US embassy cable - 03ABUDHABI3247

UNCLAS ABU DHABI 003247 
 
SIPDIS 
 
FOR DINT/USGS/RGARMON 
FOR USAID/DCHA/OFDA/JSMITH 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: OTRA, TPHY KSCA, SENV, ECON, TC 
SUBJECT:  USGS MISSION IN UAE IN TROUBLE 
 
REF: ABU DHABI 1130 
 
1. (SBU) Summary: The National Drilling Company (NDC) 
hasrequested that the Ground Water Research Project 
(GWRP) -- the UAE entity with which the U.S. 
Geological Survey (USGS) is affiliated -- stop 
drilling new water wells, downsize its staff and end 
its research projects in the UAE.  NDC would like the 
GWRP only to maintain a database, an unacceptable 
option for the USGS scientists.  For now, the two 
parties have agreed to a compromise situation whereby 
GWRP  reduced local staff and will curtail the 
assignment of one of the three USGS scientists. End 
summary. 
 
2. (SBU) USGS Program Advisor Douglas A. Trudeau 
informed Econoff that the NDC has requested that the 
GWRP stop doing research and drilling water wells and 
only maintain a database.  (Note: NDC is part of 
ADNOC, the state-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. 
The GWRP program began in 1988, and USGS provides NDC 
with assistance in writing guidelines and standards 
for water-well drilling, well construction, well 
rehabilitation and in training NDC well drillers. End 
note.) 
 
3. (SBU) The NDC also wants GWRP to reduce costs, 
downsize the workforce, and cut the American staff 
down to only the country advisor.  The USGS and NDC 
signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on March 
10, 2003, outlining the general parameters of their 
relationship (see reftel).  The two also have in place 
a signed Project Implementation Plan (PIP) extension 
valid until December 31, 2003, which calls for funding 
3 USGS in-country advisors. 
 
4. (SBU) After negotiations with NDC, the GWRP agreed 
to trim the number of local staff from 51 to 23 as of 
July 1, and one of the three USGS scientists will 
likely curtail his assignment and leave in the next 2- 
3 months.  The other two Americans will finish their 
tours.  USGS maintains that it is too difficult to 
have only one USGS staff person in Al Ain (the UAE 
town where the project is based), but they are willing 
to compromise by calling one person a country advisor 
and putting two others there on long-term TDY status. 
 
5. (SBU) USGS believes that solely maintaining a 
database is not a worthwhile endeavor for them.  They 
are trained scientists and for their mission to be 
meaningful, they need to be involved in data 
collection and interpretative work.  Furthermore, USGS 
believes there must be provisions for drilling new 
wells.  Over time the wells currently in place will 
stop being functional, or given the stresses on the 
ground-water system here, they will be located in 
areas lacking scientific merit.  Either way, there 
will be no new meaningful data. 
 
6. (SBU) Comment: The USGS does not know the reasons 
behind the proposed changes in the program, only that 
they were requested by ADNOC.  Possible explanations 
are either that ADNOC has decided to have nothing to 
do with groundwater and wishes to terminate the 
program, or more likely, that a new water authority 
will be established in Abu Dhabi Emirate -- either 
under the auspices of ADNOC or as an independent 
agency.  If this is true, NDC is preparing GWRP's 
absorption into this new entity.  The use of 
groundwater is also less important in Al Ain now -- 
especially for agriculture -- because a new 
desalination plant in Fujairah Emirate will pump up to 
150 million gallons of water per day to the region 
within the next year.  End comment. 
 
Wahba