CALGARY, Alberta — As an astrophysicist in the 1960s, Jim Buckee studied the universe's ancient past.

But if Buckee, who is now president and chief executive officer of Calgary-based Talisman Energy Inc., had been able to turn a telescope toward the future four years ago, he might never have led Talisman to buy a 25% share in Sudan's Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company.

By becoming partners with the Khartoum-based Islamic government of Sudan, which has waged a two-decade long genocidal civil war against Christian and animist residents of southern Sudan, Talisman ended up badly damaging its reputation.

Overwhelmed by the prospect of huge profits — current production in Sudan is around 240,000 barrels per day — Talisman overlooked the downside generated by the investment: crowds of protestors marching outside shareholders' meetings; Talisman's near delisting from the New York Stock Exchange; and the passage this fall of U.S. legislation that helped make it impossible for Talisman to continue denying its complicity with Sudan's genocide.

But even the toughest chief executive officer has a breaking point. After four years of insisting that all was well in Africa, Buckee announced late in October that Talisman had sold its Sudan operations for $758 million to a subsidiary of India's national oil company, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited. He also admitted what oil industry observers had been saying for at least two years: that his Sudan venture had become a corporate albatross.

“Shareholders have told me they were tired of continually having to monitor and analyze events relating to Sudan,” he said in a news release announcing the sale. “Selling our interest in the project resolves uncertainty about the future of this asset.”

Talisman's announced sale of its Sudanese holdings came little more than a week after the Sudan Peace Act passed by a vote of 359-8 in the U.S. House of Representatives and by unanimous consent in the Senate, then was signed into law on Oct. 21 by President Bush. The Sudan Peace Act is historic because it is the first time Washington has declared a nation's actions to “constitute genocide as defined by the [U.N.] Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.”

And although Talisman is not mentioned by name, the act notes that the Khartoum government “has repeatedly stated that it intends to use the expected proceeds from future oil sales to increase the tempo and lethality of the war against the areas outside of its control.”

Atrocities

According to the Sudan Peace Act text, during the past 20 years the war has already cost more than 2 million lives and displaced more than 4 million people. The tempo of the slaughter increased rapidly in 1989 after the National Islamic Front took power in a coup. Christians and animists living in the south, mostly Nuer and Dinka tribesmen, have been forced to flee their homes and farms or face rape, slavery or slaughter.

A report to the U.S. House Committee for Refugees documents cases of infants spiked to trees or beheaded, people who have been tortured then had their lips punctured and padlocked as a warning not to talk and schools and hospitals that have been repeatedly bombed and strafed.

A February 2000 report to the Canadian government by Africa expert John Harker revealed that much of the killing took place to clear oil field areas preparatory to drilling. At the time Harker wrote that Talisman was in a state of “denial” regarding the ongoing “extraordinary suffering and continuing human rights violations” in areas surrounding its holdings.

While mentioning no company names, Harker concluded that “the oil operations in which a Canadian company is involved add more suffering.”

Talisman continues to deny complicity in Sudan's human rights transgressions. “I am ambivalent about [the sale of its Sudan holdings], because the project was really good,” Buckee told reporters at a press conference in Calgary. “We met good people and we thought we were doing good things in Sudan.”

Investor Relations Manager David Mann lists some of Talisman's good deeds, including building hospitals, digging water wells and helping local farmers develop commercial crops. “We stand by our assertion that the four years spent in Sudan were beneficial to the people,” he said.

“Talisman did build hospitals and dig wells,” countered Mel Middleton, director of Calgary's Freedom Quest International, “but the only beneficiaries are people the government approves, either northerners taking over land after southerners have been displaced or southerners who've bowed to the pressure of forced conversion to Islam.”

People are often herded together and deliberately starved, Middleton said, then offered food and aid packages from the West only if they convert.

Despite Mann's insistence that it is “virtually 100% certain the sale will go through,” hurdles remain. The Indian government's proposed purchase still has to be approved by the Khartoum government. And while Sudan is likely to cooperate, it remains an open question whether India wants to conclude with the deal (which will not be finalized until Dec. 31).

“We're already collecting signatures in India,” said Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C. “We're going to let the [Indian] government know that anyone who helps make Sudanese oil production profitable is guilty of funding genocide.”

Shea admits the Indian government is not listed on the NYSE and therefore may be less responsive to Western pressure. But India is proud of its Western reputation for protecting diversity and pluralism within its own borders and could be influenced by the negative publicity attached to doing business with an Islamic government charged with carrying out genocide against some of its own people.

Shea adds that the Indian people could oppose the purchase if they learn revenues from Sudanese oil are likely used to support Pakistan-based terrorist groups.

Documentation

Asked if it is possible that Talisman officials could legitimately have failed to see the connection between oil profits and the Khartoum government's war against the south, human rights lawyer Bill Saunders, who represents Sudan's Catholic Bishop Macram Max Gassis and the Bishop Gassis Sudan Relief Fund, was dismissive.

“Absolutely ridiculous,” Saunders said. “We documented the slave trade in Sudan on film, and I've written articles for peer-reviewed journals documenting Sudan's violations of the U.N.'s antislavery and genocide conventions, and the Geneva Conventions regulations regarding noncombat-ants. Talisman has received copies of all these things. It's ludicrous for them to pretend they don't know what's going on.”

Talisman defenders insist that without the ameliorating influence of a Western-based oil company in Sudan, conditions will only get worse. But Saunders says the opposite will likely occur.

“Talisman was a major apologist for an evil government,” he said. “Now that it's gone, the U.S. and Canada are free to see the government of Sudan for what it really is.”

Shafer Parker writes from Edmonton, Alberta.