Chinese oil workers once again seem to be at the center of a nasty counterinsurgency in the Horn of Africa, in the Ogaden, located in south east Ethiopia.

The Ogaden is home to what is reported to be major deposits of gas and oil, though as in South Sudan, just how much is actually there is still just guess work.

In the 1960’s Western oil companies started finding lots of natural gas and maybe even oil in the region.

Then came various wars and then the US invasion of Somalia in 1992-3 and all the murder and mayhem this little war unleashed amongst the Somali people. So the western Big Oil mafia has stayed away.

By the beginning of the new millennium China had begun developing the Sudanese oil fields in the Abeye region and an oil pipeline to Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Shortly thereafter the Chinese began taking a hard look at next door Ethiopia and the enormous potential of the Ogaden gas and oil deposits.

Thus began the story of how China came to the Horn of Africa looking for oil and found itself in the midst of trouble.