SAN ANDRES, COLOMBIA - For Latinos, this Caribbean island is an increasingly popular honeymoon spot. For Metairie oil explorers MKJ Xplorations Inc., it stands as a reminder that wooing Latin American governments for the right to do business there can sometimes make for a rocky marriage.

The Nicaraguan government recently granted MKJ and three other small U.S. firms rights to explore for oil in the area a few miles west of San Andres. Unfortunately for the drillers, Nicaragua has a rival for their affections.

By virtue of a 1928 treaty, Colombia, 400 miles to the south, controls a Caribbean swath that includes San Andres and a few other specks in an archipelago 120 miles east of Nicaragua. As a result, Colombia has threatened to go to war if Nicaragua's oil hunt spills out of Nicaragua's zone of the Caribbean, and the Colombian navy has stepped up its presence in San Andres.

The April-May issue of The Archipelago Press has a front-page photo of a Colombian frigate and submarine patrolling near the island under the headline "Colombia defends the Nicaraguan threat."

Nicaraguan officials and MKJ insist the territorial issue has been resolved. They say all the potential oil fields lie west of the 82nd meridian, while the island is several miles east of the meridian, and the exploration zones thus are clearly Nicaragua's under terms of the 1928 treaty.

Privately, some Colombian officials agree, but a formal stand-down has not come from Bogota. That leaves some island residents uneasy, particularly in light of Colombia's refusal to grant visas for San Andres' 50,000 residents to enter Nicaraguan territory, a restriction that could cost them jobs in Nicaragua's offshore oil fields should any development go forward.

"Nicaragua is a poor country that is trying to use its brains, and I don't understand why Colombia is giving Nicaragua such a hard time," said Lozano Forbes Barker, a San Andres fisherman and farmer who admits to being "around 75 years old."

"But . . . this is Colombia. I don't know what's going to happen, but Nicaragua had better take care."

MKJ presses for resolution

MKJ President Brent Abadie would like to think of the imbroglio as a "tempest in a teacup" but acknowledged that it could become a problem.

After Colombia's ambassador to the United States recently sent MKJ a letter stating that the company's concessionary permits were in waters over which Colombia asserts "exclusive sovereignty and jurisdiction," Abadie replied that the company takes "your correspondence and claims very seriously."

But Abadie went on to demand that Colombia "specifically delineate" within 10 days the areas of its territory that overlap with the roughly 8,000 square kilometers of MKJ's concession zones.

Neither the ambassador nor any other Colombian official did so, most likely, Abadie said, because no such overlap exists.

"We've tried to address this aggressively and asked Nicaragua to resolve this," he said. "We were careful not to bid on any areas in those disputed waters, and when this developed we were kind of like, 'What in the world is going on?' "

What's happening is just the latest Latin American headache for MKJ. Last year, the company saw its plan to drill for oil near Limon on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast unravel in the face of concerted opposition from environmental activists and their political allies.

Abadie disputed recent claims in the Latin news media that MKJ is considering a lawsuit against Costa Rica and insisted that negotiations for a contract settlement with that country are ongoing.

Despite the latest troubles, Abadie said the company's experience in Nicaragua has been far more positive than in Costa Rica and that MKJ has never seriously considered abandoning exploration in Central America.

Nicaragua dismisses move

In Managua, where Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolanos' administration has placed high hopes on oil exploration to invigorate the economy of a cash-starved republic, officials professed to be as puzzled as Abadie by Colombia's hostile reception to the exploration plan.

"We have been careful about where we are open for exploration, and all areas are clearly Nicaraguan," said Mauricio Darce, director of exploration at the Nicaraguan Energy Institute.

He dismissed Colombia's saber-rattling over the archipelago as a tactical bluff aimed at scuttling Nicaragua's effort through the International Court of Justice in The Hague to clarify its territorial claims in the area. "They got a lot of land after one political conflict, and now they want even more," Darce said, referring to the 1928 Esquerra-Barcenas Treaty between Colombia and Nicaragua that granted San Andres, Providencia and other islands to Colombia.

At the time the 1928 treaty was drawn up, Nicaragua was ruled by one in a series of U.S. puppet governments and U.S. Marines were in the country hunting Augusto Cesar Sandino, the rebel leader whose name would be appropriated by the Sandinista communists who gained control of Nicaragua in the 1980s.

Thus, Nicaragua argues, no legitimate Nicaraguan government ever approved the treaty, and it wants to reopen the issue of who rightfully should control San Andres.

Development monitored

With a decision on the International Court of Justice case not expected until 2004 at the earliest, Nicaragua's oil exploration efforts will move forward under the watchful eye of its neighbors -- and not just Colombia. Honduras, with which Nicaragua has a long-simmering territorial dispute, also has voiced its disapproval.

Some analysts think Nicaragua might be using the oil concessions as a tool to strengthen its case at The Hague.

In July 2002, Oxford Analytica, a news digest used by some Western embassies in Central America, "made clear the Caribbean blocks had been included in order to establish that they were indeed part of Nicaraguan territory, and that the oil companies had been aware of this," Darce said.

Abadie said that rings true but that oil exploration's long-term economic benefits trump the short-term wrangling.

"Considering some comments I have heard from the larger oil companies, I suspect that they did not participate in the bid round, at least in part, due to the disputes," he said.

"MKJ does not feel like we are being used in the dispute. The issues are inseparable, but Nicaragua needs to move forward with the development of its natural resources and cannot be held hostage by the competing claims."

Warfare not expected

Should any real fighting occur, Nicaragua would probably not stand much of a chance. Its navy is basically a ragtag coast guard, a handful of small patrol boats in dubious condition, whereas Colombia, while hardly a force on the high seas, has a genuine fleet. Nevertheless, experts following the matter predict the chances of a war erupting are slim.

"I would take the Colombian threat with a large pinch of salt and put it down to saber-rattling," said John Shields, the Americas editor for Jane's Security Sentinel Assessments in London. Colombia "no doubt resents Nicaraguan plans to get its oil industry off the ground and would contest any serious infringement of the waters they claim, but nobody is going to war over this."

For San Andres, being at the center of an international tug of war is nothing new. While pirates used it as a hideaway, Spain and England feuded over ownership of the island until the end of the 18th century, and Barker said he was raised in a time when many residents still considered themselves British.

Today, the island is focused on tourism, and on a recent weekend the only things visible along the beaches were families swimming, not warships.

"No, no, nothing is going to happen, man," said Barnes Martinez, 59, who prowls the sea wall, hawking diving trips to the gorgeous and deserted Johnny's Cay just offshore. "This is Colombia. It's settled.

"Nicaragua can do what it wants out there," he said, waving his arm toward the wide Caribbean Sea, "but nothing is going to happen here."



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