TheWorld Petroleum Congress (WPC) meets in Africa for the first time in September 2005. This is the 18 WPC
and it brings delegations from 57 member countries to Johannesburg’s upmarket Sandton Convention
Centre. Everybody who is somebody in the oil and gas business will be there. To be more precise, oil
corporations, investors and government officials will be there since no-one else really qualifies as a somebody
in the business.
The outsiders, environmental justice organisations calling attention to the human costs of the oil industry, will
be just that: outside.
The theme of WPC 18 is ‘Shaping the Energy Future: Partners in Sustainable Solutions’. The future, it seems to
say, is in safe hands and it will be sustainable. At the same time, however, it makes very clear that the hands in
question are those of the petroleum industry: the insiders at the Sandton Convention Centre are the ones who
will shape the energy future.
