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S. AND E. AFRICA
Rural farmhouse
Brief history of the country
Swaziland (now known as the Kingdom of Eswatini) is land-locked, bordered by Mozambique to the east, and South Africa to the north, west and south. The country was renamed Eswatini in 2018.
Evidence for people in Eswatini dates from 25,000 BC although the earliest known inhabitants were San hunter-gatherers. These had been replaced by the Bantu from central Africa by 300 AD. Swazi settlers, known as the Ngwane, migrated northwards, building a kingdom by 1750 after conquering the established clans (the Emakhandzambili).
Mswati II, the most memorable of the old kings of Eswatini, extended the area in the 1850s until the present boundaries were drawn up in 1881. The UK and the Netherlands were fighting over southern Africa and in 1890 the kingdom acceded to a triumviral (British, Dutch and Swazi) administration. In 1894 a convention made Eswatini a protectorate of the South African Republic and a British protectorate in 1903.
Self government was granted in 1906 when the country partitioned into European and native areas. Eswatini was finally given independence in 1968 under a constitution which was suspended in 1973 with the king taking full control.
A new constitution was written in 2005 after protests for reform. Eswatini has a small economy trading with South Africa mostly in agricultural products. It has a small mining sector.
Oil and gas summary
Eswatini is land-locked with a variety of landscapes including mountains along the Mozambique border (the highveld), savannas in the east (the lowveld) and rain forests in the northwest.
It is almost entirely composed of rocks of the African Kalahari Craton and the overlying Karoo basin, a huge inland basin deposited during the Late Carboniferous to the Middle-Jurassic. It includes the mid-Jurassic Lebombo basaltic lavas on the east, the remains of the Karoo volcanic event.
During the Jurassic, the crust under the Karoo basin ruptured, releasing huge volumes of basaltic lava which covered nearly the whole of Southern Africa. This massive lava outpouring brought Karoo sedimentation to an abrupt end and the mountains of Eswatini comprise these preserved volcanic rocks. The plains are floored by Karoo sediments and cratonic basement.
The country straddles a major fault running from the Drakensberg volcanic mountains of Lesotho and South Africa northwards through the Lebombo volcanics of the highlands of Eswatini and the eastern highlands of Zimbabwe to merge with the Great Rift Valley in Kenya.
The geology is unsuitable for oil and gas accumulations and Eswatini thus has no identified indigenous oil or gas resources and no history of drilling and production. No exploration wells have ever been drilled and Globalshift believes it is unlikely to achieve any production in the future.
ESWATINI (SWAZILAND)
Map and National Flag
South and East Africa
Capital (exec/leg)
Population
Land area (sq kms)
Oil prod (000s b/d)
Gas prod (bcm/yr)
Oil cons (000s b/d)
Gas cons (bcm/yr)
Mbabane/Lobamba
1.2 mm
637,657
None
None
5
None
Government
Eswatini is an absolute monarchy with the king as head of state.
The king appoints the prime minister and a minority of legislators to the bicameral parliament.
Of the 30-member Senate, 10 are appointed by the House of Assembly and 20 by the monarch.
In the 65-member House of Assembly, 55 are elected and 10 appointed.
Elections are held every 5 years.
There is no government department in Eswatini responsible for oil and gas resources.