The short but turbulent relationship between...Ascom and Prof Majok’s Dr John Garang Institute of Science and Technology is a cautionary tale of how oil companies’ social projects can go awry, particularly in countries where there is little transparency. The initiative to build the university – supposedly a gesture of Ascom’s goodwill to the remote and impoverished area where it is hunting for crude – has instead dissolved into accusations that the company has paid too little attention to local needs and wishes. The story of the institute is a tiny but telling example of how a growing international class of opaque and largely unsupervised oil companies – from small operators such as Ascom to large Chinese and Russian multinationals – risk becoming agents of conflict in unstable countries such as Sudan.