Sasha's View: 'Good Job, Daddy. You Didn't Mess Up'

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden today officially embarked on their second term, taking the Constitutionally mandated oath of office in two separate private ceremonies inside their homes.

Shortly before noon in the Blue Room of the White House, Obama raised his right hand, with his left on a family Bible, reciting the oath administrated by Chief Justice John Roberts. He was surrounded by immediate family members, including first lady Michelle Obama and daughters, Malia and Sasha.

As he hugged his wife and daughters, Sasha said, "Good job, Daddy."

"I did it," he said.

"You didn't mess up," she answered.

Biden was sworn in earlier today by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic to administer a presidential oath, in a ceremony at his official residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory. He was joined by more than 120 guests, including cabinet members, extended family and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden.

Because Jan. 20 -- the official date for a new presidential term -- falls on a Sunday this year, organizers delayed by one day the traditional public inauguration ceremony and parade down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Vice President Joe Biden Sworn in for 2nd Term Watch Video

Obama Sworn In for Second Term, Kicks off Inaugural Festivities Watch Video

Obama and Biden will each repeat the oath on Monday on the west front of the Capitol, surrounded by hundreds of dignitaries and members of Congress. An estimated 800,000 people are expected to gather on the National Mall to witness the moment and inaugural parade to follow.

The dual ceremonies in 2013 means Obama will become the second president in U.S. history to take the presidential oath four times. He was sworn in twice in 2008 out of an abundance of caution after Roberts flubbed the oath of office during the public administration. This year Roberts read from a script.

Franklin Roosevelt was also sworn in four times but, unlike Obama, he was elected four times.

This year will mark the seventh time a president has taken the oath on a Sunday and then again on Monday for ceremonial purposes. Reagan last took the oath on a Sunday in 1985.

Both Obama and Biden took the oath using a special family Bible. Obama used a text that belonged to Michelle Obama's grandmother LaVaughn Delores Robinson. Biden placed his hand on a 120-year-old book with a Celtic cross on the cover that has been passed down through Biden clan.

The official inaugural activities today also included moments of prayer and remembrance that marked the solemnity of the day.

Obama and Biden met at Arlington National Cemetery for a brief morning ceremony to place a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknowns, honoring military service members who served and sacrificed. The men stood shoulder to shoulder, bowing their heads as a bugler played "Taps."

Biden, who is Catholic, began the day with a private family mass at his residence. The president and first family attended church services at Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, a historically black church and site of two pre-inaugural prayer services for former President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore and their families.

The Obamas and Bidens plan to participate in a church service on Monday morning at St. John's Episcopal, across Lafayette Park from the White House. They will also attend a National Prayer Service on Tuesday at the National Cathedral.

Later on Sunday evening, the newly-inaugurated leaders will attend a candlelight reception at the National Building Museum. The president and vice president are expected to deliver brief remarks to their supporters.

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Biden’s gun task force met with all sides, but kept its eye on the target

Vice President Biden was curt, avoiding confrontation when he sat down with the National Rifle Association and other gun rights advocates. He looked across the table in his ornate conference room and asked the NRA official if his group could back a ban on assault weapons.

“No,” was James J. Baker’s reply.

There was little discussion, no real debate over whether a 1990s ban had worked. The two men simply moved on. Biden, leading a task force to study gun violence, was certain of the course of action President Obama would end up taking, and Baker was just as certain that the NRA would work to stop it.

In the 33 days after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, gun control rocketed through what one administration official called “a time warp,” transforming from an issue that was politically off-limits to one at the top of Obama’s agenda.

At the center of the transformation was the Biden-led task force. It held 22 meetings, most of them in the same week and many stretching past two hours, Biden furiously scribbling notes in a black leather-bound spiral notebook. The group collected ideas from 229 organizations — or, as Biden put it in a speech last week, “reviewing just about every idea that had been written up only to gather dust on the shelf of some agency.”

The vice president personally placed phone calls, too, including a 45-minute chat one night with the parents of a student who died at Sandy Hook.

“It was like watching an entire term of Senate hearings compressed into a week,” said one administration official who, like others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly. “He was gently interrogating witnesses, following up, finding common ground, finding discrepancies.”

The outcome was never in doubt, however. From the outset, Obama made clear he would champion universal background checks for all gun buyers and bans on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines.

“I feel like to a certain extent they were checking the box, to say we’ve met with all the stakeholders and now we’re going to do what we’re going to do,” Baker, the NRA lobbyist, said of the task force.

Biden’s task force was less about determining which of the big-ticket items to recommend — it recommended them all — and more about involving each interest group in a process that could build a diverse coalition to lobby Congress.

A strategy took shape to undercut the NRA by appealing to its membership base through more friendly groups, such as evangelical pastors and sportsmen’s associations.

The representative of the hunters group Ducks Unlimited, for instance, presented Biden with a wooden duck decoy. In that meeting, Biden conceded that any push for universal background checks could include exceptions for gun transfers between family members.

“He wasn’t challenging their positions,” said an official. “He was looking for space between their positions and where we are — space where things can happen.”

The task force also provided Biden with his latest prominent role on a high-profile issue. Biden looks to be at the center of every big policy push of the second term, from taxes and debt to the war in Afghanistan. His performance will affect not only his ambitions for a possible third run at the presidency, but also Obama’s legacy. On guns, an issue Biden knows well, he plans to go out on the hustings to rally public support.

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Obama to take first of two oaths of office Sunday

WASHINGTON: Barack Obama will Sunday be sworn in to shoulder the power and burden of the US presidency for a second term, launching two days of inaugural rituals darkened by domestic discord and crises abroad.

Democrat Obama, 51, will swear to faithfully execute the office of president at a low-key ceremony in the Blue Room of the White House, to comply with the US Constitution, which dictates his first term ends at noon on January 20.

In a tradition honored when that date falls on a Sunday, Obama will repeat the oath in a time-honored public ceremony on Monday, and deliver his inaugural address to Americans, and the watching world, outside at a chilly US Capitol.

Obama's second inauguration, which comes courtesy of an election win over Republican Mitt Romney in November, lacks the hope and history which pulsated through his swearing in as the first black American president in 2009.

Since then, a graying Obama has been battered by a weak economic recovery, failed to meet hugely elevated expectations for his presidency and waged a political war of attrition Republicans, which often slides into the gutter.

He begins anew with several fierce budget battles looming in Congress, and with his "Yes we Can" rhetoric soured by sarcasm over the blocking tactics of Republicans in the partisan brouhaha paralyzing government in Washington.

While polls show Obama's approval ratings above 50 per cent -- far higher than the reviled Congress, they also indicate that many Americans, wearied by a stop-start recovery, doubt their country is headed in the right direction.

Abroad, the US confrontation with Iran is fast headed to a critical point with the specter of military action becoming ever more real, the longer diplomacy over Tehran's nuclear program is stuck in neutral.

Recent terror strikes which killed Americans in Benghazi and Algeria meanwhile call into question Obama's election year soundbite that "Al-Qaeda is on the run" despite the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

Increasing muscle flexing by China and rising tensions in contested waters with its neighbors, as well as North Korea's nuclear belligerence, will meanwhile test the president's signature pivot of US diplomacy to Asia.

As he raises his right hand, 224 years after George Washington took the first oath of office to lead a new nation, Obama also knows that for second term presidents, power quickly wanes and political potholes await.

The second term "curse" often strikes: Richard Nixon resigned, Bill Clinton was impeached, George W. Bush's image was shattered by Iraq and Hurricane Katrina and Ronald Reagan's legacy was marred by the Iran-Contra scandal.

Obama has already said that he will root his second term on the crusade to build a more equitable economy which powered his triumph over multi-millionaire Romney.

"I intend to carry out the agenda that I campaigned on, an agenda for new jobs, new opportunity and new security for the middle class," Obama said last week.

After being sworn in surrounded by close family, Obama will put the finishing touches on his inaugural address.

Aides have offered few previews of what he will say on Monday, though such occasions offer the chance for presidents to stress national unity, and to bind wounds of the kind of acrimonious elections like the one Obama won in 2012.

Obama has been seen with yellow legal pads full of ideas for his speech, which will likely be high on poetry but low on policy: his State of the Union Address on February 12 will flesh out his agenda.

But the president will have a message for allies and enemies abroad, and could shape the political ground for top agenda priorities including immigration and energy reform and new gun control laws.

After Monday's solemn ceremony will come celebration, as Obama returns to the White House down a parade route lined with crowds, before a night of glittering inaugural balls -- though the festivities have been trimmed in recognition of the tough times many Americans are still enduring.

On Saturday, Obama and his wife Michelle grabbed paintbrushes for an inaugural day of service at a Washington DC school.

The president, wearing khaki trousers and a button down shirt, and the first lady, in a purple shirt and black leggings, helped stain a bookshelf along with two members of a group that works to keep children in school.

Obama later joked that "Michelle said I did a fine job."

There has been an immense security build-up ahead of the inauguration, with cameras and barricades covering much of the route leading up to the Capitol. Thousands of police will also fan the area on Monday: several at each street corner.

- AFP/ck

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TOI Social Impact Awards: An ambulance in time saves lives

MUMBAI: Its 868 ambulances have helped save almost 20 lakh Indians in five states over the last seven years. But these numbers don't quite capture how a small company started by five friends has brought about big changes in India's healthscape.

Before Ziqitza Health Care started its 'Dial 1298 for an Ambulance' service in Mumbai in 2005, it was difficult to imagine a self-sustaining revenue model in emergency medical services (EMS). As the number of EMS providers multiplied , Ziqitza moved the courts to bring transparency into the sector. When they found a southern state offering its emergency medical services to a firm without calling for tenders, they took the matter to the Supreme Court. "Now every state follows the rules," says Shaffi Mather who, along with Ravi Krishna, Sweta Mangal, Naresh Jain and Manish Sacheti, returned from the US to start the company.

They also changed the peculiar Indian habit of using ambulances as hearse vehicles. "In India, ambulances were used to carry dead bodies . We refused to allow that. Ambulances are meant to help lives," says Krishna. Ziqitza's ambulances have often doubled as labour rooms, given the poor state of healthcare in remote areas. More than 6,000 babies have been delivered in their ambulances."Recently, our paramedics in Rajasthan delivered a breech baby in their ambulance," says Sweta Mangal.

The firm has carved out three business models to meet the growing requirement for ambulances. The first is Dial 1298, Ziqitza's private enterprise that charges people for the ambulance (BPL card holders can pay 50% of the fee). The second is Dial 108 in states where the government provides ambulances and money for the service. The third is an outsourcing model for hospitals.

Ziqitza — a combination of jigyasa (quest for knowledge) and chikitsa (medical aid) — was born out of personal crises. Mather didn't know whom to call in Kochi when his mother started choking in her sleep at midnight over seven years back. A few days later, Krishna's mother collapsed in the US but she was taken to hospital within a few minutes. "This contrast made us realize we needed to do something about ambulances back in India," recalls Krishna. Instead of taking the NGO route, they opted for a self-sustaining business model. It has been appreciated, with INSEAD and Harvard Business School writing about them.

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Attack at Algeria Gas Plant Heralds New Risks for Energy Development

The siege by Islamic militants at a remote Sahara desert natural gas plant in Algeria this week signaled heightened dangers in the region for international oil companies, at a time when they have been expanding operations in Africa as one of the world's last energy frontiers. (See related story: "Pictures: Four New Offshore Drilling Frontiers.")

As BP, Norway's Statoil, Italy's Eni, and other companies evacuated personnel from Algeria, it was not immediately clear how widely the peril would spread in the wake of the hostage-taking at the sprawling In Amenas gas complex near the Libyan border.

Map by National Geographic

Algeria, the fourth-largest crude oil producer on the continent and a major exporter of natural gas and refined fuels, may not have been viewed as the most hospitable climate for foreign energy companies, but that was due to unfavorable financial terms, bureaucracy, and corruption. The energy facilities themselves appeared to be safe, with multiple layers of security provided both by the companies and by government forces, several experts said. (See related photos: "Oil States: Are They Stable? Why It Matters.")

"It is particularly striking not only because it hasn't happened before, but because it happened in Algeria, one of the stronger states in the region," says Hanan Amin-Salem, a senior manager at the industry consulting firm PFC Energy, who specializes in country risk. She noted that in the long civil war that gripped the country throughout the 1990s, there had never been an attack on Algeria's energy complex. But now, hazard has spread from weak surrounding states, as the assault on In Amenas was carried out in an apparent retaliation for a move by French forces against the Islamists who had taken over Timbuktu and other towns in neighboring Mali. (See related story: "Timbuktu Falls.")

"What you're really seeing is an intensification of the fundamental problem of weak states, and empowerment of heavily armed groups that are really well motivated and want to pursue a set of aims," said Amin-Salem. In PFC Energy's view, she says, risk has increased in Mauritania, Chad, and Niger—indeed, throughout Sahel, the belt that bisects North Africa, separating the Sahara in the north from the tropical forests further south.

On Thursday, the London-based corporate consulting firm Exclusive Analysis, which was recently acquired by the global consultancy IHS, sent an alert to clients warning that oil and gas facilities near the Libyan and Mauritanian borders and in Mauritania's Hodh Ech Chargui province were at "high risk" of attack by jihadis.

"A Hot Place to Drill"

The attack at In Amenas comes at a time of unprecedented growth for the oil industry in Africa. (See related gallery: "Pictures: The Year's Most Overlooked Energy Stories.") Forecasters expect that oil output throughout Africa will double by 2025, says Amy Myers Jaffe, executive director of the energy and sustainability program at the University of California, Davis, who has counted 20 rounds of bidding for new exploration at sites in Africa's six largest oil-producing states.

Oil and natural gas are a large part of the Algerian economy, accounting for 60 percent of government budget revenues, more than a third of GDP and more than 97 percent of its export earnings. But the nation's resources are seen as largely undeveloped, and Algeria has tried to attract new investment. Over the past year, the government has sought to reform the law to boost foreign companies' interests in their investments, although those efforts have foundered.

Technology has been one of the factors driving the opening up of Africa to deeper energy exploration. Offshore and deepwater drilling success in the Gulf of Mexico and Brazil led to prospecting now under way offshore in Ghana, Mozambique, and elsewhere. (See related story: "New Oil—And a Huge Challenge—for Ghana.") Jaffe says the Houston-based company Anadarko Petroleum has sought to transfer its success in "subsalt seismic" exploration technology, surveying reserves hidden beneath the hard salt layer at the bottom of the sea, to the equally challenging seismic exploration beneath the sands of the Sahara in Algeria, where it now has three oil and gas operations.

Africa also is seen as one of the few remaining oil-rich regions of the world where foreign oil companies can obtain production-sharing agreements with governments, contracts that allow them a share of the revenue from the barrels they produce, instead of more limited service contracts for work performed.

"You now have the technology to tap the resources more effectively, and the fiscal terms are going to be more attractive than elsewhere—you put these things together and it's been a hot place to drill," says Jaffe, who doesn't see the energy industry's interest in Africa waning, despite the increased terrorism risk. "What I think will happen in some of these countries is that the companies are going to reveal new securities systems and procedures they have to keep workers safe," she says. "I don't think they will abandon these countries."

This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.

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Algeria Hostage Crisis Over, One American Dead

After the Algerian military's final assault on terrorists holding hostages at a gas complex, the four-day hostage crisis is over, but apparently with additional loss of life among the foreign hostages.

One American, Fred Buttaccio of Texas, has been confirmed dead by the U.S. State Department. Two more U.S. hostages remain unaccounted for, with growing concern among U.S. officials that they did not survive.

But another American, Mark Cobb of Corpus Christi, Texas is now confirmed as safe. Sources close to his family say Cobb, who is a senior manager of the facility, is safe and reportedly sent a text message " I'm alive."

Inside Algerian Hostage Crisis, One American Dead Watch Video

American Hostages Escape From Algeria Terrorists Watch Video

In a statement, President Obama said, "Today, the thoughts and prayers of the American people are with the families of all those who were killed and injured in the terrorist attack in Algeria. The blame for this tragedy rests with the terrorists who carried it out, and the United States condemns their actions in the strongest possible terms. ... This attack is another reminder of the threat posed by al Qaeda and other violent extremist groups in North Africa."

According to Algerian state media, 32 militants are dead and a total of 23 hostages perished during the four-day siege of the In Amenas facility in the Sahara. The Algerian Interior Ministry also says 107 foreign nationals who worked at the facility for BP and other firms were rescued or escaped from the al Qaeda-linked terrorists who took over the BP joint venture facility on Wednesday.

The Japanese government says it fears "very grave" news, with multiple casualties among the 10 Japanese citizens working at the In Amenas gas plant.

Five British nationals and one U.K. resident are either deceased or unaccounted for in the country, according to British Foreign Minister William Hague. Hague also said that the Algerians have reported that they are still trying to clear boobytraps from the site.

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Earl Smith is the man behind a military patch that President Obama prizes

AUSTIN — That February morning in 2008 found Barack Obama decidedly out of sorts.

He was locked in one battle with Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination that showed no signs of ending — and another with a vicious cold that felt the same way.

As he rode the service elevator in the backway of a convention hotel here, the snowy-haired African American operating it turned suddenly. He held out a black-and-gold bit of fabric embroidered with a screaming eagle.

“Senator Obama, I have something I want to give you,” the man said. “I’ve carried this military patch with me every day for 40 years, and I want you to carry it, and it will keep you safe in your journey.” Obama tried to refuse, but the older man persisted.

Big endeavors can find their meaning in small moments.

Later that day, Obama and his aides discussed the encounter. The future president pulled the patch from his pocket, along with about a dozen other items people had pressed upon him.

“This is why I do this,” he said. “Because people have their hopes and dreams about what we can do together.”

Two American stories intersected that morning in that elevator. The more famous, of course, is the one that begins its next chapter on Monday, as the nation’s first black president takes the oath of office for a second term.

But the other story also tells a lot about where this country has been and how far it has come.

No one in Obama’s small party that day noticed the man’s name tag or, if anyone did, the fact that it said Earl Smith was quickly forgotten.

No one knew how much of Smith’s life had been woven into a patch that, over four decades, found its way from the shoulder of an Army private to the pocket of a future commander-in-chief.

It was the only shred of cloth he had saved from the uniform of a nightmarish year in Vietnam. Smith fired artillery with a brigade that suffered 10,041 casualties during the course of the war. The brigade’s soldiers received 13 Congressional Medals of Honor.

The patch was waiting among his possessions when Smith was pardoned by the state of Georgia in 1977 after spending three years in prison for a crime he claimed was self-defense.

Smith kept it close as his lucky charm while he rebuilt his life and his reputation, starting with a job vacuuming hallways and changing sheets in an Atlanta Marriott. He carried it with him as he traveled halfway around the world again, to positions in hotels far from home, Riyadh in Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

Along the way, as he tended to travelers and made sure VIP gatherings went smoothly, he met three U.S. presidents.

His instincts told him Obama would make it four.

Like just about anyone else who was alive on Nov. 22, 1963, Smith can describe exactly where he was when he heard the horrific news: He was coming off a high school football practice field in his home town of San Benito, Tex.

Though not yet old enough to have voted for the man slain in Dallas, “I was devastated — a lot of us young people were — because John Kennedy was the young president,” recalled Smith, now 68.

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Cycling: 'I want to compete again,' Armstrong says

 

LOS ANGELES: Disgraced US cyclist Lance Armstrong said in an interview aired Friday that he wants to take part in competitive sports again, even after being banned for doping and stripped of his honors.

"Hell, yes. I'm a competitor. It's what I've done my whole life. I love to train. I love to race," Armstrong told Oprah Winfrey. "Not the Tour de France, but there's a lot of other things I could do. I deserve to be punished. I'm not sure that I deserve a death penalty."

- AFP

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Indo-Pak LoC tension puts Gujarat farmers in a soup

AHMEDABAD: The heat on the Indo-Pak border has squashed tomato prices in Gujarat. Farmers in Kadi, about 40 km north of here, say if trade with the neighbouring nation does not normalize, they will land up in a... what else, tomato soup!

Prices of tomatoes in the wholesale markets in Ahmedabad have plummeted from around Rs 300/20 kg on Saturday to Rs 80/20 kg on Thursday. The corresponding fall in the retail market is only from Rs 20/kg to Rs 15/kg so far, as traders are holding on to stocks or diverting them elsewhere. During the four winter months, farmers in and around Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar usually produce about 5,000 tonnes of tomatoes. Of this, around 600 tonnes go to Punjab and most of it crosses over to Pakistan. On an average, 40 trucks laden with tomatoes leave Kadi every day for Punjab. The outflow from Kadi, which produces 600 tonnes of tomatoes, has come down to just 10 trucks a day, since the border dispute erupted last week. Asif Darbar, a trader from Kadi, said, "Traders from Punjab come to Kadi frequently to purchase tomatoes due to superior quality, but they have stopped coming." Punjabis have also gone missing from the Jamalpur agri-market in Ahmedabad.

But while tomato farmers are left red-faced with war-mongering on both sides, there is good news for consumers. "Export quality tomatoes are grown over 2,000 hectares in Gujarat and the local variety is popular as it is big in size," said DM Vaghela, deputy director, horticulture, Ahmedabad.

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Attack at Algeria Gas Plant Heralds New Risks for Energy Development

The siege by Islamic militants at a remote Sahara desert natural gas plant in Algeria this week signaled heightened dangers in the region for international oil companies, at a time when they have been expanding operations in Africa as one of the world's last energy frontiers. (See related story: "Pictures: Four New Offshore Drilling Frontiers.")

As BP, Norway's Statoil, Italy's Eni, and other companies evacuated personnel from Algeria, it was not immediately clear how widely the peril would spread in the wake of the hostage-taking at the sprawling In Amenas gas complex near the Libyan border.

Map by National Geographic

Algeria, the fourth-largest crude oil producer on the continent and a major exporter of natural gas and refined fuels, may not have been viewed as the most hospitable climate for foreign energy companies, but that was due to unfavorable financial terms, bureaucracy, and corruption. The energy facilities themselves appeared to be safe, with multiple layers of security provided both by the companies and by government forces, several experts said. (See related photos: "Oil States: Are They Stable? Why It Matters.")

"It is particularly striking not only because it hasn't happened before, but because it happened in Algeria, one of the stronger states in the region," says Hanan Amin-Salem, a senior manager at the industry consulting firm PFC Energy, who specializes in country risk. She noted that in the long civil war that gripped the country throughout the 1990s, there had never been an attack on Algeria's energy complex. But now, hazard has spread from weak surrounding states, as the assault on In Amenas was carried out in an apparent retaliation for a move by French forces against the Islamists who had taken over Timbuktu and other towns in neighboring Mali. (See related story: "Timbuktu Falls.")

"What you're really seeing is an intensification of the fundamental problem of weak states, and empowerment of heavily armed groups that are really well motivated and want to pursue a set of aims," said Amin-Salem. In PFC Energy's view, she says, risk has increased in Mauritania, Chad, and Niger—indeed, throughout Sahel, the belt that bisects North Africa, separating the Sahara in the north from the tropical forests further south.

On Thursday, the London-based corporate consulting firm Exclusive Analysis, which was recently acquired by the global consultancy IHS, sent an alert to clients warning that oil and gas facilities near the Libyan and Mauritanian borders and in Mauritania's Hodh Ech Chargui province were at "high risk" of attack by jihadis.

"A Hot Place to Drill"

The attack at In Amenas comes at a time of unprecedented growth for the oil industry in Africa. (See related gallery: "Pictures: The Year's Most Overlooked Energy Stories.") Forecasters expect that oil output throughout Africa will double by 2025, says Amy Myers Jaffe, executive director of the energy and sustainability program at the University of California, Davis, who has counted 20 rounds of bidding for new exploration at sites in Africa's six largest oil-producing states.

Oil and natural gas are a large part of the Algerian economy, accounting for 60 percent of government budget revenues, more than a third of GDP and more than 97 percent of its export earnings. But the nation's resources are seen as largely undeveloped, and Algeria has tried to attract new investment. Over the past year, the government has sought to reform the law to boost foreign companies' interests in their investments, although those efforts have foundered.

Technology has been one of the factors driving the opening up of Africa to deeper energy exploration. Offshore and deepwater drilling success in the Gulf of Mexico and Brazil led to prospecting now under way offshore in Ghana, Mozambique, and elsewhere. (See related story: "New Oil—And a Huge Challenge—for Ghana.") Jaffe says the Houston-based company Anadarko Petroleum has sought to transfer its success in "subsalt seismic" exploration technology, surveying reserves hidden beneath the hard salt layer at the bottom of the sea, to the equally challenging seismic exploration beneath the sands of the Sahara in Algeria, where it now has three oil and gas operations.

Africa also is seen as one of the few remaining oil-rich regions of the world where foreign oil companies can obtain production-sharing agreements with governments, contracts that allow them a share of the revenue from the barrels they produce, instead of more limited service contracts for work performed.

"You now have the technology to tap the resources more effectively, and the fiscal terms are going to be more attractive than elsewhere—you put these things together and it's been a hot place to drill," says Jaffe, who doesn't see the energy industry's interest in Africa waning, despite the increased terrorism risk. "What I think will happen in some of these countries is that the companies are going to reveal new securities systems and procedures they have to keep workers safe," she says. "I don't think they will abandon these countries."

This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.

Read More..