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Brief history of the country
Eritrea (the State of Eritrea) is bordered by Sudan to the west, and Ethiopia and Djibouti to the south. The long northeastern coastline lies along the Red Sea.
On the route out of Africa, Eritrea has been inhabited for millennia. The region was part of the Land of Punt, the kingdom of D’mt, and the Christian Kingdom of Aksum. After the decline of Aksum in 940 AD much of the area was known as the Medri Bahri ruled by Ethiopia. This fell to Ottoman rule in 1517 who finally lost control after the arrival of Italian settlers in 1880.
Italy incorporated kingdoms and sultanates into Italian Eritrea in 1889 with boundaries matching those of today. It developed the country and in 1936 merged its territories into Italian East Africa. In 1941, during World War 2, the British expelled the Italians.
Eritrea federated with Ethiopia in 1947 which went on to annex it in 1953. The country’s parliament was forcibly dissolved in 1962 and the ensuing Eritrean War for Independence was fought until 1991 when the rebels finally took control. After a referendum Eritrea declared independence in 1993.
The country has had an uneasy peace since then. The economy depends on gold and silver mining and worker remittances from abroad. Eritrea has extensive resources of copper, gold, granite, marble, and potash.
Oil and gas summary
Eritrea, at the southern end of the Red Sea is bisected by a branch of the East African Rift. On the east are coastal plains and in the west are highlands.
Eastern Eritrea and northern Ethiopia (the Danakil Depression in Eritrea) are the site of a triple junction where the divergent margins of 3 tectonic plates; the Arabian, Somalian and Nubian (African), meet.
The junction is underlain by the Afar dome, an area of high heat flow that began rising in the Eocene causing crustal extension. This ultimately led to collapse in the Early Miocene. Most of onshore Eritrea is thus made up of volcanics and meta-sediments with only a thin Cenozoic cover. There are no sedimentary basins with potential source rocks.
Eritrea has an extensive coastline on the Red Sea and offshore it overlies the Red Sea rift basin with a thickening Miocene to Recent succession, marking the divergent margin between the Nubian and Arabian plates. Just a few unsuccessful offshore wells were drilled in the shallow waters in the late 1960s and early 1970s, failing to encounter a viable petroleum system. Globalshift considers the area to have no potential.
Thus Eritrea has no identified indigenous oil or gas resources, either onshore or offshore, and Globalshift believes that it is unlikely to achieve any production in the future.
In 2006, the country announced it would become the first country in the world to turn its entire coast into an environmentally protected zone.
ERITREA
Map and National Flag
South and East Africa
S. AND E. AFRICA
Village scene
Capital
Population
Land area (sq kms)
Oil prod (000s b/d)
Gas prod (bcm/yr)
Oil cons (000s b/d)
Gas cons (bcm/yr)
Asmara
5.2 mm
117,600
None
None
4.6
None
Government
Eritrea is a single party state. No elections have ever been held for the 150-member National Assembly. The president has been in office since independence in 1993.
There is no government department in Eritrea responsible for oil and gas resources.