sao tome: Oil brings storms to placid Sao Tome

Seismic data suggest billions of barrels of oil could lie off Sao Tome's coast near oil-rich Nigeria, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea in an increasingly important oil-producing region far from the risks of the Middle East. And that is driving an intense local struggle for power, complicated by the involvement of big outside players drawn to islands that had been getting by in quiet poverty, exporting a little cocoa and some bananas.