Jane's Country Risk News reports Feb. 1 that renewed US attempts to woo Turkmenistan's President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov to open his country's vast natural gas reserves may be "too little, too late." Russia already accounts for 97% of Turkmenistan's gas exports. Russia, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan signed an agreement in December to build a gas pipeline along the edge of the Caspian Sea, through the Russian network. The plan could undermine US plans for a trans-Caspian pipeline to the Caucasus. Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao visited Turkmenistan in November, and Berdymukhammedov reiterated plans to export gas to China through a pipeline due to come online in 2009. Berdymukhammedov has also refused to rule out the possibility of a trans-Caspian pipeline, however.

Iraq has halted oil exports to Austria's OMV, Central Europe's leading oil and gas group, to protest a deal with the autonomous Kurdish region. An official at the Oil Ministry said OMV will no longer receive 10,000 barrels per day of Basra Light crude. In November, OMV signed two production-sharing contracts with the Kurdish authorities for two exploration blocs, Mala Omar and Shorish, in Irbil. South Korea's SK Energy was also cut off because of deals with the Kurdish government. SK Energy refused to abandon its exploration blocs in Kurdistan as part of a consortium led by the state-run Korea National Oil Corp.

Thousands of civilians fled Chad's capital N'Djamena Feb. 4 after rebel forces pulled back from the city following two days of street fighting in an effort to overthrow President Idriss Deby. The government said it had forced back the rebels, who had stormed into N'Djamena aboard armed pickup trucks. But the rebels called the pullback a "tactical withdrawal" before a renewed assault. "We're asking the population to leave," said rebel spokesman Abderamane Koullamalah. Foreign Minister Ahmat Allam-mi said N'Djamena was secure and under government control: "The battle of N'Djamena is over." (Reuters, Feb. 4) Exxon said it oil operations in Chad were not affected by the fighting. (Dow Jones, Feb. 3)

A Feb. 1 attack on the Israeli Embassy in Mauritania and two other high-profile attacks since December have thrown into question the African republic's democratic opening. In the latest attack, the façade of the Israeli Embassy in Nouakchott, that capital, was sprayed with machine-gun fire in the early hours of the morning. Guards returned fire and three people leaving a nearby nightclub were wounded. In December, four French tourists and three Mauritanian soldiers were shot dead by men accused of belonging to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Many in Mauritania say the attacks indicate a radicalization of society since a reformist coup in a 2005 ended harsh military rule. "Religious sentiment in Mauritania has become much stronger [since the coup], similar now to many Arab countries," said Professor Yahya Ould Al-Bara, an anthropologist at the University of Nouakchott. (IRIN, Feb. 1)

A coalition of Native Alaskans and environmental groups filed suit in federal court Jan. 31 to halt oil drilling in the Chukchi Sea, which lies above the Arctic Circle between Alaska and Russia. Thirty million acres of polar bear, walrus, and whale habitat in the Chukchi Sea are scheduled to be opened to oil and gas companies Feb. 6, when the US Interior Department's Minerals Management Service (MMS) will hear bids for drilling leases. The suit claims that MMS did not adequately weigh the impacts on wildlife and Native villages along Alaska's North Slope.

China, which relies on imports for 50% of its oil needs, has established a system of national oil reserve centers, modeled on the US Strategic Reserves. Approved by the State Council in 2004, the four strategic reserve centers in the coastal areas of Zhenhai, Zhoushan, Huangdao and Dalian came on line in December. Together they hold reserves equivalent to 10 days of the nation's oil consumption. (Asia Online, Jan. 7) India announced this month it will begin construction on strategic storage centers this year as well, with the first site to be at Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. (Times of India, Jan. 14)

Colombia's top cocaine lord Wilber Varela, kingpin of the notorious Norte del Valle Cartel, was found shot dead in Venezuela, authorities in Caracas announced Feb. 1. The bullet-riddled body of Varela, known by the nicknames "Jabon" (soap) and "Detergente" (detergent), was discovered Jan. 30 along with that of another man in a tourist cabin at Loma de Los Angeles, Mérida state, in western Venezuela.

In December, we noted the World Court ruling on the long-standing dispute over the San Andrés Islands in the Caribbean—held by Colombia but claimed by Nicaragua. The New York Times reports Feb. 1 on the emergence of an independence movement on San Andrés, in repudiation of both Colombian and Nicaraguan claims. Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe recently inaugurated a new hospital on the island unsubtly named "Amor de Patria" (Love of Fatherland), and sent 12,000 troops to march through the streets in last July's Colombian independence celebrations. But many Raizals, the English-speaking African descendants of the archipelago, are coming to support what the Times calls a "nonviolent separatist movement."