Arab Media Question U.S. motives in Darfur

This is from ncmonline. Oil is virtually never mentioned with respect to events in the Sudan. There is total concentration on the humanitarian disaster but nothing that ever links this to Sudan's oil resources. Well hardly ever, I have seen one article that mentions that China continues to support the Sudan govt. because it is interested in Sudanese oil.

Arab Media Question U.S. Motives in Darfur
Eye on Arab Media
New America Media, News Report, Jalal Ghazi, Posted: Feb 18, 2008
Editor’s Note: Steven Spielberg’s decision to step down as artistic adviser for this summer's Olympic Games in Beijing – citing China’s trade with Sudan despite a humanitarian crisis in Darfur – is the latest spotlight on the “crisis” in Darfur. While Americans portray Darfur as the greatest genocide of modern times, Arab media say that, as with Iraq, the United States is only interested in its oil.As Americans criticize China for putting profit ahead of human rights abuses in Sudan, Arab media say that the United States is in no position to judge. Arab officials and journalists say the Bush administration’s focus on the “crisis in Darfur” has more to do with reclaiming Sudanese oil fields than carrying out a humanitarian mission.Sudanese President Omar Al Bashier, who spoke with London-based Arab News Broadcast in December 2007, believes the dispute between the United States and Sudan did not start in 2003, when rebel groups rose up against the Sudanese government. Al Bashier argues that the countries were already feuding over oil two decades before the United States became concerned about the supposed one million refugees. The American oil company Chevron made the first oil discovery in Sudan in 1979. Over the next few years, along with Shell, Chevron spent millions of dollars in extensive seismic testing and drilled some 52 wells. In 1983, Chevron came to an agreement with the Sudanese government and the Arab Petroleum Investments Corporation (APICORP) to jointly build an oil pipeline, linking Sudanese oil fields to Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Chevron suspended its activities in Sudan after one of their facilities was attacked and three workers were killed during a civil war in the area.However, journalist and political analysts Kahled al-Aa’esr says that American oil companies did not necessarily want to leave Sudan. The United States considered the Sudanese oil fields to be a part of their own oil reserves, and wanted access to these fields at a time of their choosing. Al-Aa’esr argues that this is what initially soured the relationship between the United States and Sudan. “The American oil companies didn’t fully develop Sudan’s oil infrastructure at that time, but they wanted to come back in 40 or 50 years,” al-Aa’esr says, when there was greater demand for oil and they could increase their profit margin.