speaker 2: other small exchanges and hype up investors in retail investors
Speaker 2: on who are on boards like on Reddit in places
Speaker 2: like that, and they get a lot of money invested
Speaker 2: in this by hyping up the possibility of you know,
Speaker 2: an enormous find in this case in Namibia and Botswana.
Speaker 2: So it really is just I mean, really it's a
Speaker 2: handful of people. When I was in Namibia, I went
Speaker 2: to the company headquarters. You know, it's like, okay, so
Speaker 2: Recount Africa has got this operation that I'm reporting about,
Speaker 2: this drilling, high profile drilling operation. I figured they would
Speaker 2: have a building, a like an office, you know, there
Speaker 2: would be some kind of establishment, And it was basically
Speaker 2: this like rented little office at the end of this
Speaker 2: empty hallway where one I was sitting in a chair
Speaker 2: with like office depot kind of steel furniture. Who was
Speaker 2: in charge of their operations there? And I went in
Speaker 2: and you know, said hello and told him who I was,
Speaker 2: and I was from Rolling Stone and and you know,
Speaker 2: I'd like to go look at the drill sites. And
Speaker 2: he was at first really friendly to me. It was
Speaker 2: really sweet, and like he's like, oh great, welcome to
Speaker 2: the maybe and all that, and then he said, okay,
Speaker 2: we'll arrange this. Let me let me call me back
Speaker 2: in a couple of a couple of hours and we'll
Speaker 2: set it up. And I left and called him a
Speaker 2: couple of hours and he was immediately very gruff and like, no,
Speaker 2: we're not you know, no, no drill visits. Sorry, we're
Speaker 2: not cooperating and hung up the phone on me. He'd
Speaker 2: obviously checked in with somebody and like, you know, we're
Speaker 2: not letting any reporters anywhere near this. But that's the
Speaker 2: kind of operation it is. It's not a you know,
Speaker 2: it's not a big company. It's like four guys, you know,
Speaker 2: who have corralled a bunch of investors, have some money,
Speaker 2: bought a drilling rig and are punching holes in Namibia.
Speaker 3: Its wild. It's just it's wild that that's like a
Speaker 3: thing that you can do.
Speaker 2: And make a lot of money at it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I make a lot of money at it, even
Speaker 3: if there's nothing coming out of those wells. Have they
Speaker 3: what's kind of the status of this project right now?
Speaker 2: Well, they've you know, they've drilled three or four exploratory wells.
Speaker 2: They haven't really they claim to have found what they
Speaker 2: call a working petroleum system. But all of the patrolling
Speaker 2: engineers I've talked to who've looked at their data say
Speaker 2: it's not a working petroleum system. Their stock price is
Speaker 2: you know, under a dollar and has been under a
Speaker 2: dollar for a long time. You know, it was up
Speaker 2: around seven or eight, I think even nine dollars for
Speaker 2: a while a year ago, which was when all the
Speaker 2: insiders cashed out. You know, this company was worth at
Speaker 2: a certain point something like a market cap of like
Speaker 2: two billion dollars, even though you know they'd never found
Speaker 2: any oil and their office was nothing more than a
Speaker 2: you know, steel chair in a in a lonely little
Speaker 2: building in Hindu, Namibia. You know, I don't know where
Speaker 2: it's going to go. They look like they have enough
Speaker 2: operating cash to get to go through another quarter or two.
Speaker 2: But a lot of the main investors have already moved
Speaker 2: on to other companies, and even the key player, Craig Stankey,
Speaker 2: who is the sort of man behind this, he's moved on.
Speaker 2: He's involved in some other companies. So I basically think
Speaker 2: they're going to fade away. I think that, you know,
Speaker 2: they're just going to vanish in this sort of petroleum haze.
Speaker 2: I think that after several years of promising and promising
Speaker 2: and promising, I think even there, you know, cult like
Speaker 2: investors are losing patients with them, and you know, they've
Speaker 2: been talking about it, you know, a joint venture somebody
Speaker 2: one of the big oil majors coming in and you know,
Speaker 2: buying them out or buying out a portion of their operation,
Speaker 2: and which would certainly happen if if there was one
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty billion barrels of oil, sure, yeah they
Speaker 2: would have. It would be a pretty good shape. But
Speaker 2: the fact that nobody has after all this time, it's
Speaker 2: pretty good evidence that even insiders don't believe what they're selling.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, do you is there any sense that they have
Speaker 4: been able to for some period of time at least
Speaker 4: kind of use the discoveries of oil in the southern
Speaker 4: part of Namibia where it shares a border with South Africa.
Speaker 3: Yeah, do you think that they've been they've been kind
Speaker 3: of using that to you know, convince people that oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: there's a lown gas up here too, Oh.
Speaker 2: Totally, well, yeah, they're totally using that. And then also,
Speaker 2: you know, shell has been made a couple there's been
Speaker 2: a couple of big offshore discoveries in Namibia also, you
Speaker 2: know the maybea for a long time, I thought they
Speaker 2: had no oil, there's no gas. They were not they
Speaker 2: you know, Angola to the north, you know, as lots,
Speaker 2: and they just thought this was you know, something that
Speaker 2: you know, was not available to them to develop. And
Speaker 2: then a couple of these big a couple of these
Speaker 2: big offshore discoveries came on which do seem real, and
Speaker 2: then the some other discoveries in the southern part of
Speaker 2: the country. But you know, Africa, as you know, is
Speaker 2: at this sort of turning point right of are they
Speaker 2: going to develop in this old like you know, nineteenth
Speaker 2: century you know, resource curse kind of development path or
Speaker 2: are they going to move in a new direction. And
Speaker 2: I think Namibia is like really at the kind of
Speaker 2: full crum of that decision.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to talk to you more about that
Speaker 3: because I feel like Namibia is in this really interesting place.
Speaker 3: It does. It reminds me a lot of Diana, which
Speaker 3: we've been looking at a lot the last year or so.
Speaker 3: In that Namibia also kind of has this you know,
Speaker 3: reputation as like a real leader in conservation and doing
Speaker 3: so much around wildlife preservation and all of these things,
Speaker 3: and now they're at the precipice of maybe becoming a
Speaker 3: big oil and gas producer. And I'm curious about what
Speaker 3: you found in terms of what I don't know, what
Speaker 3: people think about it there, how the government is reacting,
Speaker 3: how people on the ground think about it. I had
Speaker 3: someone I talked to someone just the other day who said,
Speaker 3: you know, for a long time, folks in global soft
Speaker 3: countries thought about climate change as global North problem, a
Speaker 3: problem that was created by the global North and should
Speaker 3: be solved by it, which is not necessarily untrue, but
Speaker 3: unfortunately everybody is going to be impacted by it too,
Speaker 3: right in these countries, you know, more than most. So Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm just curious what you saw in terms of people
Speaker 3: kind of grappling with all of those things at once.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I mean, I think it's a really
Speaker 2: really important question, and I think probably maybe one of
Speaker 2: the most sort of important kind of questions in the
Speaker 2: whole energy climate debate that's happening in the world right now,
Speaker 2: and it's at the center of the loss and damage
Speaker 2: conversations that are happening, you know, with the IPCC and
Speaker 2: this question of what does the global North, owe the
Speaker 2: global South, and because you know, obviously we, the global North,
Speaker 2: have created this problem of climate change. We're the ones
Speaker 2: who have spent you know, one hundred years dumping ZO
Speaker 2: two into the atmosphere. And as you chronicle better than
Speaker 2: any buddy with oil majors like exce On Mobile knowing
Speaker 2: what they were doing, and you know, there's no question
Speaker 2: about who's responsible for this, right right, And you know
Speaker 2: when you travel in when I traveled in Namibia in Botswana,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, energy poverty is very real. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know it's really important in countries in Namibia, in
Speaker 2: Botswana for more people to get access to energy for
Speaker 2: all kinds of very obvious reasons. And you know, there's
Speaker 2: a legitimate argument to be made that. Look, you know
Speaker 2: that I even in a meeting with the Maybe is
Speaker 2: Drilling the head of their sort of drilling operations oversight
Speaker 2: agency said to me basically is, look, you guys, you
Speaker 2: meing America have look what you've done. You know, you
Speaker 2: drilled everything, and you know, look what's going on now.
Speaker 2: We just okay drilling in the World Willow Project in Alaska.
Speaker 2: Look at what we're doing in the Gulf. I mean
Speaker 2: like you have no right to tell us like not
Speaker 2: to drill. You know, you have no moral standing.
Speaker 3: Here, right like new stop first, you know vibe. Yeah, yeah, that's.
Speaker 2: Really and that's really true. I mean it's really true.
Speaker 2: I mean there's we we do have no moral standing
Speaker 2: to come in there and say, you know, shame on you. However,
Speaker 2: what's very powerful that's happening there and what I encountered
Speaker 2: on the ground was a lot of you know, African activists,
Speaker 2: African sort of you know, new energy thinkers who are saying,
Speaker 2: look forget like what you know people in the US
Speaker 2: want us to do or care. It's like for our
Speaker 2: own good, you know, we need to go on a
Speaker 2: different path because the future is not oil and gas.
Speaker 2: These things are going to turn out to be stranded assets.
Speaker 2: They're going to screw up our country. They're gonna pullue,
Speaker 2: they're gonna do all the things that we can see
Speaker 2: has happened to the US and to other countries who
Speaker 2: have gone down the path of fossil fuel development. Were
Speaker 2: smarter than that. The advantages is to go on this
Speaker 2: new and different path. And Namibia is a great example
Speaker 2: because Namibia's solar resource, for example, is just phenomenal. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's better than California or Nevad. I mean it's really
Speaker 2: they have the real gold mine or the real one
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty billion barrels of oil in Namibia is
Speaker 2: not in the ground. It's in the sun, and the
Speaker 2: possibilities of that are huge. And they're also doing things
Speaker 2: very innovative things like green hydrogen development that they have
Speaker 2: a big project going on that is I think it's
Speaker 2: nine billion dollars or something of investment that is very
Speaker 2: progressive and you know a kind of step towards this
Speaker 2: sort of new energy economy also, so they're at this
Speaker 2: sort of you know, full crumb of this of this change.
Speaker 2: But one of the things that econ Africa story shows is,
Speaker 2: you know, is the ability of the oil and gas
Speaker 2: industry world players to you know, access political officials, to
Speaker 2: to get Okays to do things. They know how to
Speaker 2: pull the levers and you know, they know how to
Speaker 2: you know, pay off the right people and you know,
Speaker 2: get the development going even in ways that you know,
Speaker 2: even if it's not the sort of smartest path or
Speaker 2: the most democratic path or the one that most people
Speaker 2: in the country want, they know how to get it done,
Speaker 2: which is the same story as you saw in Guyana
Speaker 2: and we see in America.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, and then you know there's this this dual
Speaker 3: problem which you pointed to before of like it's not
Speaker 3: just the long term potential impacts around climate, but also
Speaker 3: the near term impacts of you know, air and water
Speaker 3: pollution and the potential for oil spills and all that
Speaker 3: kind of thing too. Did you get like, did you
Speaker 3: get a sense of how well or not the Namibian
Speaker 3: government is positioned to actually like regulate an oil and
Speaker 3: gas industry. No.
Speaker 2: I mean my sense is that you know, they they
Speaker 2: are you know, children in a sandbox in dealing with
Speaker 2: these you know, big experienced oil and gas players, even
Speaker 2: like recon Africa. I mean recon Africa is you know,
Speaker 2: in the classic way kind of trying to exploit this
Speaker 2: in a way. And they're talking about how you know,
Speaker 2: they are. They talk about how they're drilling mud and
Speaker 2: their drilling fluids are one hundred percent organic, right as
Speaker 2: if it's like Gwyneth Paltrow developing. You know, it's like
Speaker 2: it's hilarious, you.
Speaker 3: Know, wow, drilling mud or a mask. Oh wow, that's
Speaker 3: really interesting. Is there a sense like in Guyana, there's
Speaker 3: very much this idea of like, oh, well, you know,
Speaker 3: oil and gas is going to make this rich and
Speaker 3: you know, solve all of our development financing problems, and
Speaker 3: in a very big way. It actually gets talked about
Speaker 3: all the time there. It like that oil money is
Speaker 3: going to pay for climate adaptation, which is such a
Speaker 3: like really clear example of you know what happens when
Speaker 3: the global north does not step up and do you
Speaker 3: know what it should on climate. It's like, okay, now
Speaker 3: we've kind of abandoned these countries to rely on oil
Speaker 3: companies to pay for climate adaptation, and the trade off
Speaker 3: is you know, more drilling and all of that. So anyway,
Speaker 3: I don't know, like is that something that you saw
Speaker 3: in Namibia as well, where like well this might be
Speaker 3: a problem, but it'll bring in money and we need
Speaker 3: that money to deal with all of these other things.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean that's clearly a big part of the
Speaker 2: sort of pitch that a company like riek On Africa makes.
Speaker 2: So though in this case they don't really talk that
Speaker 2: much at least that I saw about climate related adaptation
Speaker 2: and money. It's more just like you know, economic development.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like we're going to bring jobs to
Speaker 2: these poor people. We're going to you know, provide clean
Speaker 2: drinking water. You know, we are a you know, experienced professionals.
Speaker 2: We do this right. We're not a fly by night organization.
Speaker 2: You know, we care about Namibia. Blah blah blah. You know,
Speaker 2: they're very good at you know, pitching this as the
Speaker 2: path for economic prosperity and growth. Right. And then you
Speaker 2: go there and you walk around and you talk to
Speaker 2: people in the villages and things around there, and yes,
Speaker 2: they drilled a couple of drinking wells that cost them
Speaker 2: two or three thousand dollars and that has helped a
Speaker 2: couple of you know, the villages. And I visited some
Speaker 2: of these wells and people were happy that they were there.
Speaker 2: But it's like you know, buying the local soccer team
Speaker 2: new shirts or something. I mean, it's like, you know it.
Speaker 2: They know how to do build up this kind of
Speaker 2: good will at a very cheap cost. And you ask
Speaker 2: them about you know, when I asked people about you know,
Speaker 2: employment and jobs, and you know, they would hire someone
Speaker 2: to like hold a flag on a dirt road for
Speaker 2: a day or two and pay them less than a
Speaker 2: dollar or something. And then that would be the end
Speaker 2: of it. And you know, clearly all this drilling stuff
Speaker 2: is you know, everything there was Haliburton. I mean this
Speaker 2: is all imported stuff, imported engineers. The actual you know,
Speaker 2: job possibilities for local people there are very very small.
Speaker 2: You know, the oil contracts, most of the money is
Speaker 2: you know, going out of the country. The money that's
Speaker 2: not going into the hands of sort of corrupt officials
Speaker 2: got the country. You know, this is it's it's a
Speaker 2: very transparent game that anybody like you who has looked
Speaker 2: at this for a long time knows exactly how it's played.
Speaker 2: And they're really experts at it, and they're really good
Speaker 2: at it, and you know, they have that playbook down.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. What about sort of civil society groups in Namibia,
Speaker 3: so you know, like nonprofits and foundations, but also journalism,
Speaker 3: you know, government watchdog groups things like that. Are any
Speaker 3: of those folks kind of starting to to look at
Speaker 3: this stuff more critically?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they're first of all, they has some
Speaker 2: really good journalism. They have the paper. Then Namibian has
Speaker 2: done some really good coverage of ricon Africa and of
Speaker 2: the problems with withdrilling in these fragile areas. So they
Speaker 2: do have that they they are building. There is a
Speaker 2: growing you know, activists, community Fridays for the Future, other
Speaker 2: organizations like that have a real presence. One of the
Speaker 2: things that you know, really caught my eye and in
Speaker 2: first beginning to explore this story and deciding to actually
Speaker 2: go there and write about it, was seeing some video
Speaker 2: of some of the sort of community meetings where local
Speaker 2: activists were challenging kind of some of Ricon's officials who
Speaker 2: would come in and you know, describe this these drilling
Speaker 2: projects to them, and the local activists really kind of
Speaker 2: got up in arms about it and really challenged them.
Speaker 2: I thought, oh, wow, this is really interesting. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of pushback here.
Speaker 3: That's really interesting is the like is the is the government? Yeah, like,
Speaker 3: how is the government sort of supportive of that or
Speaker 3: not or you know, more on the side of the
Speaker 3: oil companies or sort of neutral. What's what's the like
Speaker 3: relationship like there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean it's it's complex, you know. The
Speaker 2: the Namibian mining minister who I a guy named tom
Speaker 2: al Window who had a kind of community meeting in
Speaker 2: Ruindu maybe, which is the sort of largest town near
Speaker 2: the drilling sites. I was there when he had this
Speaker 2: community meeting and I attended it, and and you know,
Speaker 2: he's very smart guy, very sophisticated, uh you know, but
Speaker 2: very clearly like if there's oil here, we're going to
Speaker 2: develop it. This is our rights.
Speaker 3: You know, we have.
Speaker 2: A right to develop our resources. You know, we want
Speaker 2: to do this and we want and you know, we
Speaker 2: want to do this right. So they're they're kind of
Speaker 2: progressive in that sense, you know, this is there they
Speaker 2: The question is is will that would that actually happen?
Speaker 2: What would doing it right mean in a place like that?
Speaker 2: And you know it's like can you drill in you know,
Speaker 2: for oil and gas the right way in Usemite Valley?
Speaker 2: I mean no, I mean you can't. Right, there's if
Speaker 2: you're going to drill for oil and gas and Musemite Valley,
Speaker 2: it doesn't there's no right or wrong way. It's a
Speaker 2: disaster any way you look at it. Right. And so
Speaker 2: the same kind of thing with the Okamango Delta. It's
Speaker 2: like there's no right or wrong way to drill here.
Speaker 2: You just this should this should not this should not
Speaker 2: be happening, right. I mean if you value this, this
Speaker 2: ecosystem and this this planet, the way that a lot
Speaker 2: of people do so, so I think that, you know,
Speaker 2: what's interesting in this story is that, you know, by
Speaker 2: choosing to drill in this we're very close to this
Speaker 2: fragile area. They they really kind of kicked off a
Speaker 2: kind of attention and got people like me and activists
Speaker 2: and others to say, hey, what the hell are you doing?
Speaker 2: What is going on here? That I think they regret
Speaker 2: because I think that they would like this to have
Speaker 2: just gone through in a much quieter way. And there
Speaker 2: certainly is other drilling and exploration going on in Namibia
Speaker 2: that I'm not writing about, and you've probably never heard of,
Speaker 2: and I've probably never heard of, and you know that
Speaker 2: is going on quietly under the radar. But these guys
Speaker 2: were bold and stupid, and they just arrogant and just thought, oh,
Speaker 2: what the hell, We're gonna drill right next to the
Speaker 2: Okamango Delta and lo and behold. People don't like that,
Speaker 2: including a lot of Namibians who are you know, we're
Speaker 2: marching in the streets and holding up flags. But we
Speaker 2: know what's really interesting too, is that you really feel,
Speaker 2: or I really felt when I was there, compared to
Speaker 2: covering a similar kind of you know, meetings and activism
Speaker 2: in the US is fear. There's a real fear there
Speaker 2: of what the oil companies could do to them. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of I talked to a number of activists
Speaker 2: who said, you know, I'm talking to you, but you know,
Speaker 2: if I disappear next week, you know you need to know,
Speaker 2: you know who did this or who who is where
Speaker 2: to look first kind of thing, right, And so you
Speaker 2: really feel the kind of courage of speaking out there
Speaker 2: in a way that you know, I don't really feel
Speaker 2: when I cover similar kinds of events here in the
Speaker 2: US or in Western Europe or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's interesting, awesome, Well, I really appreciate you
Speaker 3: talking to me about it. More. It's a great story.
Speaker 3: We will link to it in the show notes and
Speaker 3: send everybody over to read it, and definitely we'll be
Speaker 3: following to see what becomes of recon Africa.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think I think they're They're like a little
Speaker 2: soap bubble that's gonna like pop, you know, right really
Speaker 2: soon here. I don't think they're going to be around
Speaker 2: for long, but you know, who knows, who knows?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, awesome, Well, thanks Jeff, I appreciate it, And yeah,
Speaker 3: looking forward to seeing whatever you do next.
Speaker 2: Thank you Amy.
Speaker 1: That's it for this time. Next week we are back
Speaker 1: in Diana for the final episode of this season. Don't
Speaker 1: miss it. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.