WASHINGTON (IPS)--The State Department’s top official to Africa recently visited Angola and Nigeria, spotlighting Washington’s growing interest in and reliance on oil resources in the Gulf of Guinea, along the continent’s West Coast.

Ensuring greater access to West African oil is high on the agenda of Assistant Secretary of State Walter Kansteiner’s trip. Angola and Nigeria are already the 8th and 5th biggest sources of foreign oil for the United States.

Earlier this year, Mr. Kansteiner, speaking before a meeting of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS) here, called African oil a "national strategic interest" of the United States.

But IASPS, whose founder-director Robert Loewenberg has strong ties to the right wing of Israel’s coalition-leading Likud Party, wants Washington to go much further.

"Congress and the (Bush) administration should declare the Gulf of Guinea an area of ‘vital interest’ to the U.S.," according to a report released in June by the institute, which is based in Jerusalem but has a Washington office.

Some IASPS insiders also have links to the oil industry, Congress and to right-wing elements in the Pentagon.

The report, which included the views of U.S. oil companies with investments in West Africa, goes so far as to urge the establishment of a U.S. military sub-command for the region, with basing rights and a home port on the Gulf of Guinea islands of Sao Tome and Principe.

While the idea has not received much public attention, IASPS and its founder-director, Robert Loewenberg, enjoy good access to senior Pentagon officials, who would like to see the Arab-dominated Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) break up and are actively interested in the sub-command suggestion.

Of the West African oil producers, only Nigeria is an OPEC member. The Bush administration, which has actively courted the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo, would like to see the nation leave the group. Unhappiness within Nigeria over low OPEC export quotas has fuelled recent speculation that the country may pull out even before the end of the year.

While officials in former president Bill Clinton’s administration shared Israeli interests in reducing U.S. dependence on Mideast oil, last September’s terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon and the unprecedented strains on U.S.-Saudi ties that followed brought new urgency to that quest.

That urgency has been compounded by political instability in Venezuela and Colombia, two important sources of U.S. oil; escalation in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; and Bush’s commitment to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein by any means necessary.

"The ongoing tensions in the Middle East provide the most compelling evidence yet of our nation’s need to diversify its sources of petroleum," noted Rep. William Jefferson, a Democrat, at a hearing in June of the House International Relations Committee. "In the long term, African oil provides energy security for our nation."

Oil from the Gulf of Guinea is now the source of about 15 percent of the 12 million barrels of oil imported by the United States each day. Of that amount, Nigeria provides close to one million barrels a day. Only Canada, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Mexico are bigger sources.

Angola supplies about 333,000 barrels a day, according to government statistics for 2001, while Equatorial Guinea, thanks to new, deep-water drilling technology that is making the entire region more attractive to U.S. oil companies, has increased production from nothing just a few years ago to more than 200,000 barrels a day, much of that bound for the United States.

Not everyone thinks more oil from Africa would be a positive move.

"It’s like these companies can own a platform, extract the oil, and then just send a check to the government," said Michael Chege, director of the Center for African Studies at the University of Florida. He fears that such arrangements will evolve into an "alliance between the ‘oilagarchy’ and dictatorships" backed up by U.S. military power.

Still, West Africa’s share of the U.S. import oil market is expected to grow to 25 percent as early as 2015, as new technology makes it possible for companies to tap energy resources that were out of reach until now.

In addition to Nigeria, Angola, and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville and Cameroon are already oil exporters, while Chad will come on line after the construction of a major pipeline by ExxonMobil. Oil companies are also actively exploring off the coasts of Namibia, Cote d’Ivoire, Mauritania, and Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara.

"Last year, there were eight billion barrel finds of oil in the world: seven of those were off the coast of West Africa," says Rep. Jefferson.

"Oil production (in Angola and Nigeria alone) is expected to double or triple in the next 5 to 10 years," according to an unclassified study by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

"West Africa oil is of high quality, is easily accessed off-shore, and is well positioned to supply the North American market," adds the study.

It is also isolated from potential social and economic problems, notes Robert Murphy, an economic specialist with the State Department’s Office of African Analysis. "Much of Africa’s oil is offshore, thereby insulated from domestic and political or social turmoil," he says.