Oil in Haiti and Oil Refinery - an old notion for FortLiberte as atransshipment terminal for US supertankers
Another economic reason for the ouster of President Aristide and current UN occupation (See also - Haiti's Riches: Interview with Ezili Dantò on Mining in Haiti and Answers to media questions about Haiti.)
By: margueritelaurent.com on: 22.01.2010 [07:53 ]
Located in the North-Eastern part of Haiti and abounding with tourist sites, Fort-Liberté is a city where the first declaration of Haiti's independence took place on November 29, 1803. It has one of the most captivating historical sites in the area called Fort Dauphin known today as Fort-Liberté. This fort was built around 1731 under the command of Louis XV, king of France, and its ruins are the greatest evidences of its genius designers who chose the most strategic point to built it in order to fight off upcoming invaders. In addition to its architectural charm, it overlooks a splendid bay of turquoise seawater, which sparkles under the bright rays of the tropical sun.
There is evidence that the United States found oil in Haiti decades ago and due to the geopolitical circumstances and big business interests of that era made the decision to keep Haitian oil in reserve for when Middle Eastern oil had dried up. This is detailed by Dr. Georges Michel in an article dated March 27, 2004 outlining the history of oil explorations and oil reserves in Haiti and in the research of Dr. Ginette and Daniel Mathurin.
There is also good evidence that these very same big US oil companies and their inter-related monopolies of engineering and defense contractors made plans, decades ago, to use Haiti's deep water ports either for oil refineries or to develop oil tank farm sites or depots where crude oil could be stored and later transferred to small tankers to serve U.S. and Caribbean ports. This is detailed in a paper about the Dunn Plantation at Fort Liberte in Haiti.
Ezili's HLLN underlines these two papers on Haiti's oil resources and the works of Dr. Ginette and Daniel Mathurin in order to provide a view one will not find in the mainstream media nor anywhere else as to the economic and strategic reasons the US has constructed its fifth largest embassy in the world - fifth only besides the US embassy in China, Iraq, Iran and Germany - in tiny Haiti, post the 2004 Haiti Bush regime change.
The facts outlined in the Dunn Plantation and Georges Michel papers, considered together, reasonably unveil part of the hidden reasons UN Special Envoy to Haiti, Bill Clinton, is giving the UN occupation a facelift so that its troops stay in Haiti for the duration.
Ezili's HLLN has consistently maintained, since the beginning of the 2004 Bush regime change in Haiti, that the 2004 US invasion of Haiti used UN troops as its military proxy to avoid the charge of imperialism and racism. We have also consistently maintained that the UN/US invasion and occupation of Haiti is not about protecting Haitian rights, security, stability or long-term domestic development but about returning the Washington Chimeres/gangsters - the traditional Haitian Oligarchs - to power, establishing free trade not fair trade, the Chicago-boys' death plan, neoliberal policies, keeping the minimum wage at slave wage levels, plundering Haiti's natural resources and riches, not to mention using the location benefit that Haiti lies between Cuba and Venezuela. Two countries the US has unsuccessfuly orchestrated regime changes in and continues to pursue. In the Dunn Plantation and Georges Michel papers, we find and deploy further details as to why the US is in Haiti with this attempted Bill Clinton facelift to the UN's continued occupations.
For, no matter the disguise or media spins it's also about Haiti's oil reserves, and about securing Haiti's deep-water ports as transshipment location for oil or for tank sites to store crude oil without interference from a democratic government beholden to its informed population's welfare. (See Reynold's deep water port in Miragoane/NIPDEVCO property- scroll to photos in middle of the page.)
In Haiti, between 1994 to 2004 when the people had a voice in government, there was an intense grassroots movement to figure out how to exploit Haiti's resources. There was a plan, where in the book "Investing In People: Lavalas White Book under the direction of Jean-Betrand Aristide (Investir Dans L'Humain), the Haitian majority "were not only told where the resources were, but that — they did not have the skills and technology to actually extract the gold, to extract the oil."
The Aristide/Lavalas plan, as I've articulated in the Haiti's Riches Interview, was "to engage in some sort of private/public partnership. Where both the Haitian people's interest would be taken care of and of course the private interest would take their profits. But I think it was around that time we had St. Genevieve saying they did not like the Haitian government. Obviously, they didn't like this plan. They don't like the Haitian people to know where their resources are. But in this book, it was the first time in Haitian history, it was written in Kreyòl and in French. And there was a national discussion all over the radio in Haiti with respect to all these various resources of Haiti, where they were located, and how the Haitian government was intending on trying to build sustainable development through those resources. So that's what you had before the 2004 Bush regime change/Coup D'etat in Haiti. With the Coup D'etat now, though the people know where these resources are because this book exists, they don't know who these foreign companies are. What they're profit margins are. What the environmental protection rules and regulations to protect them are. Many folks, for instance, in the North talk about losing their property, having people come in with guns and taking over their property. So that's where we are." (Haiti's Riches: Interview with Ezili Dantò on Mining in Haiti.)
The mainstream media, owned by the multinational companies fleecing Haiti, certainly won't lay out for public consumption that the UN/US invasion and occupation of Haiti is to secure Haiti's oil, strategic position, cheap labor, deep water ports, mineral resources (iridium, gold, copper, uranium, diamond, gas reserves), lands, waterfronts, offshore resources for privatization or the exclusive use of the world's wealthy oligarchs and US big oil monopolies. (See, Map showing some of Haiti's mining and mineral wealth, including five oil sites in Haiti;Oil in Haiti by Dr. Georges Michel; Excerpt from the Dunn Plantation paper; Haiti is full of oil, say Ginette and Daniel Mathurin; There is a multinational conspiracy to illegally take the mineral resources of the Haitian people: Espaillat Nanita revealed that in Haiti there are huge resources of gold and other minerals, and Is UN proxy occupation of Haiti masking US securing oil/gas reserves from Haiti).
In fact, the current Haitian authority-under-the-US/UN-occupation that is in charge of regulating exploration licenses and mining in Haiti does not explain, in any relevant or systematic manner, to the Haitian majority about the companies buying up, post 2004, Haiti's deep water ports, what their profit shares with the Haitian nation are, where are the accounting of said shares owed to the people of Haiti, nor explain the environmental effects of the massive excavations of Haiti's mountains and waters going on right now. Instead, the Director of Mining in Haiti blithely maintains that "further research will be necessary to confirm the existence of oil in Haiti."
In an excerpt taken from the article posted Oct 9, 2000 by Bob Perdue entitled "Lonnie Dunn, third owner of the Dauphin plantation," we learn that:
"On November 8, 1973, Martha C. Carbone, American Embassy, Port-au-Prince, sent a letter to the Office of Fuels and Energy, Department of State, in which she stated that the Government of Haiti "...had before it proposals from eight different groups to establish a trans-shipment port for petroleum in one or more of the Haitian deep water ports. Some of the projects include construction of a refinery...." She further commented that the Embassy was acquainted with three firms: Ingram Corporation of New Orleans, Southern California Gas Company and Williams Chemical Corporation of Florida.. (According to John Moseley, the New Orleans company was probably "Ingraham", not Ingram.)
In the November 6, 1972 issue of Oil and Gas Journal, Leo B. Aalund commented in his article "Vast Flight of Refining Capacity from U.S. Looms",.: "Finally, 'Baby Doc' Duvalier's Haiti is participating with a group that wants to build a transshipment terminal off Fort Liberte, Haiti". One of the proposals referred to by Carbone was undoubtedly submitted by Dunn interests.
Additionally, we learn from this article that "Lonnie Dunn who owned the Dauphin plantation "planned to straighten and widen the entrance to the Fort Liberte bay so that super tankers could be brought in and the cargo distributed to smaller tankers for transfer to U.S. and Caribbean ports that could not accommodate large ships..." (Photo of Fort Liberte, Haiti).
We've put on the Ezili's HLLN website the other relevant portions of this paper that talks about the corporate eye the US has had, for decades, on Fort Liberte in Haiti as an ideal deep water port for the multinationals to establish an oil refinery.
In the 50s and 60s there was little need for Haiti's ports or oil as the Middle Eastern monopoly was gushing dollars galore. No need for these oil monopolies to undercut themselves by putting more oil on the market to cut their profits. Manipulated scarcity thy name is profit! or, did I mean capitalism?
But the oil embargo of the 70s, the advent of OPEC, the rise of the Venezuelan factor, the Gulf Crisis followed by the Iraq war for oil, all has made Haiti a better bet for the three-piece suits and their military mercernaries called "Western governments", yep, a way easier place to pillage and plunder behind the "bringing democracy" or "humanitarian aid" public covers.
Serendipitously with Haiti's 2004 Bush-the-son Regime Change, a follow up to the 1991 Bush-the-father's military coup, we find, flurries of Congressional "discussions" about off-shore drillings in preparation, perhaps, to the eventual "revelation" as written in the Dunn paper years ago, that "there is a need for supertankers that require deep-water ports which are not readily available along the U.S. East Coast - nor ...welcome...for environmental and other consideration will (not) permit the construction of domestic refinery capacity on the scale that will be required."
Occidental side of the Fort
Despite being renovated by ISPAN in the mid' 1990, it is now in a very bad shape. All the balls and most of the canons have been stolen along with most of the cut stones paving its alleys and imported from Nantes, France. They were quite simply stolen by people not fully aware of their illegal act. Moreover, many holes within the fort enclosure are a potential threat to the preservation of the Fort in case of rain.
We underline that Haiti is an ideal dumping ground for the US/Canada/France and now Brazil, because environmental, human rights and health issues and other considerations in the US and in these other countries, would probably not permit the construction of domestic refinery capacity on the scale that new explorations of oil in this hemisphere will required. So, why not pick the most militarily defenseless country in the Western Hemisphere and dot it with such unsafe initiatives behind a UN multi-national "humanitarian" mask and fatherly Bill Clinton's snowy white hair and smiling face?
It is relevant to note here that most of Haiti's major deep water ports have been privatized since the Bush 2004 regime change in Haiti. It is also relevant to note here what I wrote last year in the piece titled Is the UN military proxy occupation of Haiti masking US securing oil/gas reserves from Haiti: "If there's substantial oil and gas reserves in Haiti, the US/Euro genocide and crimes against the Haitian population has not yet begun. Ayisyen leve zye nou anwo, kenbe red. Nou fèk komanse goumen. (See also, John Maxwell's Is there oil in Haiti and Haiti Forum 2009.)
The revelations of Dr. Georges Michel and the Dunn Plantation papers seem to positively answer the question that there is substantail oil reserves in Haiti. And our Ezili Dantò Witness Project information is that it's indeed being tapped and contracted out, but not for the benefit of Haitians or Haiti's authentic development. That's why there was a need to marginalize the Haitian masses through the ouster of Haiti's democratically elected Aristide government and put in the UN guns and UN occupation that today masks the US/Euros' (with a piece to the new power that is Brazil) securing Haiti's oil and gas reserves and other mineral riches such as gold, iridium, copper, diamond and underwater treasures. (Majescor and SACG Discover a New Copper-Gold in Haiti, Oct. 6, 2009; See, Haiti's Riches and There is a multinational conspiracy to illegally take the mineral resources of the Haitian people: Espaillat Nanita revealed that in Haiti there are huge resources of gold and other minerals.)
Today, the US and Euros say they are happy with Haiti's "security gains" and "stable" government. To wit: the last elections the US/UN presided over in Haiti excluded Haiti's majority party from participation. Haiti's jails are filled, indefinitely detained without trial or hearings, since 2004, with thousands upon thousands of community organizers, poor civilians and political dissenters that the UN/US label "gangsters." Site Soley has been "pacified." There are more NGOs and charitable organizations -about 10,000 - in Haiti then in any where in the world since 2004 and the Haitian people are a million times worst off than they were before this US/NGO civilization (otherwise also known as the "International Community") and their thugs, thieves and corporate death squads came and disenfranchised nine million blacks. Food prices are so high, some resort to eating dirt in the form of cookies to assuage Clorox hunger.
Lovinsky Pierre Antoine, the head of Haiti's largest human rights organization was disappeared in 2007 in UN occupied Haiti with no investigation done. Between 2004 and 2006 under the Western occupation, first by the US Marines then the UN multinational troops headed by Brazil, from 14,000 to 20,000 Haitians, mostly who opposed the occupation and regime change, were slaughtered with total impunity. More Haitian children are out of school today in 2009 than before the US/NGO "civilization" came post 2004. Under the US-imposed Boca Raton regime ,Haiti's Supreme Court was fired and brand new and paid-for judges, without any Constitutional authority inherited from the people of Haiti's mandate, took the place of the legitimate judges and law officers and are still metering out paid-for rulings in 2009 under the UN occupation and international community's tutelage.
And, as a matter of power, privilege, inequity and the violence of neocolonialism, white-sex abusers and pedophiles are having a hay day and human trafficking of Haiti children are at an all-time high. It is no revelation that in the stakes of corruption in Haiti or in Africa that a great many of the foreign NGOs along with their bourgeois/elite/pastors/priests and others are destroying poor children's life with absolute impunity while being painted as "saints" in their press back home the better to raise more funds to masturbate on Black pain some more.
Yet, Special UN Envoy, Bill Clinton, tells us "I am serving the next two years as a US Special Envoy to Haiti...This is the best chance in my lifetime that Haitians have ever had to escape the chains of their past..." The former President added, "If Haiti pulls out of this it will be in no small measure because of the efforts of non-governmental organizations."
What that means is perhaps this is the Haitian subcontractors, ruling oligarchs and US/Euro military industrial complexes' best chance to finally impose their chains on Haiti for good. Tap Haiti's oil, keep it so poor it will be grateful for slave wages at sweatshops. Let sexual tourism and the white sex-abusers do as they will. Transfer quickly more Haiti properties to foreigners and render the "good" Haitians as maids, butlers and servants in US/Euro-owned Haiti tourist resorts like the rest of the Caribbean. Militarize Haiti so that dissent is not possible even as a thought. That's perhaps UN Envoy, Bill Clinton's "best chance in my lifetime" scenario for Haiti. Nothing else makes sense. (See, HLLN comment on new IMF figures indicating Haiti is no longer the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and Does the Western economic calculation of wealth fit Haiti -fit Dessalines idea of wealth distribution?NO! and Comparing crime, poverty and violence in the rest of the Hemisphere to Haiti and Pointing Guns at Starving Haitians: Violent Haiti is a myth and The Western vs the Real Narrative on Haiti and No other national group anywhere in the world sends more money home than Haitians living abroad.)
Going shopping in Haiti:
"It is organized violence on top which creates individual violence at the bottom." --Emma Goldman
Though they exist and form the exception to the rule, there are very few Paul Farmers, Margaret Trosts or Bill Quigleys in the Haitian world. And even amongst "the exceptions," the number whittles down to almost zero in terms of foreign heroes who can be expected to go the lifetime-distance without making "unusual alliances" or joining the status quo that vies for the soul of Black folks. Few who would HEAR, Lila Watson who said, "If you have come here to help me then you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine then let us work together." This sort of thinking that inspires self-reliance not dependency and provide the respectful conditions for those in great need to, in liberty, dignity and identify, realize their own needs is not what compels the International Community in Haiti right now.
For, in the age of humanitarian imperialism, globalization, financial colonialism and neocolonial-violence obfuscated behind forced assimilation and cultural imperialism, what exactly do some whites or modern missionaries go shopping in Haiti for: sex, self-esteem, adulation, fun, challenge, adventure, the boost in serotonin-consumption, to exploit cheap labor, plunder Haiti's natural resources, for self-improvement, recovery, to use Haiti as in excuse to raise funds for their salaries and living expenses to live the old Dixie's planters' life with exploitation black sex on tap, or as an easy way to gain international expert credentials in any field and move up the socio-economic ladder at home and/or for securing the good tropical lifestyle with mountain and oceanfront houses, the waiters, maids, gardeners and seafood they couldn't obtain as easily in their Euro/US countries where they are the majority, ordinary, can’t use the white privilege inheritance without some scrutiny and are not as exotic and special as in neocolonial devastated Haiti. It’s all hidden, of course, behind the mask of being good humanitarians, altruistic charity workers and helping Haitians. (See also, Ezili Dantò Reviews Travesty in Haiti: A true account of Christian missions, orphanages, fraud, food aid and drug trafficking (a book by Timothy T. Schwartz, Ph.D.); Haiti's Holocaust and Middle Passage Continues; The Slavery in Haiti the Media Won't Expose ; UN Peacekeepers and Humanitarian Aid Workers raping, molesting and abusing Haitian children; The-To-Tell-The-Truth-About-Haiti Forum 2009; I am the History of Rape: HLLN Letter to UN asking for investigative reports on UN soldier's rapes in Haiti; and, Proposed solutions to create a new paradigm.)
Ezili Dantò/HLLN
Oil in Haiti, by Dr. Georges Michel , webzinemaker.com, March 27, 2004 This English translation is an HLLN courtersy for our English speakers. Please refer to the French Original.
Since time immemorial, it has been no secret that deep in the earthy bowels of the two states that share the island of Haiti and the surrounding waters that there are significant, still untapped deposits of oil. One knows not why they are still untapped.
Since the early twentieth century, the physical and political map of the island of Haiti, erected in 1908 by Messrs. Alexander Poujol and Henry Thomasset, reported a major oil reservoir in Haiti near the source of the Rio Todo El Mondo, Tributary Right Artibonite River, better known today as the River Thomonde. (Perhaps the word Thomonde is derived from de Todo El Mondo?) The deposit of oil in question straddles the boundary between the boroughs of Hinche and Mirebalais in a mountainous area located at the foot of the chain of the Black Mountains, direction due west of Thomond.
The same map indicates an oil reservoir in the Dominican plain of Azua, a short distance north of the Dominican Republic in the town of Azua. According to our information, the latter oil field located in the Dominican Republic had actually been operating in the first half of this century, produced up to 60,000 barrels of oil per day and had closed because it was considered at the time "insufficiently profitable." Also in the Dominican Republic, there was announced, in 1982, a discovery, in front of the plain of the Azua, of a huge oil field offshore at the coast of Barahona. But this deposit has been left untapped.
Those who have traveled from Port-au-Prince to Santo-Domingo can testify that the plain of the Azua and its coastline very much resembles the area of Vieux Bourg d'Aquin and its related coast. Therefore, reasonable chances are that there is hydrocarbon deposits in the counterpart Haitian region, especially as we are told that in the plains of Cayes there is geological evidence of the presence of oil, as well as at the Bay of Cayes, Les Cayes and between Ile a Vache.
In 1975 we bathed in the waters of Les Cayes and noticed that our feet was covered by a sort of black oil seeping from the seabed. A fisherman from the place explained that this was not uncommon in the area.
He reports similar phenomena in other regions of Haiti - it seems so in the plains of Leogane and at the foothills of Morne-à-Cabrit. It's also been reported that there is the presence of oil shale in the province of Grand Anse.
There are still many places on our island (Haiti and Dominican Republic) that meet all the geological criteria for the presence of hydrocarbons. In Haiti, include the plains of Cayes, the plain of Leogane, the plain of Cul-de-Sac, the Gonaives plain and the deserted Savannah, the Plaine du Nord. Ile de la Gonave and corresponding coastlines to the off-shore deposits. In this list, do not forget the large sedimentary basin of the Central Plateau of Haiti.
In the course of the 1950s, the Knappen-Tippen-Abbet company (nicknamed by the local people "the company for small bread and butter") conducted drillings in La Gonave, in the Cul-de-Sac plains, in the Plateau-Central and in the region of Gonaives. All of these drillings had proved extremely promising and the results were beyond expectations. However, the big multinational oil companies operating in Haiti pushed for the discovered deposits not to be exploited. Haiti was neither Saudi Arabia nor Kuwait. At a time when a barrel of crude oil sold for just over a dollar, and the Persian Gulf provided oil galore, there was no reason for these companies to put in production these oil fields deemed much less profitable. Especially while ARAMCO then known as the Arabian American Oil Company was, rain or shine in Arabia, at a low price, even to the point of looting the precious oil resources of this kingdom.
The attitude of these big multinational oil companies was "We shall keep the Haitian deposits and other such layers of deposits in reserve for the 21st century when the Middle Eastern jackpot are depleted." This is what happened! The wells of Knappen-Tippen-Abbet were numbered, carefully locked or sealed with cement and forgotten.
The reports of the huge drillings were not, it seems, supposed to be made public to the Haitians. Do you think they would ever hand over to a bunch of backward negroes, information that would allow them to work towards their own economic liberation? This would make them too strong and give too much power to little Haiti.
Haitians had to wait half a century or a century for that. However, the successful countryside of the Knappen-Tibben-Abbet company, allowed for a great deal of opportunity to many Haitian schools, preparing primary school students for their certificate and studying in the geography textbook of Haiti from the Brothers of Christian Instruction, to learn that our land had oil reservoirs in the Central Plateau and La Gonave. This, did not fall on deaf ears ...
It is generally known, in all circles, that there are petroleum hydrocarbon deposits in the bowels of the island of Haiti. But the petroleum industry/circles are not eager to put into production these so readily available Haiti oil reserves. Other more important areas were already identified as major oil producing regions of the world. The thinking was there will always be time to think about the island of Haiti.
However, these big oil entities and the powerful nations did think of us during the Gulf crisis when Kuwaiti deposits, the Saudis and other oil reservoirs were threatened by Saddam Hussein. If the Cubans had not made a great effort by themselves to put their own oil in exploitation, nobody would have done it for them. If it were not for the efforts of the Cubans, Cuban oil would still be housed in the bowels of the earth, as it remains for Haitian oil. The ball is in our camp ...
If the big oil companies are not interested in our oil, we should ask our Cuban neighbors to come help us exploit it. In their dramatic search for oil, the Cubans have developed technology and know-how that we could, in return for their services, yield to the Cubans part of our domestic oil production and give them a share of profits. A mission of government officials and businessmen in Haiti should leave for Cuba in this direction.
The sad case of the international embargo clearly shows that we must fend for ourselves, and especially that we do not have to wait for the OK from the United States when our vital interests are in peril. The whole of our society is aware and sees well how our big northern neighbor has treated us and shall treat us in the future. Haiti will be saved by Haitians and Haitians only, that is the principle lesson of the embargo.
If our oil was available, we would not have been shamefully forced to capitulate after the oil embargo decided in defiance of international law with their infamous Resolution 841, by the great powers now bearing the pompous and ridiculous name of "international community".
Our government, our big businessmen, our ultra-liberal economists, our big smugglers, our Chicago-Servant-Boys, our anti-nationalists and others ruffians, prefer to import everything, even air, rather than to put to use the resources of Haiti. With a zeal that is hard to understand, they blindly obey the bidding orders of the IMF and World Bank, and are put together with these two organizations to destroy the Haitian economy, especially our valuable agriculture.
Nevertheless, they find themselves caught out with us. And when imperialism, to meet its gruesome intentions, decides to impose an embargo, the last embargo (there will be perhaps more in the future, who knows?) has proven the need to accelerate economic integration with the Dominican Republic.
Both Republics should undertake, by treaty, to provide each other with some oil no matter the decisions of a third party. A trans-island pipeline, Barahona to Port-au-Prince, could be part of this oil integration between the two countries that share the island.
While waiting to be able to consume our own oil, whose surpluses shall also provide the valuable currency we need, we should increase the country's storage capacity for oil products and consider how to stockpile important strategic reserves on the territory of the Republic. The oil embargo of 1991 is also a strong argument for rebuilding our railways.
Dr Georges Michel
27 mars 2004
Translated by Ezili Dantò of HLLN,
Oct. 2009 Please refer to the French Original.
§
Why Clinton, the UN occupation and another reasons for being in Haiti: Deep Water Ports -
The following excerpt was taken from: Lonnie Dunn, third owner of the Dauphin plantation (emphasis added).
"...On November 8, 1973, Martha C. Carbone, American Embassy, Port-au-Prince, sent a letter to the Office of Fuels and Energy, Department of State, in which she stated that the Government of Haiti "...had before it proposals from eight different groups to establish a trans-shipment port for petroleum in one or more of the Haitian deep water ports. Some of the projects include construction of a refinery...." She further commented that the Embassy was acquainted with three firms: Ingram Corporation of New Orleans, Southern California Gas Company and Williams Chemical Corporation of Florida.. (According to John Moseley, the New Orleans company was probably "Ingraham", not Ingram.)
In the November 6, 1972 issue of Oil and Gas Journal, Leo B. Aalund commented in his article "Vast Flight of Refining Capacity from U.S. Looms",.: "Finally, 'Baby Doc' Duvalier's Haiti is participating with a group that wants to build a transshipment terminal off Fort Liberte, Haiti". One of the proposals referred to by Carbone was undoubtedly submitted by Dunn interests.
I suspect that in this project Dunn was tied in with Southern California Gas Co. According to Mike Shanks, Dunn was involved with McCollum, a Texaco V.P. and James Knapp, a V.P. of Pacific Lighting. At that time, Southern California Gas Co. was a subsidiary of Pacific Lighting (which became Pacific Enterprises in 1988). (According to John Moseley of the Brown and Root engineering firm, the associate referred to here by Shanks as a Texaco V.P. was H. M. McCollum of Conoco.) (According to Mrs. Eleanor Searle McCollum, her late husband was Leonard F. "Mc" McCollum, President and CEO of Conoco Oil for 20 years. She added in a letter: "There is no H.M. McCollum."
# To the Carbone letter, George M. Bennsky, Director, Office of Fuels and Energy, responded: "U.S. Policy heavily favors deep-water ports in our own waters rather than those in non-U.S. locations. "There is, however, some doubt whether environmental and other considerations will permit the construction of domestic refinery capacity on the scale that will be required".
Dunn planned to straighten and widen the entrance to the bay so that super tankers could be brought in and the cargo distributed to smaller tankers for transfer to U.S. and Caribbean ports that could not accommodate large ships. He further intended to develop a facility to break down old ships for scrap and repair others. According to Albert Hill, who came to HASCO as an engineer and ended up as President of that company, another player in Dunn's harbor scheme was Daniel Ludwig whose name is also associated with efforts to develop the Amazon Basin.
The sinuous entrance to the bay is about 2.5 kilometers long and 400 meters across at its narrowest; three points jut out from the east bank, each the site of an ancient French fort. The larger of these, still a rather spectacular site, is Fort Labouc on the Atlantic Ocean at the east side of the entrance to the bay.. The 1:50,000 "Phaeton" topographic map of the area, prepared in 1963, indicates the depth of the entrance to the bay is at least 10 fathoms throughout; some areas are much deeper. A substantial area in the center of the bay has a depth of 12 to 14 fathoms.
An engineering study was conducted by Charley Vaughn, Basil Maxwell and John Moseley of Brown and Root Co., Marine Division, to provide a cost estimate for a dredger to widen the entrance to Fort Liberte Bay. They were flown from Miami to Port-au-Prince in Dunn's King Air turboprop and after clearing customs were flown to Fort Liberte on a Plantation aircraft. "With all that sisal it looked like Arizona or northern Mexico", said Moseley. The plan was to widen the entrance by slicing away the projections on the east side, which would have destroyed three of the old French forts. Drill cores indicated the surface layer of coral was underlain by gravel. To enable a large tanker to turn around, a "finger pier" would be installed from the south shore to the deeper center of the bay, about 1000 meters northwest of Fort Saint Joseph.. This long narrow berth for two ships - the project was planned for ships of 300,000 tons - also provided a trestle for a ship to shore pipeline and was large enough to drive a truck to the end of the pier..
A logical point for the foot of the pier might have been where Fort Saint Joseph projects into the bay and this development could have destroyed that ancient structure. However, according to John Moseley, there was to be an angle turn in the trestle to land to the southeast of the Plantation headquarters to a suitable tank farm site and avoid disturbing the fort.
According to Moseley, the plan was to develop a tank farm where crude oil could be stored and later transferred to small tankers to serve U.S. and Caribbean ports. There were no plans for a refinery. According to Jean Claude Leger, Frederick Snare Co., Chappell Hill, Texas, would construct the oil transfer facility. (Moseley indicates the Frederick Snare Co. was probably headquartered in Chapel Hill, NC, not in Texas.)
Moseley does not recall the time of his visit but it must have been during the early years of Dunn's ownership of the Plantation because, by late 1973 the Government of Haiti apparently had the Dunn group's proposal in hand and it seems likely there would be a considerable time lapse between the B&R engineering study and submission of the proposal. Moseley's visit was clearly prior to the time sisal harvest and decortication was renewed because when I asked,: "What was happening on the Plantation at the time?", he responded: "There was not much activity, just grinding poverty and there was only one white on the Plantation at the time, a young man with a German accent". There were only about 100 cattle (high-dollar type) with more to be airlifted in. Dunn's son, Lonnie, Jr., "Ran the cattle end.".All this came to naught, probably because of the October 1973 Arab oil embargo following the Yom Kippur War...." (Haiti: Dauphin Plantation: Lonnie Dunn, third owner.)
(Ezili Danto's Note: But times have changed .... There is a need for "supertankers that required deep-water ports which are not readily available along the U.S. east coast - nor were (..) welcome..for environmental and other considerations will (not) permit the construction of domestic refinery capacity on the scale that will be required"
Thus, in addition to the details outline in Haiti's Riches and elsewhere by Ezili's HLLN, part of the reason for the US to want Haiti is because of its many deep water ports, especially "Fort Liberte Bay and its potential as a deep-water port.")
There is a multinational conspiracy to illegally take the mineral resources of the Haitian people
Espaillat Nanita revealed that in Haiti there are huge resources of gold and other minerals by ESPACINSULAR, SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic, November 17, 2009 (Translated from Spanish original)
The former president of the Dominican Petroleum Refinery (REFIDOMSA), Leopoldo Espaillat Nanita, considers that one of the solutions to the Haitian State's problems in paying its foreign debt and to solve its overwhelming socio-economic issues is to be found in deposits of gold and other minerals that Haiti owns.
Espaillat Nanita revealed that according to geological studies and research conducted on Haitian soil, indicating that the nation shares with the Dominican Republic gold deposit, untapped world's largest and a little known and rare mineral that is vital for building of spacecraft and other appliances extraterrestrial iridium. These two resources are sufficient to alleviate the "poor" reality of those born in Haiti.
Espaillat Nanita also claims that these resources are poorly understood because of a multinational conspiracy that aims to extract Haiti's natural wealth, especially those derived from minerals that abound in the neighboring state.
REFIDOMSA's former president said that this group of firms and individuals in State are dedicated to fostering poverty in Haiti, suggesting that the Dominican Republic serves as a crutch to the centuries-old misery and marginality living of the vast majority of our neighbors in Haiti.
In this regard, he supports the pronouncements of the newly appointed Prime Minister of Haiti, Jean-Max Bellerive, on the search for new alternatives that will facilitate job creation and attracting foreign investors to the smallest of the two countries that share the island of (Ayiti) Hispaniola instead of charges only to the Dominican nation.
Espaillat admitted that in Haiti there is a national class, comprising politicians and intellectuals-mainly belonging to Bellerive, concerned that Haiti's problems are resolved in its territory and not elsewhere, such as its neighbor island.
The former energy official made these statements in an interview conducted on the radio program that airs Monday through Friday on the Dominican FM station from 4 to 6 pm.
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