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What can the audience learn about Haiti's Oil Situation What environmental, social, and political risks might arise in supply chain operations in Haiti? What are the foreseeable costs and benefits from supply chain operations in Haiti? How could someone ensure that a company's involvement would play a beneficial role in Haiti's economic recovery?

What are the foreseeable costs and benefits from supply chain operations in Haiti? Imagine someone as a midlevel manager for a major international oil company. They have been asked whether an investment in oil exploration in Haiti is a good business decision. What environmental, social, and political risks might arise in supply chain operations in Haiti? What factors should they consider How does this matter relate to any on going world issues?

Etext Reference

Case Study Haitian Oil

Passage #1 Adapted from: Polson, Jim. "Haiti Earthquake May Have Exposed Gas, Aiding Economy." January 26, 2010. Available at http://www.bloomberg.com.

In 2010 an earthquake killed more than 150,000 people in Haiti. It may have left clues to petroleum reservoirs that could aid economic recovery in the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation, a geologist said.

"The January 12, 2010, earthquake was on a fault line that passes near potential gas reserves," said Stephen Pierce, a geologist who worked in the region for 30 years. The quake may have cracked rock formations along the fault, allowing gas or oil to temporarily seep toward the surface, he said.

"A geologist, callous as it may seem, tracing that fault zone from PortauPrince to the border looking for gas and oil seeps, may find a structure that hasn't been drilled," said Pierce, exploration manager at Zion Oil & Gas Inc., a Dallasbased company that's drilling in Israel. "A discovery could significantly improve the country's economy and stimulate further exploration."

Following the earthquake, the Haitian Prime Minister JeanMax Bellerive met in Montreal with diplomats, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to discuss redevelopment initiatives. Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said wind power may play a role in rebuilding the Caribbean nation, where forests have been denuded for lack of fuel, the Canadian Press reported.

"Haiti, from the standpoint of oil and gas exploration, is a lot less developed than the Dominican Republic," Pierce said. "One can connect a lot more work there." More than 600,000 people are without shelter in the PortauPrince area, the United Nations said on January 22, 2010. The 7.0 magnitude quake destroyed about onethird of the buildings in PortauPrince. It also knocked out the capital's seaport and water and sewage systems. "Relief and recovery for the survivors is the priority now," Mark Fried, a spokesman for British charity Oxfam, said in a statement. "Hundreds of thousands who lost everything but their lives need water, shelter, and toilets to stop the spread of disease," he said.

Haiti will need "massive support" for a "colossal" reconstruction from the earthquake, Bellerive said at the meeting in Montreal. The Greater Antilles, which includes Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and their offshore waters, probably hold at least 142 million barrels of oil and 159 billion cubic feet of gas, according to a 2000 report by the U.S. Geological Survey. Undiscovered amounts may be as high as 941 million barrels of oil and 1.2 trillion cubic feet of gas, according to the report.

Among nations in the northern Caribbean, Cuba and Jamaica have awarded offshore leases for oil and gas development. Trinidad and Tobago, South American islands off the coast of Venezuela, account for most Caribbean oil production, according to the U.S. Energy Department.

Passage #2 Adapted from: Engdahl, F. William. "The Fateful Geological Prize Called Haiti." January 30, 2010. Available at http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.

Behind the human tragedy in Haiti, following the 2010 earthquake, a drama is in full play for control of what geophysicists believe may be one of the world's richest zones for hydrocarbonsoil and gasoutside the Middle East.

Haiti, and the larger island of Hispaniola of which it is a part, straddles one of the world's most active geological zones, where the deepwater plates of three huge structures rub against one another: the intersection of the North American, South American, and Caribbean tectonic plates. Below the ocean and the waters of the Caribbean, these plates consist of an oceanic crust some 3 to 6 miles thick, floating atop an adjacent mantle. Haiti also lies at the edge of the region known as the Bermuda Triangle, a vast area in the Caribbean subject to bizarre and unexplained disturbances.

These underwater plates are in constant motion, rubbing against each other along lines analogous to cracks in a broken porcelain vase that has been reglued. The earth's tectonic plates typically move at a rate of 50 to 100 mm annually in relation to one another and are the origin of earthquakes and of volcanoes. The regions of convergence of such plates are also areas where vast volumes of oil and gas can be pushed upward from the Earth's mantle. The geophysics surrounding the convergence of the three plates that run more or less directly beneath PortauPrince make the region prone to earthquakes such as the one that struck Haiti with devastating ferocity on January 12, 2010.

Aside from being prone to violent earthquakes, Haiti also happens to lie in a zone that, due to the unusual geographical intersection of its three tectonic plates, might well be straddling one of the world's largest unexplored zones of oil and gas, as well as of valuable rare strategic minerals.