Everyone enjoys a ‘rags to riches’ story. Hassan Tatanaki has a favourite – a timeless tale he says resonates as much today as it ever has. He tells it like this: A man loses everything he owns in a business deal, so he prays for a $1m loan. He promises to return it after 12 months. A sympathetic angel hears the prayer. “He only wants it for one year, and then we get it back,” the angel tells God. So God agrees. A year later the angel reminds God the money is due. “Give him another year,” God says. The loan is extended into years two, three and four, until eventually the angel becomes frustrated. God explains that although the man took the $1m for himself he spent most of it on charitable projects. “If I take it back, I take from so many people,” God argues. “I can’t do it.”
The moral of the story according to Mr Tatanaki is, if you don’t share it, you lose it. “God gives us everything, so you have to give back,” he says. “I mean, you can’t just keep taking in this world. There has to come a time in life when we start giving back.” A bold statement from a wealthy businessman – but does he really mean it? And more importantly does he really care?
Oil rigs
Mr Tatanaki is a Libyan-born business magnate. As chairman of Challenger Limited – a company registered on the Isle of Man with offices in Libya, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia – he oversees 30 oil rigs across the MENA region, 25 of which are working in Libya. He led his family in taking over the company in 1991. Clients include national and international oil companies and corporations.
The American company Bronco Drilling acquired a 25 percent equity interest in Challenger, in January 2008, by adding several rigs to the company’s fleet. The ‘deal’ was significant in that it represented a calculated shift by the Libyans to attract foreign expertise and investment – although Mr Tatanaki doesn’t quite see it that way.
“I don’t think we would look at it as a deal,” he says. “We would look at it as a strategic alliance. The concept or the idea was to gain western technology and capital by offering accessibility to the oil opportunities available in the region.”
Mr Tatanaki claims investors are benefiting because of historic failures. Production levels in Libya have fallen by almost 60 percent since the 1970s when they topped 3.2 million barrels-a-day. The country is now in the process of overhauling its oil infrastructure to reach a three million barrels-a-day by 2015 quota set by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
Although Mr Tatanaki says under-investment by government led to the drop in supply, he insists those oil reserves now offer foreigners a unique opportunity.
Firstly because Colonel Muammar Gaddafi wants supplies increased to fuel rapid economic growth, and secondly because his ‘open door policy’ aims to make that happen.
“Ever since the late 1980s the amount spent on the existing fields was getting less and less,” says Mr Tatanaki. “That’s what really caused the downfall of production.
What Libya is trying to do now is get back to the pre 1970s. Instead of having the national owned oil companies having control of enormous blocks they can’t develop and explore, the plan is to encourage foreign investors with the better knowledge and expertise to come in and develop or explore these fields.”
Libya’s relative political stability compared to other potential oil producing nations is regarded as a positive, though Mr Tatanaki says the country’s position on the world map is its greatest asset. “Europe is our main market,” he says.
Pipelines
“In my opinion, this is where Libya has an advantage. It is so close to Europe. It takes I think 16 or 18 hours to upload crude oil from Tripoli into the European pipeline. The pipeline capability is crucial,” he says. There are more good signs. Many Libyans who were living abroad are coming back into key positions in the oil and finance sectors. The privatisation of IT, transport and financial services is attracting foreign investment. Libya’s ambitious National Development Plan allocated US$14bn for 2008, representing 60 percent of Libya’s total annual budget for that year. Most importantly legal treaties and tax changes are offering » investors more confidence.
Since US trade sanctions were lifted in 2004, Libya has emerged as a major international market for infrastructure, utilities and energy projects. Among these is the Great Man-Made River project, an engineering fete listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s largest irrigation scheme. And then there’s tourism. Mr Tatanaki hopes to attract three to five million tourists to Libya over the decade in his role as national ambassador for tourism.
Billions of pounds are to be invested in several projects, one of which involves the ancient city of Cyrene, the former Greek colony founded in 630BC. Among its most famous features are the temple of Apollo and a partially unexcavated shrine to Zeus. The site won the 2009 World Tourism Award, presented at the World Travel Market, on Tuesday November 10, 2009, at London’s Excel Centre, London.
“When I took Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep there they couldn’t believe what they were seeing,” Mr Tatanaki says. “The wonder is that it has not been damaged by modern buildings at all. Bob is a good friend of mine and he was shocked at how beautiful it is. Meryl Streep was so mesmerised for about 10 minutes she couldn’t mention a word. It is absolutely incredible. We hope to make that entire region a protected area. You have beaches. You have the mountains. You have the ruins. And the ruins are beyond belief. Honestly. I mean it’s beyond, beyond belief. You have to visit it to understand it. And we’re only talking about a one hour flight from Rome.”
Dr. Saif al-Islam Gaddafi signing the Cyrene declaration marks the inception of the world’s first regional-scale conservation and development in The Green Mountain region which covers some 5,550sq km. Described by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) as ‘one of the 10 last paradises of the Mediterranean’, the region is rich in prehistoric, Greek Roman and Islamic antiquity and is one of the world’s most important UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The Cyrene development, designed by the British architect Sir Norman Foster, will see the archaelogical ruins on the north-east coast protected and surrounded by 20 luxury hotels and thousands of new houses funded through Libya’s designated Economic and Social Development Fund, making it a true haven for eco-investments.
Perceptions
But if the plans and objectives are clear, the implementation has not always been an overwhelming success. The global downturn has of course not helped with foreign investment. Mr Tatanaki claims cultural differences between East and West have been a far greater problem. He blames Libyan bureaucracy, weak legal procedures and government officers and agents unaccustomed to the new ‘open door policies’ involving de-nationalised projects. He says some western companies wanting to get involved are still worried by the old perceptions.
“You have two people who really don’t understand each other because the market is not mature,” he says.
“Things haven’t been going as fast as people thought they would because of the lack of understanding on both sides. It takes time because you still have the same bureaucrats, with the same mentality. It takes time to change that on both sides. It took Egypt 20 years.” Another problem is ‘the Islamic issue’, which Mr Tatanaki refers to as his ‘favourite subject’.
As a dedicated philanthropist, he directs much of his attention towards two main areas. One is humanitarian relief for the people of Arab/African states in crisis. The other is promoting moderate interpretations of the Muslim faith. He describes this as a combination of rigorous scholarship and spirituality, as opposed to ‘militant teachings’. Islam is not about cutting off the hands of thieves or stoning women to death. He insists these stereotypes only appear in The Koran because they are based on the stories and laws of other religions (Judaism, Christianity) recited from the Bible, in another era.
“What we are seeing is people abusing Islam and giving it this image,” he says. You are not allowed to kill in Islam. You are not allowed to do most of the things they say and do. The killings, and the jihads. The Koran has to be understood as a whole and not by picking sentences that can easily be misunderstood and way out of context if taken on their own. For example, the Koran doesn’t say ‘do not pray’, but it says ‘do not pray if you are drunk’. So you can’t just take ‘do not pray’ and say, ‘okay I don’t need to pray’.
“The extremist movements use the Koran for their own aims – and their aim is to rule.Jihad is what? Jihad has conditions and it does not necessarily mean to fight. Jihad means that you build a hospital for people or you give money to people in need. That is jihad. Jihad does not mean death. It means giving.”
Satellite channel
In determined mood, he provided $2.7m to help launch the 24-hour satellite channel “El Azhari” in August 2009. The start-up costs have since risen to $8m. The channel aims to present ‘true Islam’ to non-Arab Muslims (who represent 70 percent of 1.2 billion) and non-Muslims, in association with the Egyptian-based Al Azhar University. The University, founded in around 970, is the main centre for Arabic literature and Sunni Islamic learning. It is also the world’s second oldest surviving degree granting university.
Mr Tatanaki describes his new channel as a belated response to the militants that have sprung up in the last 15-20 years, a challenge the ‘real institutions did not bother to compete with’. “They did not consider the impact the media would have in promoting these groups,” he says. “Suddenly they have woken up and discovered that the best way they can reach people themselves is through media. And that is what we are trying to do. “We are giving something back.”