Black Gold Beneath the Sand: Somalia’s Oil Future Hangs in the Balance

The maps have existed for decades. Seismic surveys conducted before Somalia’s state collapse in 1991 pointed to significant hydrocarbon reserves stretching from the Puntland coastline deep into the Indian Ocean basin. Geologists who studied the data spoke quietly of figures that could rival some of West Africa’s most productive fields. Then the government fell, the warlords came, and the maps gathered dust in foreign ministry filing cabinets from London to Rome.

Three decades later, those maps are being unfolded again.

Somalia’s federal government has begun the careful, politically treacherous work of reviving its petroleum sector. Exploration licenses have been issued. International energy lawyers are flying into Mogadishu. The conversations happening in Halane — the fortified compound that serves as the de facto capital within the capital — increasingly involve men in suits carrying spreadsheets rather than men in uniform carrying weapons.

The opportunity is real. The obstacles are equally real. Revenue-sharing disputes between the federal government and regional states like Puntland and Jubaland have already derailed negotiations multiple times. The legal framework governing oil contracts remains incomplete. And the memory of what resource wealth has done to other fragile African states — funding conflict, entrenching corruption, hollowing out institutions — hangs over every conversation.

Somalia has an opportunity to write a different story. Whether its political class has the discipline and the vision to do so is the question that will define the country’s next chapter more than any election or military campaign.