MADRID: Until recently, Equatorial Guinea had a dismal reputation: a backward dictatorship where most residents were dirt- poor while the oil wealth was pocketed by the ruling clan.

Yet as Guinea’s oil revenues have soared, the tiny central African country has become increasingly presentable, and is now posing as a friend of the United States and as a major diplomatic player in the region.

With a war looming in Iraq, the United States is looking for alternatives for the Middle East as a supplier of oil, and is expected to rapidly increase oil imports from West Africa.

The region already has established producers such as Nigeria, Angola and Gabon. They are being joined by upstarts such as Equatorial Guinea, the island state of Sao Tome and Principe, which is expecting to strike oil, and Chad.

West Africa already produces 4.5 million oil barrels a day, more than Iran or Venezuela.

Oil has enabled Equatorial Guinea to reach a dazzling economic growth — but is the former Spanish colony really becoming more democratic and using oil money to alleviate poverty, as it claims, or is US backing just encouraging President Teodoro Obiang to tighten his grip on power?

Equatorial Guinea started producing oil on a large scale in 1996, and oil revenues have increased until Africa’s only Spanish-speaking country reached an economic growth of 65 per cent in 2001.

Producing 250,000 barrels a day , the country of half a million residents now pumps more oil per person than Saudi Arabia.

Office buildings and lavish villas are springing up in the capital Malabo, the nouveau-riche drive around in shiny Land Rovers, and Americans and other foreigners swarm in newly opened hotels and restaurants.

Yet Spanish reports say roads remain pot-holed, most people still struggle to make a living from fishing or hawking.

The government refuses to give clear figures on Equatorial Guinea’s oil income, fuelling suspicion that it is still pocketing much of it.

A decade of oil revenues “has not had any positive impact on the daily life of the population”, the Spanish Africa magazine Mundo Negro wrote.

Criticism has not restrained US oil companies such as ExxonMobil and Triton, which are pumping oil in Guinean waters.

The US has also announced that it will open an embassy in the country of 28,000 square kilometres, consisting of Bioko Island where the capital Malabo is located and of Rio Muni on the mainland.

Washington has denied reports that it is planning to build a military base in Sao Tome to protect oil shipments to the US. The United States already imports 16 per cent of its oil from West Africa and is expected to increase that share to 25 per cent by 2015.—dpa