By Jason Mclure
Tuesday, January 06, 2009

“Petronas and similar companies should consider the damage to their reputation if they effectively enter into a regime engaged in war crimes,” the Ogaden National Liberation Front said in a statement e-mailed to reporters today in the capital, Addis Ababa. “We urge Petronas to exercise corporate responsibility and steer clear” of the Ogaden region.

The warning comes after a Jan. 3 article in The Reporter, an Addis Ababa-based newspaper, which said Petronas had hired a United Arab Emirates-based company to resume exploration in the region.

Ethnic Somali rebels from the ONLF are seeking independence for Ethiopia’s Ogaden region, an arid area twice the size of England largely inhabited by nomads. In April 2007, the group attacked a Petronas exploration site operated by China’s Zhongyuan Petroleum Exploration Bureau, killing nine Chinese workers and 65 Ethiopians.

The attack triggered a counterinsurgency campaign by the Ethiopian army in the second half of 2007. The area is still under the control of Ethiopia’s military, which has barred foreign reporters from traveling independently in the region.

Tania Landsberg, group communications manager at Petronas’s African unit Engen couldn’t immediately comment when Bloomberg News reached her on her mobile phone. Petronas owns 80 percent of Engen.

No viable oil reserves have yet been discovered in eastern Ethiopia. Ethiopia and Somalia fought wars in 1963-1964 and 1977 over the region.

Wahde Belay, a spokesman for Ethiopia’s Foreign Ministry, didn’t answer calls to his mobile phone. Calls to Alemayehu Tegenu, Ethiopia’s minister for mines and energy, didn’t connect.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jason McLure in Addis Ababa via Johannesburg at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net.

Source: Bloomberg, Jan 06, 2009

xinfiniin @ 1/7/2009 4:59 PM EST  We have recieved a fax from Petronas in our Washington Offices today. Contents of the fax will be made available to all readers on friday. Fiqi, Hawd is laylasamatar the harlot! dont bother responding to her ill fated comments.

Caraweelos @ 1/7/2009 4:54 PM EST  Fiqi, Lol! do I irritate you that much, take aim and  throw your size 8 1/2 shoe.

fiqicigaal @ 1/7/2009 3:41 PM EST  Caraweelos In fact you are holding at the wrong end of the rope and indeed you need advice to find your way in life. The best business in all the world is that of making friends (you sound lonely) and no investment in any where  will pay larger dividends. Life is more than stocks and bonds , and love than rate percent. Forget the Milk Powder and the Black Oil, you do not have enough brains for that stuff. In your case , investment in people will pay you the best interest. In three months time i will make review on your situation and we will talk more  about investment. Please do not hesitate to contact me if the timing is inconvenient, of course you have my tel.

Caraweelos @ 1/7/2009 1:29 PM EST  Gaadhka adiga kuma haysto ee waxaan haystaa Fiqi. I can't make up my mind, which commodity I should invest Powder Milk or Black Oil in the Stock Exchange. Please advice.

fiqicigaal @ 1/7/2009 10:55 AM EST  I have in the years learn't to forgive my fellow Somalis when they stumble on me or may i rather say on the long suffering people of ogaden even the likes of Hawd the menace.The  hatred he is carrying is a live coal in his heart, far more damaging to himself than those whom he call the longfoot. And isn't it true that the stup*d neither forgives nor forgets, they will also play the blame card even when whole Somalia has disintegrated into clan enclaves.