Oil & war

"Oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands
of the Arabs."
                  
  -- Henry Kissinger,
                        US Secretary of State under Presidents Nixon & Ford

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The Price of Oil

Life After the Oil
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Oil Empire

 


January 2006.
U.S. thirst for oil could send Africa on Mideast's path

July - December 2005.
OIL AND CANCER IN ECUADOR - Ecuadoran villagers believe high rates of disease are tied to petroleum pollution
Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship
The Big Scoop Series #6: OIL - The Global Addiction Killing Our Planet
Hugo Chavez: "If the Imperialist Government of the White House Dares to Invade Venezuela, the War of 100 Years Will be Unleashed in So. America"
Arctic Oil / THE LAST REFUGE - Caribou migration, drilling plan symbolic of battle between oil and environment
Women, Oil and the Role of the U.S. in Iraq's New Constitution
Tomgram: Mike Davis on a Paradise Built on Oil

March - June 2005.
Bush's Environment Chief: From the Oil Lobby to the White House to ExxonMobil
Buy Your Gas at Citgo: Join the BUY-cott!
Tom Engelhardt: Oil and Iraq

July - August 2004.
Indigenous tribe takes on big oil - Ecuadoran village refuses money, blocks attempts at drilling on ancestral land
Nicolas Sarkis: The Causes of the New Oil Crisis

April - May 2004.
The Halliburton Agenda: The Politics of Oil and Money    DemocracyNow!
Robert Collier: Oil erupts as issue in presidential campaign
   - Election Gift? Kerry blasts price deal Bush made with Saudi prince
   - Lots of Talk: But workable solutions aren't likely soon

January - March 2004.
Nigerian villagers allowed to sue ChevronTexaco - Protesters were slain, possibly with help of firm's subsidiary
Peering into oil's future - Experts try to predict when the world will start running low
Life After the Oil Crash

July - December 2003.
Larry Everest: Oil, Power and Empire
George Monbiot: The Bottom of the Barrel
Oil is running out, but no one wants to talk about it ...Oil itself won't disappear, but extracting what remains is becoming ever more difficult and expensive.... Every year, we use four times as much oil as we find.
Israeli pipeline to help move Russian oil to Asian markets
White House accused of overpaying 'cronies'
The Bush administration has been accused of paying almost three times the market value for petrol imported into Iraq from Kuwait, with profits falling mostly to Halliburton, the Texas oil services company headed by Dick Cheney before he became Vice-Pres.
Bush: A Pipeline through Rainforest for Buddies

January -June 2003.
The Iraq Money Tree
Iraqi oil - Firms around world all want piece of 'huge prize'
Gulf oil -- How important is it, anyway?
Saudis worry Iraq war could create oil rival

2002.
Carve-up of oil riches begins
Why are we at war? It's the oil, stupid!
U.S. Fails to Curb its Saudi Oil Habit, Experts Say
Energy and war --MoveOn Bulletin 11/20/02
In Iraq war, to the victor goes the oil
Cynthia McKinney: Another oil war
Oil, war and the future of Iraq
Robert Collier: Oil firms wait as Iraq crisis unfolds
The seventh oil war
Understanding your World: Oil, Iraq and the US
US refiners reportedly buying most of Iraq's oil
Oil and War

Prior .
America's Pipe Dream -- A Pro-Western Regime in Kabul Should Give the US an Afghan Route for Caspian Oil
War and Oil: The Politics of Dick Cheney    DemocracyNow! (7/25/2000)
Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship

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U.S. thirst for oil could send Africa on Mideast's path

G. Pascal Zachary
Sunday, January 29, 2006

Kribi, Cameroon -- Standing on a rocky African beach, at the base of a gorgeous waterfall, I am peppered with requests from African men. One is peddling a canoe ride. Another wants to sell me some polished shells. A third asks if he can be my guide. A fourth wants me to visit his art shop. A larger group of men play a game of cards, passing the time.

These men are poor, a condition not unusual in these parts but made more painful by their awareness that a short distance across the water sits a mammoth offshore oil terminal run by ExxonMobil,

The men crowd around me and ask me why does the pipeline, which carries oil underneath their coastal village and out to sea, employ so few people -- and none of them. They suspect, they say, that they are members of the wrong tribe, that the government cares nothing about them, and that ExxonMobil prefers foreign workers. I know the truth. These men are not needed. They lack the right skills and, anyway, very few people are needed to keep the oil flowing.

I cannot share my rude truth with these men for I fear their anger. When I tell them I am not an employee of ExxonMobil but a journalist, they are unsatisfied. They crowd around me, agitated. To them, I am simply an American, a representative from the country consuming African oil.

I plot my escape, and, when safe in my four-wheel drive, I have time to ponder how high a moral price are we gas-guzzling Americans willing to pay for an uninterrupted flow of crude oil?

The question keeps popping up around the world as the United States, which relies on foreign oil for nearly 60 percent of its needs, scrambles to secure sources. The Faustian bargains made by the U.S. government with repressive oil-producing Muslim states of the Persian Gulf are well known. We now face an endless war in Iraq; an Iran striving for nuclear technology; a Saudi Arabia incubating anti-American terrorists and perhaps teetering on the verge of collapse.

Can the United States avoid repeating in Africa this dangerous pattern of first cosseting oil dictators and then suffering a painful blowback?

That's the big question that looms over America's growing oil dependence on tropical Africa. Depicted by rock stars and philanthropists as mired in disease, disorder and malnutrition, Africa is nevertheless America's fastest-rising source of imported oil. Already, three of the top 15 foreign oil suppliers to the United States are African, and the region could provide as much as 25 percent of U.S. imports by 2025.

It is imperative that the United States forge a new bargain with Africa's oil-producing countries. Africa is the poorest part of the planet and it would be disgraceful for Americans to support an oil system that reinforces poverty, fuels corruption and promotes social unrest. Oil could be a boon for Africa, but if mismanaged this precious resource will ultimately be a source of shame.

The results of America's oil dealings with Africa are troubling so far. African governments routinely loot oil revenue. People living closest to the oil wells, meanwhile, are often the poorest of the poor. This is the story in Angola and Nigeria, two of America's top seven sources of imported oil.

Trying to write a new script for African oil, international do-gooders such as the World Bank and Oxfam concocted an innovative plan: Help those African countries to develop an oil sector only if they pledge to spend oil revenue wisely.

The impoverished landlocked country of Chad is the first test of this new way of dealing with African oil. The opening went well. Chad needed loans to build an oil infrastructure, in particular a pipeline that would carry its oil hundreds of miles to an Atlantic port in Kribi, Cameroon, where the oil could be exported. In exchange for loans from the World Bank and international support for billions of dollars of needed private investment, Chad passed a law that bound the government to spend its oil money wisely -- on education and health, not its military.

Oil started pumping in 2003, under the management of U.S. oil giant ExxonMobil. Chad's share of the revenue so far is about $300 million, two-thirds of which the government says it has spent on social programs.

But last month, Chad's government suspended its oil law, breaking its promise with the international do-gooders by declaring it will spend more of its oil money on security and abolish a "future generations fund," a savings account that was to kick in when the country's estimated 1 billion barrels of oil are gone. Observers expect the worst because Chad has a long history of instability and violence. Critics are upset because there is already evidence that the Chad government wasn't living up to the deal anyway.

The World Bank has retaliated by banning any future loans to Chad. More needs to be done. The U.S. government should urge ExxonMobil, which has been silent on the Chad issue, to halt oil payments to the Chad government.

ExxonMobil also needs to pay more attention to the resentment building along its pipeline. The company may ultimately face the exhausting problem afflicting Chevron, another big U.S. oil company that has important operations in Nigeria's Delta region. Kidnappings of Chevron's workers are routine, the company's oil platforms and pipelines face regular assault and Chevron's community relations are strained.

As a result, the trend in Nigeria and neighboring Cameroon is to shift oil operations offshore as much as possible. But the relative safety of the sea reinforces the sense that oil companies want to reduce to a minimum their contact with ordinary Africans.

Oil companies are understandably reluctant to try to reform wayward governments. But they can do better in Africa by adopting a common standard in doing business, including a requirement that payments to governments be made transparent. The trouble is that oil companies are looking for a competitive advantage, making cooperation difficult. Indeed, some oil companies are actually government agencies. China's state-owned oil company, for instance, recently agreed to pay $2.3 billion for a stake in a Nigerian oil and gas field.

Because oil companies can't be expected to monitor international morals, the U.S. government must intervene. The Bush administration should begin by asking Chad President Idriss Deby to reverse his government's decision to break its oil promises. The United States might even threaten to cut off all military aid to Chad, which is part of a five-year $500 million Pentagon program to assist nine African governments in expanding their military capacity, purportedly to help in the war on terrorism.

Nigeria and Angola can also benefit from U.S. pressure. These superstars of African oil should be asked to account completely for their oil revenues -- and allow international inspectors to see where these governments claim to be spending their money.

Nigeria recently released an audit of payments made to the government from large oil companies for 2003 and 2004. The audit, while incomplete, suggests that some Nigerians see the need for greater accountability. The Bush administration should support a wider audit, covering all Nigeria's revenues, which exceeded $30 billion last year.

For the foreseeable future, America can't get along without African oil, and revenue from oil sales can help Africa in its long and difficult climb from poverty and disorder. But America must avoid replaying the same pattern in Africa as it has created in the Persian Gulf. America can be a smart consumer, prodding its suppliers to improve their behavior. That will mean tough decisions for Americans who too often seem willing to purchase oil at any moral price.

G. Pascal Zachary is a fellow of the German Marshall Fund, researching African affairs. He teaches journalism at Stanford University. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.

San Francisco Chronicle

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Buy Your Gas at Citgo: Join the BUY-cott!

by Jeff Cohen
Published on Monday, May 16, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

Looking for an easy way to protest Bush foreign policy week after week? And an easy way to help alleviate global poverty? Buy your gasoline at Citgo stations.

And tell your friends.


Of the top oil producing countries in the world, only one is a democracy with a president who was elected on a platform of using his nation's oil revenue to benefit the poor. The country is Venezuela. The President is Hugo Chavez. Call him "the Anti-Bush."

Citgo is a U.S. refining and marketing firm that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company. Money you pay to Citgo goes primarily to Venezuela -- not Saudi Arabia or the Middle East. There are 14,000 Citgo gas stations in the US. (Click here http://www.citgo.com/CITGOLocator/StoreLocator.jsp to find one near you.) By buying your gasoline at Citgo, you are contributing to the billions of dollars that Venezuela's democratic government is using to provide health care, literacy and education, and subsidized food for the majority of Venezuelans.

Instead of using government to help the rich and the corporate, as Bush does, Chavez is using the resources and oil revenue of his government to help the poor in Venezuela. A country with so much oil wealth shouldn't have 60 percent of its people living in poverty, earning less than $2 per day. With a mass movement behind him, Chavez is confronting poverty in Venezuela. That's why large majorities have consistently backed him in democratic elections. And why the Bush administration supported an attempted military coup in 2002 that sought to overthrow Chavez.

So this is the opposite of a boycott. Call it a BUYcott. Spread the word.

Of course, if you can take mass transit or bike or walk to your job, you should do so. And we should all work for political changes that move our country toward a cleaner environment based on renewable energy. The BUYcott is for those of us who don't have a practical alternative to filling up our cars.

So get your gas at Citgo. And help fuel a democratic revolution in Venezuela.

Jeff Cohen is an author and media critic (www.jeffcohen.org)

CommonDreams

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San Francisco Chronicle

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Saudis worry Iraq war could create oil rival

If attack succeeds, Baghdad's output could top kingdom's

Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, February 16, 2003

Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia -- Pipes, ducts, tanks, towers and an infinite variety of refining, storage and shipping facilities stretch for miles along the desert seashore, resonating with a low, almost imperceptible hum.

This is the heart of the Saudi oil empire, an empire that has made the conservative kingdom an indispensable U.S. ally in the Mideast.

To talk about the place is to make superlatives seem almost banal -- Ras Tanura is the world's largest petroleum products export facility, owned by the world's largest oil firm, in a nation that is the world's largest petroleum producer.

But Saudis are worried that their empire may soon be eclipsed by a powerful new challenger rising out of the ashes of war -- Iraq.

If a U.S.-led invasion succeeds in overthrowing Saddam Hussein's government and installing a pro-American regime in Baghdad, Iraq's immense, largely untapped oil wealth will be opened to foreign investment and the country could become the major economic powerhouse in the region, casting a long shadow over Saudi Arabia.

"If the United States takes over Iraq and Iraqi production rises dramatically, Saudi Arabia will lose position in the market and political influence with the United States," said a strategic planning executive for Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil monopoly.

Such an outcome would be a triumph for the growing anti-Saudi lobby in Washington, which notes that the country produced Osama bin Laden and 15 of the Sept. 11 hijackers, and whose religious charities have funded a variety of extremist anti-Western groups.

"If Iraq gets a democratic government open to foreign investment, there would be an alternate source of oil supply to (that of) the Saudis, so we wouldn't have to defer to their blackmail, their use of the (oil) revenues that we give them for activities that are very jihadist and dangerous," said Frank Gaffney, a Pentagon adviser and president of the Center for Security Policy, a Washington think tank.

In public declarations, Saudi officials insist they are not worried about Iraqi competition. "We hope there will be enough demand to absorb new production, whether it be from the Caspian or West Africa or Iraq," said Abdulatif Al-Othman, the executive director of Saudi Aramco. "The more the merrier."

But privately, many Saudi officials wring their hands.

"Saudi Aramco doesn't like this, but of course we can't talk about it," said the company's planning executive, who wished to remain anonymous. "Some analysts say Iraq could eventually become No. 1."

Iraq has 113 billion barrels of proven reserves, second only to Saudi Arabia's 262 billion barrels. Iraq's potential remains largely unexplored because of the disruption of the past two decades of war and economic sanctions. The U.S. Energy Department estimates that Iraq has as much as an additional 220 billion barrels in undiscovered reserves, bringing the Iraqi total to the equivalent of 98 years of current U.S. annual oil imports.


FOREIGN OIL COMPANIES
It is widely assumed that U.N. economic sanctions would be quickly lifted after the ouster of the Hussein regime and that the new U.S.-installed government would invite foreign oil companies into Iraq.

"Iraq cannot do without opening to foreign investors," said Fadhil Chalabi, executive director of the Center for Global Energy Studies, a think tank in London.

Chalabi's career includes stints as secretary-general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and Iraqi deputy minister of petroleum. He is considered a leading candidate to be installed as czar of Iraq's energy industry in a postwar administration that is certain to be heavily influenced, if not directly run, by the U.S. government.

Chalabi also is a leading proponent of selling off the state-owned Iraqi oil industry to foreign investors. "Without privatization, there is no hope for the oil industry to solve the country's dire economic and social situation, " he said in an interview with The Chronicle.

Chalabi points out that the new government will desperately need quick cash.

The cost of rebuilding the country will be sky-high, as much as $100 billion, according to some estimates.

So far, there's little American public support for spending U.S. tax dollars on Iraq's reconstruction, and it's unlikely that Arab and European nations will foot the bill, as they did in the 1991 Gulf War, particularly if a new war is not backed by another U.N. Security Council resolution.

As a result, analysts say, most of the cost will have to be borne from Iraqi oil revenues.

When added to Iraq's $120 billion foreign debt -- much of it left over from the 1980-88 war against Iran -- the result is a huge burden.

Chalabi estimates that if the best-case scenario holds -- a quick victory by U.S. forces and little damage to the country's oil fields -- Iraq could raise its production from the current level of 2.8 million barrels per day to 7 million barrels per day by 2008. Eventually, he says, Iraqi output will top 10 million barrels per day, more than Saudi Arabia's.


'A LOT OF FANTASY'
But Robert Mabro, director of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, cautions that "there is a lot of fantasy going around" about Iraq's oil future.

"It depends on many factors. Will Saddam blow up the oil fields in the first days of the invasion? Will he shoot missiles at Kuwait's oil installations? How much damage will be done during the war, and how long will it last? It's too speculative."

In part because of these uncertainties, accusations that oil is a leading motive behind the Bush administration's drive toward war are wrong, in the view of many analysts.

"If we just wanted to grab Iraq's oil, we would just get rid of the sanctions and do business with Saddam, who would be more than willing to sell his oil to us," said Gaffney. "And if we just wanted cheap oil, we'd invade Venezuela."

What seems more certain is that in the short term, a war with Iraq will cause at least a moderate jump in oil prices -- although less of a jump than expected only a month ago. At that time, Venezuela was paralyzed by anti- government protests that shut down its oil exports, the fifth highest in the world. If Iraq's production had been taken off the world market at the same time as the Venezuela shutdown, prices could have spiked to $50 per barrel or more, driving American gasoline prices well above $2 per gallon.

Now, with Venezuela's production expected to be back near normal next month -- assuming there are no further political disruptions -- the "Iraq effect" will be more moderate, oil experts say, perhaps a rise to $40 per barrel, unless Kuwait's exports are affected.


PRICE WARS
In the long run, as increased Iraqi production enters the market, prices could be driven down as far as the low teens by a price war between Iraq and Saudi Arabia, according to Fareed Mohamedi, chief economist of Petroleum Finance Co., a Washington consulting firm.

"Rather than sticking within their quota and give up their market share to the Iraqis and others, the Saudis are likely to increase production to drive down prices to push other high-cost producers off the market," Mohamedi said.

However, such a price war is likely to result in decreased revenues for the Saudis, which could lead to social instability in a country that has already experienced sharp drops in living standards since the highs of the 1980s, along with increasing levels of joblessness. Unemployment is likely to grow further because of the country's high birth rate and its reliance on low-wage laborers from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Yemen.

"An oil price crash would be painful here, no matter how much the government has in foreign assets," said Brad Bourland, chief economist at the Saudi American Bank in Riyadh.

Still, Saudi Arabia may be better positioned to weather an oil price war than almost any oil-producing nation, including Iraq, say energy analysts. Its cost of production is believed to be less than $1 per barrel, and Saudi Aramco enjoys a sterling reputation among buyers worldwide as reliable and quality conscious.

"For those advocating a rapid restructuring of the Iraqi oil sector with massive foreign investment resulting in rapidly growing output levels, the unintended consequences could be much lower oil prices, lower oil revenues for the new government in Baghdad and a host of political problems around the world," said Mohamedi.

Ironically, Saudi Arabia and its neighbors could emerge stronger than ever from "regime change" in Iraq. Many analysts say that because of price wars and dwindling oil reserves in other regions, the Persian Gulf's share of the world's crude oil supply -- currently about 25 percent -- could rise to as much as 40 percent over the next decade.

"For those who see Iraq as a means to lessen dependence on the Saudis, in the end the world might become more dependent on Saudi oil," Mohamedi said. "So much for supply diversity as a policy."

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Carve-up of oil riches begins

US plans to ditch industry rivals and force end of Opec, write Peter Beaumont and Faisal Islam

Sunday November 3, 2002
The Observer

The leader of the London-based Iraqi National Congress, Ahmed Chalabi, has met executives of three US oil multinationals to negotiate the carve-up of Iraq's massive oil reserves post-Saddam.

Disclosure of the meetings in October in Washington - confirmed by an INC spokesman - comes as Lord Browne, the head of BP, has warned that British oil companies have been squeezed out of post-war Iraq even before the first shot has been fired in any US-led land invasion.

Confirming the meetings to US journalists, INC spokesman Zaab Sethna said: 'The oil people are naturally nervous. We've had discussions with them, but they're not in the habit of going around talking about them.'

Next month oil executives will gather at a country retreat near Sandringham to discuss Iraq and the future of the oil market. The conference, hosted by Sheikh Yamani, the former Oil Minister of Saudi Arabia, will feature a former Iraqi head of military intelligence, an ex-Minister and City financiers. Topics for discussion include the country's oil potential, whether it can become as big a supplier as Saudi Arabia, and whether a post-Saddam Iraq might destroy the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Disclosure of talks between the oil executives and the INC -- which enjoys the support of Bush administration officials -- is bound to exacerbate friction on the UN Security Council between permanent members and veto-holders Russia, France and China, who fear they will be squeezed out of a post-Saddam oil industry in Iraq.

Although Russia, France and China have existing deals with Iraq, Chalabi has made clear that he would reward the US for removing Saddam with lucrative oil contracts, telling the Washington Post recently: 'American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil.'

Indeed, the issue of who gets their hands on the world's second largest oil reserves has been a major factor driving splits in the Security Council over a new resolution on Iraq.

If true, it is hardly surprising, given the size of the potential deals. As of last month, Iraq had reportedly signed several multi-billion-dollar deals with foreign oil companies, mainly from China, France and Russia.

Among these Russia, which is owed billions of dollars by Iraq for past arms deliveries, has the strongest interest in Iraqi oil development, including a $3.5 billion, 23-year deal to rehabilitate oilfields, particularly the 11-15 billion-barrel West Qurna field, located west of Basra near the Rumaila field.

Since the agreement was signed in March 1997, Russia's Lukoil has prepared a plan to install equipment with capacity to produce 100,000 barrels per day from West Qurna's Mishrif formation.

French interest is also intense. TotalFinaElf has been in negotiations with Iraq on development of the Nahr Umar field.

Planning for Iraq's post-Saddam oil industry is being driven by a coalition of neo-conservatives in Washington think-tanks with close links to the Bush administration, and with INC officials who have long enjoyed their support. Those hawks have long argued that US control of Iraq's oil would help deliver a second objective. That is the destruction of Opec, the oil producers' cartel, which they argue is 'evil' - that is, incompatible with American interests.

Larry Lindsey, President Bush's economic adviser, recently said that a successful war on Iraq would be good for business.

'When there is a regime change in Iraq, you could add three to five million barrels [per day] of production to world supply,' he said in September. 'The successful prosecution of the war would be good for the economy.'

Analysts believe that after five years Iraq could be pumping 10m barrels of oil per day. Opec is already starting to implode, with member nations breaking quotas in an attempt to grab market share before oil prices fall.

Russian concern over a future INC-inspired carve-up of Iraq's oil to the benefit of the US has become so intense that it recently sent a diplomat to hold talks with INC officials. At that meeting in Washington on 29 August the diplomat expressed concern that Russia would be kept out of the oil markets by the US.

A model for the carve-up of Iraq's oil industry was presented in September by Ariel Cohen of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which has close links to the Bush administration.

In The Future of a Post-Saddam Iraq: A Blueprint for American Involvement, Cohen strikes a similar note to Chalabi, putting forward a road map for the privatisation of Iraq's nationalised oil industry, and warning that France, Russia and China were likely to find that a new INC-led government would not honour their oil contracts.

Cohen's proposal would see Iraq's oil industry split up into three large companies, along the areas of ethnic separation, with one company in the largely Shia south, another for the Sunni region around Baghdad, and the last in the Kurdish north.

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Worldview highlights: debating American power
26.05.2002: Henry Porter: Don't wag your finger at us, Mr Bush
17.03.2002: John Lloyd: How anti-Americanism betrays the left
10.03.2002: Mark Leonard: Why America isn't listening
07.04.2002: Nick Cohen: With a friend like this...
10.02.2002: The debate: Is America too powerful for its own good?
23.12.2001: Henry Porter: The triumph of reason
27.01.2002: Paul Rogers: American unilateralism is back
20.01.2002: Christopher Hitchens: What Bush got right

Useful links
UNSCOM
UN resolutions on Iraq
British Foreign Office: Relations with Iraq
US State Department Iraq Update
Arab.net - Iraq resources
Campaign against Sanctions on Iraq
Centre for non-proliferation studies

www.guardian.co.uk

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U.S. Fails to Curb its Saudi Oil Habit

By JEFF GERTH


WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 — Nearly a dozen years after the Persian Gulf war, when reliance on Saudi supplies prompted calls for the United States to diversify its sources of oil, America remains as dependent as ever on the Saudis, according to government and industry officials.

The Saudis supply about one-sixth of United States oil imports. But what gives Saudi Arabia its considerable political strength is its role as the only producer with the spare capacity to replace millions of barrels a day of lost oil. That amount could be drained from the market temporarily by an attack on Iraq, according to the administration's internal assessments as well as outside experts.

"The Saudis have by far the largest amount of unused capacity," Guy Caruso, the head of the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration said.

Relations between Saudi Arabia and the United States have been strained since the participation of several Saudis in the Sept. 11 attacks last year prompted close scrutiny of the country's role in financing and otherwise supporting Islamic radicalism. But the Bush Administration's strategic options are clearly limited by American dependence on Saudi oil.

Saudi Arabia is now producing about eight million barrels a day, oil executives say. Saudi officials have said publicly that they could raise their output to 10 million barrels a day fairly quickly and to 10.5 million within three months. Most experts, as well as the Bush administration, accept the Saudi assurances.

If a war halts Iraq's oil exports — estimated at 1.5 million to 2 million barrels a day — the situation will be manageable, Mr. Caruso said. But it would be harder to replace a steeper decline in exports, which could occur if oil supplies from other Persian Gulf producers were reduced by terrorist attacks or by prohibitive insurance premiums on oil tankers.

In an interview, Mr. Caruso said the United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve and stocks in other countries represented the other best defense against short-term disruptions.

Established in the 1970's as a response to an oil embargo by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, which is based in Kuwait, the reserve now holds a record 592 million barrels, part of a Bush administration plan to reach 700 million barrels by 2005.

But because of increased American dependence on imported oil, the length of time the reserve can compensate for lost imports has declined from a high of 118 days in 1985 to 51 days at the end of last year. Some oil experts advocate increasing the reserve to one billion barrels.

Alan Larson, under secretary of state for economic affairs, went to Saudi Arabia last month to secure assurances that Riyadh would pump extra oil if it were needed, American and Saudi oil executives say.

Last month Mr. Caruso's office helped prepare an "oil market contingency planning" book, based entirely on public data. The Energy Department has restricted the book's distribution to keep it from Congress and the public, according to government officials.

In an interview last month, Mr. Caruso cited a small portion of the book's contents to illustrate the unique role of Saudi Arabia.

Because there are no reporting requirements in the international oil industry, capacity figures vary widely.

Mr. Caruso's agency estimates that Saudi Arabia has slightly more than half the spare production capacity of 4.5 million to 5 million barrels a day that exists in member nations of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

A group of experts led by Larry Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation, estimates that total spare capacity is only three million barrels, and that the Saudis control two-thirds of that.

In the three months after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the largest oil supply disruption in American history occurred, with the daily shortfall averaging 4.6 million barrels, government records show.

Prices doubled for a time. But the shortage was largely offset by increased Saudi oil production, which went from 5.8 million barrels a day in August to 8.5 million by December, according to data in Energy Department's oil market contingency planning book.

Some analysts question whether Saudi Arabia actually has the spare capacity it says it has.

"We all take the Saudi assurances for granted," said Matthew Simmons, head of Simmons & Company International, a Houston-based energy advisory firm, but "the last time Saudi Arabia ever got close to 9 or 10 was in 1980. Their largest field is 55 years old, and they do not disclose their field-by-field production data, so we really don't know for sure."

Government and industry oil experts praise the administration for its focus on energy security. But they say it has been too quiet about its plans, given how openly the issue is discussed in the oil markets and the administration's own push for more transparent oil markets.

Administration officials say they have adopted a cautious approach to avoid roiling the markets. "Something said casually could be misinterpreted and influence the markets," said one Energy Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

More than a half-century ago, the United States developed a close relationship with the Saudi ruling family, tacitly if not explicitly trading support for the government for access to oil.

But the events of Sept. 11 raised fresh questions in the United States about Saudi Arabia: 15 hijackers and much of Al Qaeda's finances came from the kingdom.

On the Saudi side, the American military presence in the country is one factor in the "increasingly open challenges" to the royal family's control, a recently released assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency says.

Both governments insist that the relationship is as strong as ever. But the Pentagon has developed regional alternatives to the use of Saudi military installations, and a draft of a secret Congressional report has criticized the Saudis for not cooperating with Americans investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.

Still, the prospects of a war with Iraq show how oil continues to bind Saudi Arabia's relationship with the United States.

The countries' dealings have always been marked by quiet diplomacy. But according to Bush advisers and officials, the fear that critics would, perhaps unfairly, link the administration's policies to the oil industry has added another layer of secrecy.

"If you are trying to talk about Iraq and if you were not encumbered by the fear that your actions would be linked to Exxon Mobil or the oil industry," said one Bush adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity, "you'd be talking about oil issues."

Vice President Dick Cheney tackled the issue of energy security in the administration's National Energy Policy report. The report noted that Saudi Arabia's policy of "investing in spare oil production capacity" had lessened the impact of oil supply disruptions in any region.

But the report also called for greater "diversity of world oil production." to avoid possible instability due to "concentration of world oil production in any one region of the world."

After Sept. 11, President Bush decided to increase the American strategic reserve to 700 million barrels. But some experts say more is needed, in part to reduce the importance of Persian Gulf producers like Saudi Arabia.

"You want to make it politically impossible for the Saudis to use their swing capacity as a political club," said James Woolsey, President Clinton's first C.I.A. director and one of the advocates of increasing the reserve to one billion barrels.

President Bush's national security strategy, released in September, proposed to "enhance energy security" by working with allies to "expand the sources and types of global energy supplied, especially in the Western Hemisphere, Africa, Central Asia and the Caspian region."

The strategy did not mention the Persian Gulf, the source of most of the world's known oil reserves and virtually all of the world's spare oil capacity.

Energy security issues were front and center two weeks ago in Washington at a conference on the economic consequences of an attack on Iraq. The conference was sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Panel members called for more complete and understandable data on oil markets, a position supported by the Bush administration. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham backed a Saudi initiative in that area during a forum in Japan.

Experts on the panel said Saudi Arabia's stated intention to fill in the supply gaps made the outlook for oil markets more favorable than it was after the sudden Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Moreover, the loss of Iraqi oil exports would be far less than the loss of 4.5 million barrels a day that occurred as a result of Iraq's invasion, which halted Kuwait's production, too.

But the center's analysis included some new problems and a few unknowns. Commercial petroleum stocks are much tighter today than in 1990, and there is less ability to substitute other fuels.

Furthermore, no one knows what President Saddam Hussein of Iraq might do to his own or his neighbors' oil fields, or whether sympathetic terrorists might hit oil targets in the region.

New York Times

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Unsteady Venezuela on the brink

Protests, explosions, unrest threaten to disrupt oil industry

Robert Collier
November 22, 2002

At a time when the world's attention is focused on the threat of war in oil-rich Iraq, there's upheaval ahead in another major petroleum-producing nation: Venezuela.

The stakes are unusually high for the Bush administration, because any major violence in Venezuela could cause a sharp rise in world oil prices.

In recent days, the conflict between leftist President Hugo Chavez and an opposition coalition of political parties, business groups and labor unions has reached the boiling point.

Bomb explosions have rocked newspaper offices, hundreds of thousands of people have clogged city streets, and more than 100 army officers have camped out in a major plaza of Caracas, the capital, declaring it liberated territory and calling on the military to overthrow Chavez.

On Monday, Chavez's allies in the army high command took the unprecedented step of grabbing control of the Caracas police, which was loyal to Mayor Alfredo Pena, a fierce Chavez opponent.

On Thursday, opposition leaders called for a general strike and lockout by employers to begin Dec. 2.

Although they gave no details, many leaders said the shutdown will be indefinite, a repeat of the quasi-insurrectionary stoppage in April that brought about a civilian-military coup that temporarily ousted Chavez.

Observers in Washington and Venezuela warn that large-scale bloodshed -- even a civil war -- is not out of the question.

"Venezuela clearly has crossed a threshold of violence in the past three or four days," said Riordan Roett, director of the Western Hemisphere program at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

"Venezuela is more deeply, bitterly divided than any other nation in recent memory except for Central America in the 1980s and Chile in 1973," when the military overthrew leftist President Salvador Allende. "This is an extraordinary event for Latin America."

Venezuelan unrest could also set off seismic waves across the U.S. economy. Venezuela is the fourth-largest source of imported oil for the United States, and the government owns several major U.S. refineries and the Citgo chain of gasoline stations.

Any interruption in Venezuela's shipments would cause a sudden spike in international oil prices.

Most petroleum experts believe an Iraq war will push prices temporarily to at least $40 per barrel, so a meltdown in Venezuela at the same time could send them soaring much higher.

In August, a poll by the Venezuelan firm Keller and Associates showed 62 percent of the 1,000 people questioned believed the country was heading toward civil war, and 25 percent said they would be willing to fight in that war -- 13 percent against Chavez and 12 percent on his side. Since then, most observers believe that passions have grown hotter.

The opposition, which generally represents the middle and upper classes, claims that Chavez is leading Venezuela toward a Cuban-style dictatorship.

Chavez, a former army officer who was elected in 1998 and re-elected in 2000, enjoys strong support from the poor because he has increased spending on anti-poverty programs.

The opposition demands that Chavez resign and allow new elections. He refuses to quit and points out that the Venezuelan Constitution only allows a new election after the midpoint in his six-year term, or August 2003.

For the past two weeks, Organization of American States Secretary-General Cesar Gaviria has been overseeing negotiations between the government and the opposition, but Thursday's strike call appeared to deal a severe blow to the hopes for peace.

"I'm very, very afraid that a decision so drastic (the general strike) will not allow us to continue our efforts with the negotiations, especially to find an electoral solution to the crisis," Gaviria said.

Opposition hard-liners appear eager for confrontation and accuse Gaviria of being too soft on Chavez.

"We have told Mr. Gaviria that his mission's lack of resolve will make civil war almost inevitable, and that will weigh on his conscience," said Rafael Poleo, publisher of El Nuevo Pais, a fiercely anti-Chavez Caracas newspaper, after a recent meeting with the OAS leader.

Roett calls the negotiations useless, and adds: "This is going to be settled in the street. That's the best solution we can hope for right now.

"What I think it will come down to is that Chavez will try to take total power, and the military, backed by civil society, will move first and take him out."

While the Bush administration has no love for Chavez, the fears of oil supply disruptions have prompted U.S. diplomats to warn the opposition to back away from the brink.

On Monday, the U.S. Embassy in Caracas issued a loud and clear call for moderation: "The United States again reiterates its rejection of illegal actions, especially against people or property, with the intent of altering the constitutional order -- either to overthrow the government or keep it in power unconstitutionally."

Most Venezuelans believe Washington's focus on Iraq is key to Chavez's survival.

"The Bush administration isn't interested in fighting with Chavez now because it needs Venezuela's supply of oil," said Margarita Lopez Maya, a history and economics professor at the Central University of Venezuela. "The administration will wait until it finishes with Iraq, then it will see if Chavez is making problems."

Trying to make the best of his advantage, Chavez has offered to sign a treaty with Washington that would guarantee an unlimited supply of oil to the United States for 20 years at a fixed price.

He also has emphasized that Venezuela will do its best to keep oil prices down during an Iraq war -- "an extremely important signal to Washington and to the oil markets," according to Mazhar Al-Shereideh, the director of Petroanalysis, a consulting firm for the oil industry.

"Historically, Venezuela has always been a steady and reliable source of oil in times of war and peace. Now, the United States needs Venezuela more than ever."

San Francisco Chronicle

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Energy and War

MoveOn Bulletin
Wednesday, November 20, 2002

Editor: Sarah Thompson
Editorial Assistant: Leah Appet
Subscribe online at: http://www.moveon.org/moveonbulletin/


Contents:

1)  Introduction: Energy Policy=Foreign Policy?
2)  One Link: Axis of Oil
3)  Consumption and Production
4)  The Bush Administration and Energy Policy
5)  The "War on Terrorism"
6)  Iraq
7)  Alternatives
8)  Credits
9)  About the MoveOn bulletin and MoveOn.org


1)  INTRODUCTION: ENERGY POLICY=FOREIGN POLICY?

"Together, oil and coal constitute the biggest single industry in history."
     - Ross Gelbspan, in his book, The Heat is On

Energy is the keystone of the quality of life characteristic of much of the modern industrialized world. It makes our technology possible. It touches our lives in thousands of ways each day--from the heat we use in our homes, to the materials that make up the many products we use, to the types of medical services we enjoy, to the ways we communicate and travel.

Yet we take energy largely for granted. We treat it as though it will always be available. And we underestimate its importance in our everyday lives.

Most of our energy comes from oil, gas, and petroleum products. These non-renewable resources not only fuel our cars, but they are also used in literally thousands of ways to support our industrialized lifestyle. They are the key to the current world economy. But they will not last forever. By some estimates, oil production may reach its peak as soon as 2003; by other estimates, 2010. Either way, oil production will most certainly peak within the lifetimes of most people around today. Meanwhile, we have done little to reduce our dependence on this source of energy, thereby assuring that the demand will remain. Once the oil resources of the world begin to diminish, the price of oil will inevitably rise quite high.

This may explain why oil is important enough to fight over.

Oil may not be the only reason for a new Gulf War, but there is little doubt a successful military seizure of Iraq would have the end result of giving the US control over Iraq's oil reserves. Not only would this immediately put money into the pockets of US oil companies, it would also ensure that Iraq's oil reserves don't fall into the hands of a US competitor such as China.

Still, at best, this type of power-grab will only be beneficial to some, and only in the short-term. Burning oil and gas pollutes our collective environment, no matter who controls the oil reserves. Once oil reserves begin to decline, competition for them will become even more intense, and may result in conflicts that we can't yet foresee, all with their attendant environmental and humanitarian consequences. After that, even those oil reserves that we have today will dwindle and go dry, and the cost of finding more oil and extracting it will continue to rise, until it outweighs potential profits, and the amount of energy needed to recover the oil is equal to or exceeds the energy in the recovered oil. In the meantime, unless the population has found some more sustainable way to produce energy, our quality of life will deteriorate. Experts worry that the lack of availability of oil could cause the global human population to actually decline.

If the experts are right, we need more of a solution than squabbling over whatever oil is left. And we need more of a solution than reducing our dependence on Middle Eastern oil. We need to start reducing our dependence on oil, period. We may even need a radical change, a new revolution on the scale of the industrial revolution, in order to completely end our use of oil.

It isn't really that controversial of an idea, after all, that the oil will eventually run out. The controversial part comes when deciding what to do with that knowledge. The Bush administration's ties to the oil industry will likely mean that new policies aimed at ending dependence on oil won't be coming from the government. So new ideas and environmentally concerned action will have to come from the grassroots level. It will take a lot of effort, but it could help ensure a much better future for many generations to come.

If the experts are right, the sooner we start, the better.


2) ONE LINK: THE AXIS OF OIL

Cheney, Bush, and the industry form a kind of "axis of oil" which serves US corporate interests. In fact, based on consultations with energy industry leaders such as the CEO of Enron, the Bush administration has determined that the basis of the US national security is access to oil. Not surprising then that Iraq is the new target in the "war on terrorism."
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1113-08.htm


3) CONSUMPTION

On a table showing world petroleum consumption from 1991-2000, the US is the highest consumer of petroleum by far.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/iea/table12.html

Dependence on foreign oil is a result of this high rate of consumption. In June 2002, Under Secretary of State Alan Larson testified before the House of Representatives International Relations Committee that US dependency on foreign sources of oil will be an "unavoidable component of the energy supply mix." According to Larson, "We are virtually self-sufficient in all energy resources except oil, of which we import 52 percent of our needs. Estimates indicate that over the next 20 years, U.S. oil consumption will increase by 33 percent or more than 6 million barrels a day. Depending on many factors, including the policies we adopt, the Energy Information Administration estimates that imported oil could grow to 62 percent of our total oil consumption by 2020." Thus the energy security policy of the US must "ensure that our economy has access to energy on terms and conditions that support economic growth and prosperity" and "ensure that the United States and its foreign policy can never be held hostage by foreign oil suppliers."
http://www.usembassy.it/file2002_06/alia/a2062007.htm


4) THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION AND ENERGY POLICY

The Bush administration is as oil-drenched as they come, as this article takes care to demonstrate. But what does this mean? According to the article, "George W.'s ties to oil don't prove that the industry decides our every foreign policy move. But they do just about guarantee, for all practical purposes, that nothing significant will change in American energy policy. With Bush-Cheney in power, oil addiction is here to stay."
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CAV111A.html

For in-depth information about Dick Cheney and his ties to the energy industry, see our previous bulletin, "Who is Dick Cheney?"
http://www.moveon.org/moveonbulletin/bulletin1.html

This is an excellent overview of a report on the campaign contributions made by various energy companies to Democratic and Republican candidates over the past ten years. Not surprisingly, President Bush was the number one recipient of campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry in the last election. Enron was the number one campaign contributor in this industry, while Exxon Mobil came in second. Bush also received a large amount of money from the utilities industry. In fact, his two-year fund-raising total was more than any other federal candidate has received from electric utilities in the past decade. There is lots of detailed information here, especially if you have a little time to explore the charts.
http://www.opensecrets.org/pressreleases/energybriefing.htm

Confused by all of the information out there about Enron? Never fear--here, in point form, is "Enron at a Glance." Along with other useful information, this list notes that Enron CEO Kenneth Lay "was appointed to the Bush transition team where he worked directly with Vice President Cheney to develop the administration's national energy policies," and that "no fewer than 52 former Enron executives, lobbyists, lawyers or significant shareholders ended up working for the Bush administration."
http://www.thedailyenron.com/enron101/glance.asp

Now that the Republicans have won full control of both Congress and the Senate, it is far more likely that they will pass a controversial energy bill which includes drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
http://www.adn.com/front/story/2095762p-2192708c.html

MSNBC takes a look at the Republicans who will be taking over the environment and energy committees, and how this is likely to affect policy in 2003, including the energy bill.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/831973.asp

This website offers a critical analysis of the energy bill, breaking it up section by section with links and pro/con summaries provided for the various topics covered. A very useful resource if you have a little time to browse.
http://www.energyjustice.net/energybill/


5) THE "WAR ON TERRORISM"

Why do so many people outside of the US seem to think that the war on Afghanistan is related to oil? This article gives an overview of a number of sources that examine the many links between oil policy and events in Afghanistan, and gives the gist of their arguments on subjects such as the rise and fall of the Taliban.
http://www.afgha.com/
article.php?sid=13313&mode=threa