The afternoons in the world’s most remote and southerly capital are occasionally disturbed by distant explosions — but that is only because, 28 years after the Falklands conflict, the clearance of minefields left by the Argentinians has finally begun. All week there has been uproar in Buenos Aires, London, New York and Mexico after a British company began drilling for oil in waters just north of the Falkland Islands, prompting protests from Argentina.
In the eye of the storm, however, life remains as serene as ever. A meeting of the legislative assembly yesterday discussed an invasion of earwigs, not “Argies”, and the islanders rolled their eyes at the latest bout of sabre-rattling from their bellicose neighbour. “They have been doing this sort of thing for years. They make a great big noise about it all, but they can’t follow up with actions,” Emma Edwards, an assembly member, said.
“They should get over it and accept we won the war. They are being stupid and babyish,” said Toni Jacobsen in a vox pop conducted by Penguin News, the island newspaper. Chris Duggan, one of four former Welsh Guardsmen visiting the islands to pay their respects to fallen comrades on St David’s Day, agreed. “It is because [the Argentine Government] have their face in the s*** again and are trying to distract their public,” he said.
Nobody sees the slightest prospect of another invasion by Argentina, not now the British have a proper garrison and purpose-built airbase on the islands. The worst that the Argentinians have done so far is to launch a cyber-attack on the Penguin News website, replacing its home page with their own flag and an explanation of why what they refer to as the Islas Malvinas belong to them.
The British Government’s news manipulators 8,000 miles away in London are, however, taking no chances. They are doing their best to quash any stories that might conceivably inflame passions in Argentina.
The Ministry of Defence refused to allow The Times to interview Commodore Phillip Thicknesse, the commander of British Forces in the South Atlantic. The media have been denied access to Royal Navy vessels patrolling the waters around the islands, or to the Ocean Guardian oil rig, which sparked the row. The Times was even refused permission to watch the Falkland Islands Defence Force, a company of volunteers, doing an eight-mile march during its regular Thursday evening training session. The pictures may have been deemed too provocative in Buenos Aires.
The islanders’ equanimity is based largely on the belief that Argentina can do little to hurt them without hurting itself more. It could threaten to deny the use of its southern port of Ushuaia to the four or five cruise ships that sail to the Falklands each week during the summer, disgorging so many tourists that they can briefly double Stanley’s population.
Those tourists are certainly important to the Falklands, spending an average of £50 per head on gift shop penguins or half-day trips to see the real things. The problem is that the cruise companies might choose to visit Stanley instead of Ushuaia, or quit the South Atlantic altogether.
Argentina could also press Chile to cancel its weekly flight to the Falklands, meaning that the only way to reach the islands would be via the expensive, twice-weekly, 20-hour Ministry of Defence “airbridge” from RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire. But the route is a moneyspinner for the Chilean LAN airlines, carrying 4,000 Argentinians every year to the Falklands to visit, among other things, the graves of soldiers killed in the 1982 conflict.
In no other way do the Falklands depend on Argentina. Every six weeks a supply ship arrives from Britain, bringing everything from Waitrose food to Land Rovers, and every fortnight a supply ship arrives from Chile bearing fresh fruit and vegetables. The Falklands exports fish via Uruguay, and the oil exploration paraphernalia all comes from Britain. “Other than making a lot of hot air, I really don’t think Argentina can upset our way of life,” Ms Edwards said.
Paradoxically, the greater threat to that way of life comes not from Argentina, but from the oil drilling that has angered it. By some estimates there could be 60 billion barrels of oil beneath the waters surrounding the Falklands. If that is true, and even a tenth of it can be extracted, this tiny archipelago of 3,100 people and 600,000 sheep could become, as some wags have called it, the next “Baa-rain”.
The Falkland Islands government would receive not only licence fees, but 9 per cent of the royalties from every barrel sold, and a 26 per cent corporation tax. The Falklands would become one of the wealthiest patches of earth on the planet. It is a prospect that has aroused very mixed feelings. “Some people are rubbing their hands in glee — the prospectors, the speculators and the shareholders,” Tony Curran, editor of Penguin News, said. “Other people are concerned it might change their way of life for ever.”
Property prices are climbing already, and Aberdonian oil workers are jostling for rooms in Stanley’s few guest houses. But that is only a taste of what could come if the Ocean Guardian strikes it rich.
A serene and harmonious community where people do not lock their doors and children are completely safe would face an influx of outsiders. A new port, housing, amenities and perhaps even a whole new town would be required. While oil could be loaded straight on to tankers, gas would require a liquifaction plant.
There would also be a risk, however small, to the Falklands’ pristine environment. The drift to Stanley from the “camp”, as the rest of the islands are known, would accelerate. How many young islanders would choose the tough life of a sheep farmer over more lucrative jobs in the oil industry?
The Falkland Islands government is acutely aware of the potential problems. It has sent delegations to the Shetlands, the Orkneys, Newfoundland and other remote communities to see how they have coped with oil.
It is already talking of investing in infrastructure, creating trust funds for future generations and of paying the £70 million a year that Britain presently spends defending the islands. “It would be payback time for 1982. Everyone to a man is of that view,” said Phyl Rendell, the islands’ director of mineral resources.
Not everyone is convinced. In Penguin News yesterday, Graham Bound, an islander, said that “by dabbling in oil we may have tapped into the nervous system of one of the world’s most dangerous industries. One wonders if it has brought happiness and grassroots benefits anywhere.”
He continued: “I’m not sure I want it. That does not mean I pine for the days of peat fires and monthly mailships, but neither do I long for the time when we are a bloated and spoiled replica of the United Arab Emirates, with an aggressive neighbour regularly beating the drums.”
