- Linda McQuaig is a prominent, admired, and award-winning
Canadian journalist writing about vital issues of concern to everyone.
She was a national reporter for the Toronto Globe and Mail before joining
the Toronto Star where she now covers Canadian politics with her trademark
combination of solid research, keen analysis, irreverence, passion and
wit. She's easy to read, never boring, and fearless. The National Post
called her "Canada's Michael Moore."
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- McQuaig is also a prolific author with a well-deserved
reputation for taking on the establishment. In her previous seven books,
she challenged Canada's deficit reduction scheme to gut essential social
services. She explained how the rich used the country's tax system to get
richer the way it's worked in the US since Ronald Reagan and then exploded
under George Bush. She exposed the fraud of "free trade" (never
called fair because it isn't) empowering giant corporations over sovereign
states while exploiting working people everywhere.
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- She also showed how successive Canadian governments waged
war on equality since the 1980s, and in her latest book, "Holding
the Bully's Coat - Canada and the US Empire," she takes aim at the
conservative Stephen Harper administration's allying with George Bush's
belligerent lawlessness and phony "war on terrorism." Canada
chose not to be part of Washington's concocted "coalition of the willing"
in Iraq but partnered in its war of aggression and illegal occupation of
Afghanistan.
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- Her last book before her latest one is another important
tour de force and subject of this review. It's titled "It's the Crude,
Dude: war, big oil, and the fight for the planet." It's no secret
America's wars in the Middle East and Central Asia are to control what
a Franklin Roosevelt State Department spokesman in 1945 called a "stupendous
source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world
history" - the huge amount of Middle East oil with most of it believed
to be in Saudi Arabia then. With it goes veto power over how it's distributed,
to whom, at what price, for whose benefit and at whose expense. Today,
one country above all others may be that "greatest material prize"
making it target number one America intends to control for the strategic
power and riches it represents.
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- The country is Iraq, and it's the reason US forces invaded
and occupy it. McQuaig's book explained it stunningly, beginning on her
opening page: The "oil motive" drives America's wars "given
oil's obvious geopolitical significance, and the fact that Iraq is the
last easily harvested oil bonanza left on earth." More on that below
and also on the fact that with less than 5% of the world's population and
3% of its oil reserves, the US wastefully consumes one-fourth of all oil
production with no plan to cut back. It means a reliable outside source
is essential pointing directly at the Middle East where two-thirds of all
proved reserves are located. They're not inexhaustible, however, as oil
is a finite resource. It means a crunch ahead is inevitable.
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- McQuaig cited a US Department of Energy National Energy
Laboratory report saying: "The world has never faced a problem like
this....Previous transitions (like 'wood to coal and coal to oil') were
gradual and evolutionary; oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary,"
and may already have occurred. Further, with America waging two costly
oil-related wars for much of what's left, gaining control has become violent
with no letup in sight and more oil-rich nations in Washington's target
queue. More on that below as well and the fact that oil consumption keeps
increasing, two huge emerging nations (China and India) need growing amounts
of it, just at a time production peaked and is declining. That's a combustible
mixture now playing out in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia. It also affects
Iran, Venezuela, Sudan (for its Darfur oil riches) and other strategically
important oil-rich nations that dare defy America by wanting control of
their own resources along with the major share of revenue from them.
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- McQuaig deals with this timely and important subject
in the part of the world where it matters most - the Middle East and especially
Iraq where America came to stay. Her book is divided into 10 tantalizingly
titled chapters. It was written in 2004, updated in 2006, and is just
as relevant now as when first published. Some of the story is known, but
much information covered isn't common knowledge and key parts aren't discussed
at all in the mainstream. They include the rise of Big Oil and OPEC, Iraq's
strategic importance, its potentially immense and easily accessible untapped
oil riches, and America's intention to turn the nation into a centrally
located Middle East military base with plans to stay as long as there's
enough oil in the country and region to make it worthwhile. Current talk
of future force drawdowns and withdrawal is baloney. That will be discussed
further below as well.
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- McQuaig provides lots of relevant context for a full
understanding of why oil centrally dominates geopolitics today:
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- -- wars and the reason America fights so many of them
- for the essential resources, mainly oil, to keep the heart of capitalism
beating, without which it can't;
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- -- the dominant media's vital hyperventilating lead cheerleader
role selling them;
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- -- the power of the oil cartel and how it developed and
grew after Edwin Drake drilled the first commercially successful well in
Titusville, PA in 1859.
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- -- how John D. Rockefeller ruthlessly built a powerful
Oil Trust he controlled; how it was nominally dismembered by Theodore Roosevelt's
trust-busting efforts early in the last century; yet how it endured through
joint ventures, interlocking directorates, mergers and "working (partial
ownership) control" of its separate pieces, the largest of which was
Rockefeller's Standard Oil of New Jersey, now called ExxonMobil. The old
Oil Trust would fit in its back pocket.
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- -- the role of the US auto industry and its addiction
to gas-guzzling, hugely greenhouse gas emitting, high-profit SUVs accounting
for one-fourth of all US auto sales;
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- -- the rise, fall and reemergence of OPEC; -- the historical
roles of Saudi Arabia and Venezuela as dominant oil producing nations and
the central role Iraq plays today as the grandest of grand oil prizes;
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- -- the hugely important issue of global warming fossil
fuel burning causes; how transportation is over one-fourth of the problem
with passenger vehicles the main culprit, and this industry's accounting
for half of total oil consumption;
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- -- and still more in McQuaig's powerful, riveting, and
relevant account of oil's central importance in our lives. Her book reads
like a thriller. But the story is real, and it's vital to know its contents.
Read on for a detailed sampling. Then buy and read the book for the full
account.
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- Fort Knox Guarded by a Chihuahua
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- The title refers to language about oil-rich Canada that
a US investment service, called Daily Reckoning, used in a provocative
newsletter article. It said Canada owes us (their) oil. "Without
our protection, (the country) is the natural resources equivalent of Fort
Knox guarded by a 'No Trespassing' sign and a Chihuahua" because our
military protects our northern neighbor. That's likely news to most Canadians
for a country with no enemies. Canada, however, is extremely oil-rich,
and counting its huge amount of hard to refine tar sands oil ranks second
in the world in total reserves.
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- In her newest book, "Holding the Bully's Coat,"
McQuaig explains her nation is currently the US's leading energy supplier.
Canada's importance will grow ahead as it plans to triple its oil sands
production by 2015 to three million barrels daily, earmarking most of it
for US markets. It's part of a secretly launched 2005 scheme called the
Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) or North American
Union.
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- It's a tri-national agreement hatched below the radar,
controlled by Washington, and advocates greater economic, political, social,
and security integration between the US (as boss), Canada and Mexico.
In fact, it's an ugly corporate-led plot against the sovereignty of three
nations for greater profits, enforced by a common hard line security strategy
already in play in each country. It's goal is a borderless North America
under US control without barriers to trade and capital flows for corporate
giants, mainly US ones.
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- It's also to insure America gets free and unlimited access
to Canadian and Mexican resources, mainly oil, but Canadian water, too.
That will assure US energy security while denying Canada and Mexico preferential
access to their own resources henceforth earmarked for US markets. The
scheme amounts to NAFTA on steroids combined with Pox Americana homeland
security enforcement partnered with Canadian and Mexican contingents.
It adds up to the worst of all possible worlds headed for an unmasked "deeply
integrated" police state.
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- Canada is also currently hamstrung by a provision it
agreed to in ratifying NAFTA in 1993. It gave up the right to reduce its
US energy exports (should it need more of them) unless it cuts its own
consumption by a comparable amount. Oil-rich Mexico, in contrast, agreed
to no such provision and got an exemption Canada lacks. Canada has a loophole,
though, SPP provisions will close if enacted. NAFTA can't prevent the
country's use of its newly developed tar sands oil or the right to export
them to other nations, as of now. With that in mind, Canada is building
a 720 mile oil pipeline from northern (oil-rich) Alberta to British Columbia
in the far west. When completed, it will enable resources to be exported
to China or any other oil-consuming nation Canada chooses to trade with.
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- Meanwhile, back in the US, the Iraq war was launched
in March, 2003. Dominant media fear mongering helped sell it, giddy cheerleadering
accompanied its start, the reasons for going were reinvented when ones
first given were exposed as lies, excuse-making now explains why things
haven't gone as planned, and all the while we're told it had nothing to
do with oil. And fish don't swim, and birds don't fly. Instead, as McQuaig
explained "....the Iraq saga (was to disarm) a dangerous dictator
(morphed into) a battle to bring democracy to the Middle East (with) oil
remain(ing) strangely offstage, hidden in plain sight."
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- Clearly, oil drives US policy because of this nation's
insatiable appetite for 25% of world production Washington feels it has
a birthright to use excessively. We now compete with other growing economies
for a dwindling supply of an irreplaceable resource we can't do without.
McQuaig noted that prospect looms as "the world is much closer to
running out of oil than most government or industry officials are willing
to admit." We now compete with China and India along with developed
nations, with China's prodigious growth alone devouring huge amounts of
a fast-depleting resource at current rates of consumption.
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- McQuaig quoted Edmonton-based energy economist Mark Anielski
saying: "There's not enough oil to feed two (voracious) superpowers."
Enter Canada as already explained above and Venezuela to be addressed
later in a separate chapter on that oil-rich nation under Hugo Chavez.
For now, it deserves mentioning McQuaig brings him up because he made
some "far-reaching deals with China to develop Venezuela's considerable
oil reserves" and build a relationship with the Asian giant to supply
it with increasing amounts of future output.
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- The problem is no matter how much more oil is left in
the ground, we're now consuming more than we're producing. "Oil is
finite and not recyclable," noted McQuaig, and past experience shows
humans aren't smart or caring enough to figure a way out of this dilemma
without making painful changes they haven't been inclined to do so far.
Today, the world runs on oil. It touches nearly all parts of our lives
from running our factories to powering cars and other means of transportation
to growing the food we eat and much more. McQuaig explained "no energy
source in view....is as effective, versatile, and potent as oil."
Yet, the solution to our dilemma is to rely on lots less of it, substituting
less ecologically damaging sources like wind, sun and waves.
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- We've already consumed around half the world's supply,
according to many reliable estimates, and have done it mostly over the
last 100 years. There may be about one trillion barrels left in the ground,
but at current consumption rates it'll be gone in forty years or less.
Also, the easy to find and produce oil is running out. It's nearly all
been found except in Iraq, making that country so attractive. The vast
remaining reserves elsewhere are hard to find, expensive to produce and
more costly overall to bring to market, like Canada's tar sands and Venezuela's
heavy oil.
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- McQuaig noted an oil industry rule of thumb is companies
should bring on at least as much new oil as they produce. The industry,
however, falls far short of that, and some analysts, like Matthew Simmons,
believe the world's largest oil-rich nation, Saudi Arabia, has considerably
less oil left than it claims because it used up so much supplying the West
as its swing producer. As supplies get lower and scarcity grows in the
face of rising demand, oil prices will also rise, and one Wall Street firm,
Goldman Sachs, thinks they're not far from topping $100 a barrel.
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- McQuaig also raised a central issue she devotes an entire
later chapter to - a looming global warming crisis barely getting the attention
it deserves although credible climate scientists no longer debate what
they know is a major problem demanding attention now. Here she cited a
Pentagon-commissioned report describing global warming as a phenomenon
"that could transform the world dramatically in the next twenty years....with
major European cities (submerged) and Britain plunged into a Siberian climate."
The report also sees a coming plague of "typhoons, mega-droughts
and famine" ahead that will bring "catastrophic changes"
causing "widespread human strife and even nuclear conflict."
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- The Pentagon's concern is national security, so its top
brass are planning ahead for what McQuaig called "the prospect of
life on earth reverting to a primitive, desperate, brutal quest for survival"
needing lots more Marines available to subdue. That's no concern at the
headquarters of the largest, most profitable company on earth - oil giant
ExxonMobil. It earned a record $39.5 billion in 2006 on sales of $377.6
billion, more than double oil-rich Venezuela's GDP the same year according
to IMF data.
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- If ExxonMobil were a nation, it would rank number 20
in the world (based on GDP) for 2006 ahead of Switzerland and Indonesia
and slightly behind Sweden and Turkey. It means this company has immense
power and uses it to keep the world consuming increasing amounts of what
grows its sales and profits and keeps elevating it higher in the world
rankings of countries by size. Notions like global warming, climate control
measures, and Kyoto agreements send chills through its boardroom. The
company acts aggressively to deny a problem exists or that oil and other
fossil fuels are a cause for concern.
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- Conservative think tanks like the Competitive Enterprise
Institute echo the same claim with its director, Myron Ebell, calling Kyoto
defenders "an animus against humanity." Because it gets generous
funding from ExxonMobil and other corporate interests, it has every incentive
to be dismissive about what there's virtual scientific consensus on.
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- Problem or not, the US intends to lock up control of
as much of this resource as possible by any means and whatever the consequences.
The need for it goes back decades as a "vital American policy objective."
Referring to Saudi oil, the FDR state department quoted above said their
resources "must remain under American control (to supplement and replace)
our dwindling reserves (when we had plenty of them), and of preventing
this power potential from falling into unfriendly hands."
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- All American presidents accept this notion, even Jimmy
Carter in his January, 1980 State of the Union address as he was about
to leave office. He laid out his Carter Doctrine (written by Zbigniew
Brzezinski) stating: "An attempt by any outside force to gain control
of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital
interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be
repelled by any means necessary, including military force."
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- The same theme with a different emphasis came out of
Dick Cheney's 2001 energy task force. It acknowledged a dwindling supply
of world oil reserves focusing on the Middle East as a stopgap solution
"where the prize ultimately lies." He had a plan to get it that's
discussed below.
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- Along Comes Iraq
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- From inception, the US was always an imperial nation.
It was in our DNA from the beginning when our earliest settlers slaughtered
millions of Native Indians for their land and resources in our great push
West and South "from sea to shining sea." Jefferson even sanctified
it in our Declaration of Independence calling Native peoples "merciless
indian savages," and our Constitution dismissed them as non-persons.
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- WW II changed everything, however, when America emerged
as the only dominant nation left standing. We became the world's unchallengeable
economic, political and military superpower with designs for world hegemony.
It emerged full-blown under George Bush post-9/11 whose administration-picked
officials designed an imperial grand strategy in 1998 as members of the
Project for a New American Century (PNAC). It revived Paul Wolfowitz and
Dick Cheney aide Lewis Libby's 1992 hawkish Defense Planning Guidance putting
in new form a plan for "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies,
Forces and Resources for a New Century. It also updated the Truman Doctrine
(state department advisor George Kennan devised) for "Cold War containment"
and an earlier strategy for US global military and economic dominance.
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- Today, the Middle East, Central Asia and all independent-minded
oil rich and other states have replaced the Soviet bloc, and the new evil
empire is "international terrorism" and "Islamofascist"
threats to our national security. It's the same old scheme for world dominance
repackaged with new names and faces replacing old ones.
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- Enter Iraq, the Bush administration had designs on before
settling into office. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill revealed it was topic
one in the early weeks of 2001, months before 9/11 made attacking and occupying
it possible. He was shocked to discover the scheme was being hatched secretly
by Dick Cheney in the first meeting of the National Security Council held
10 days after the President's inauguration. The decision was taken with
talk moving on to logistics of "how" and "how quickly,"
and whether Iraq or Afghanistan was number one or two in our target queue.
The latter, of course, came first with Central Asia's immense resources
in mind, but it was just prologue for the "shock and awe" that
began in March, 2003 in the land between two rivers in the cradle of civilization,
now smashed by intent to free up its oil bonanza for Big Oil to exploit.
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- Pulling off this scheme meant getting the public on board
that works best by scaring it to death with lots of help from round-the-clock
dominant media hyperventilating. It made it easy selling the concocted
notion of "Enemy Number One" Osama bin Ladin (a former CIA asset),
Al-Queda terrorists and the "smoking gun threat" of WMDs showing
up in the shape of a "mushroom-shaped cloud." Former Dean of
the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communications, George
Gerbner, explained how it works: "Fearful people are more dependent,
more easily manipulated and controlled, more susceptible to deceptively
simple, strong, tough measures and hard-line postures....they may accept
and even welcome repression if it promises to relieve their insecurities"
and anxieties.
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- Paul Wolfowitz may have inadvertently revealed the Bush
administration's scheme to do it. He first said the WMD threat was chosen
for "bureaucratic reasons." Then he told Singapore journalists
on an Asian visit it was the only reason everyone could agree on, and finally
he admitted Iraq was chosen over North Korea because it's swimming on a
"sea of oil." That went unreported in the mainstream where "the
word 'oil' remained unmentioned and unmentionable."
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- When no WMDs were found, the reasons for war were reinvented.
Now the emphasis was to bring democracy to the country as a humanitarian
intervention, and being wrong about WMDs was chalked up as faulty pre-war
intelligence. Again, the real oil motive was kept off the table "in
plain sight" as McQuaig observed. It was also to remove a leader
unwilling to let his nation become a US pawn, an unforgivable sin in Washington's
eyes, especially if the state swims on a "sea of (mostly undeveloped
easily accessed) oil." Iraq's oil treasure is the last bonanza of
"low-hanging fruit" on the planet making it too rich a prize
to pass up regardless of cost or degree of difficulty getting control of
it.
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- McQuaig explained exploration of Iraq's oil potential
remained "frozen in time" with almost no new development in over
two decades because of intervening wars going back to the 1980s and economic
sanctions in place following the Gulf war in 1991. Yet, even with dated
information, it's known Iraq has at least 10% of world oil reserves. If
its potential ends up doubling or tripling, as happened in Saudi Arabia
in the last 20 years, it could, in fact, have the world's largest proved
reserves. McQuaig noted that possibility is "staggering" in
importance making the country "the most sought after real estate on
the face of the earth" according to an oil analyst she interviewed.
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- In future years, with its production potential fully
developed and oil at $50 a barrel (it could be double that or more), it
translates to revenue of $70 billion a year pumping 5 million barrels daily
and $100 billion at 7 million barrels. Today, Saudi Arabia produces 8
million daily barrels or more if called on. Iraq is also strategically
located between Saudi Arabia and Iran at the top end of the Persian Gulf.
It's thus ideally positioned for a military base as McQuaig's quoted oil
analyst observed saying: "Think of Iraq as a military base with a
very large oil reserve underneath....You can't ask for better than that."
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- It makes the country so strategically important, Global
Policy Forum's James Paul argued losing Iraq would have been devastating
for Big (US) Oil. It represents "the whole future of the oil industry,"
frozen in time, hugely endowed, and easy pickings for the lucky companies
able to harvest it and reap immense profits doing it. Because of its importance,
the Cheney energy task force included Big Oil giants in its secret discussions
making plans for war with Iraq and needing its input for parcelling out
its resources afterward. The Wall Street Journal reported in October,
2002 Cheney's staff secretly met with ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips
and Halliburton executives on plans to secure and rehabilitate Iraq's oil
fields. Thereafter, they'd take them over and run them.
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- From the early 1970s, most Middle East countries and
Venezuela's oil industries were nationalized, and state-owned oil companies
still control most of the world's oil. McQuaig noted "major international
oil companies control a mere 4 per cent" but adjusted and prospered
under that arrangement nonetheless. In the Middle East, and most everywhere
else, they do the drilling and pumping under revenue sharing contracts
with host governments.
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- We now know what McQuaig may have been the first to report
in her book - that Washington's plan for Iraq involved privatizing its
oil industry along with everything else in the country already sold off
to foreign investors by 2007 or will be. She noted a secret 100 page contracting
document drafted by the US Agency for International Development (USAID),
with Treasury Department help. It detailed a plan to replace Iraq's state-run
economy with a privately owned one. It was a "Mass Privatization
Program" calling for "private sector involvement in strategic
sectors, including privatization, asset sales, concessions, leases and
management contracts, especially in the oil and supporting industries."
McQuaig said it was to "make the country a safe place for foreign
investment," or put another way, a free-market paradise for corporate
America.
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- A state department subtler form of oil privatization
was drafted as well with heavy oil industry input. It laid out seven possible
production models all involving Iraq's oil nominally remaining under state
control with "operation and control of the oil fields....handed over
to foreign oil companies."
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- Subtleties apparently were abandoned in the final US-Big
Oil drafted "Hydrocarbon Law" scheme filled with secret provisions
now before the Iraqi Parliament. It's hugely contentious as it grants
Iraq's National Oil Company exclusive control of only 17 of the nation's
80 known oil fields. The others are set aside for Big US and UK Oil investors
mainly in a shameless act of plunder. In addition, all new deposits found
(the bulk of the country's oil) are to be set aside for foreign investor
development with provisions allowing them to expropriate all earnings and
invest nothing in Iraq's economy. They also have no obligation to hire
local workers, respect union rights, or share new technologies. In addition,
they'll be granted long-term contracts up to 30 or more years, dispossessing
Iraq and its people of their own resources in a naked scheme to steal them.
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- Because Iraqi resistance to US occupation is so unrelenting,
intense and violent, there's no way for sure to know how future events
will play out. One thing is sure, however. Iraq's oil bonanza won't be
as easy for foreign investors to exploit as once thought possible and may
never be.
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- The Man to See
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- In this section, McQuaig details the lucrative business
of war-profiteering showing why conflicts are great for business. For
companies close to the Bush administration, it was a bonanza waiting to
be reaped from huge no-bid contracts. First in line was Dick Cheney's
former employer, Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root.
Since 2001 in Afghanistan and Iraq, it was awarded upwards of $20 billion
in war-related contracts the company then exploited to the fullest with
shoddy work, massive cost-overruns and fraudulent billings, most barely
drawing attention. Early on, Halliburton's Iraq oil field repairs were
so poor the US Army estimated it cost the country $8 billion in lost production.
It also botched a simple job installing metering systems at ports in southern
Iraq to protect against oil being smuggled from the country.
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- In all, well over 70 US firms, most well-connected and
many with familiar names, shared in the contracting bonanza - companies
like Bechtel, Fluor, Parsons, Shaw Group, SAIC, CH2M Hill, the Louis Berger
Group, the Rendon Group, and at least 21 private security companies like
DynCorp, Triple Canopy, Erinys and Blackwater USA supplying around 100,000
hugely overpaid paramilitary mercenaries (not the official phony 30,000
industry number). They supplement 170,000 US occupying forces providing
protection for other war-profiteering companies and Iraqi officials.
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- Last year, Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz estimated
the war's cost would ultimately exceed $2 trillion when all factors related
to it are included making it the most expensive war ever adjusted for inflation.
Omitting parts of what Stiglitz included, the conservative Congressional
Research Service (CRS) June 28, 2007 Report for Congress showed $610 billion
already approved through FY 2007 and May 25, 2007 supplemental funding
covering Iraq and Afghanistan war related costs and other Global War on
Terror operations since 9/11. At that level, it's approaching the inflation-adjusted
$650 billion Vietnam war cost it may, in fact, have already exceeded.
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- Add an administration requested $148 billion more for
FY 2008 and the cost jumps to $758 billion. Projections will likely go
higher still with monthly "burn rates" spiraling from about $8
billion in 2005 to a Senate-estimated $12 billion now. Add in an administration
requested DOD FY 2008 budget of $648.8 billion plus another $148 billion
war-related supplemental for a grand total $796.8 billion - and rising
for a bonanza of war-profiteering, waste, fraud and abuse. CRS conservatively
under-projects a total cost up to $1.4 trillion for the next 10 years at
reduced troop levels ranging from 30 - 70,000 on the assumption America
is in Iraq and Afghanistan to stay with major permanent base installations
in place and being built to assure it.
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- Capable Iraqi professionals and workers haven't shared
in the spoils of war and were never part of Washington's occupation plans.
They've been denied an operational role rebuilding and running the country's
essential services they can do as well as foreign investors and for much
less cost. McQuaig quoted former Iraqi oil minister under Saddam in the
1980s, Issam Al-Chalabi. He's not Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi who conspired
with the Bush administration to plunder his own country, wanted to run
it, and is the current oil minister. Issam Al-Chalabi was incensed that
companies like Halliburton got contracts to put out Iraqi oil fires and
rebuild the country's oil wells and production capacity. "Iraqi professionals
have been doing this for decades," he said. "They are among
the best in the world."
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- Iraq's National Oil Company is also capable of running
the nation's oil industry but will only get a sliver of it if the new "Hydrocarbon
Law" passes and becomes law. This was the key part of Washington's
plan for ownership and management that includes all of Iraq's economy to
pass largely into American business hands. McQuaig quoted a Jane Meyer
New Yorker article explaining winning contracts in Iraq is the realm of
Dick Cheney, and "Anything that has to do with Iraq policy, Cheney
is the man to see." She should have added anything to do with running
America, Cheney's also the man to see."
-
- Washington always acts in Big Oil's interest, but the
current administration is closer to the industry than any previous one.
It's staffed and run by former oil and other energy industry executives,
including the President and Vice-President. Oil is central to US plans
for world dominance, but Iraq is only one part of the overall international
oil picture, though the most important one of all. Vitally important as
well is OPEC, run by its member nations and seen as a threat to Big Oil
interests unless co-opted.
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- McQuaig explained ever since it became an important player
in the mid-1970s, Washington tried to "undermine its effectiveness
and weaken its unity." It succeeded because OPEC hurt itself and became
less of a market influence after the early 1980s. One Wall Street analyst
said "it was on its deathbed" by the late 1990s, until it suddenly
began to revive. One man made it possible by 2000, "sav(ing) OPEC"
- Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. How it happened is covered below.
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- Revolution and Ice Cream in Caracas
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- McQuaig reviewed Hugo Chavez's dramatic rise to become
Venezuela's president, his Bolivarian Revolution, the transformation of
his nation's oil policies, and his key role in the resurgence of OPEC.
Chavez was first elected president in December, 1998 and assumed office
in February, 1999. He proceeded to hold a national referendum so his people
could decide whether to convene a National Constituent Assembly to draft
a new constitution to embody his visionary agenda. It passed overwhelmingly
followed three months later by elections to the Assembly to which members
of Chavez's MVR party and parties allied to it won 95% of the seats. They
then drafted the revolutionary Constitucion de la Republica Bolivariana
de Venezuela. It was put to a nationwide vote in December, 1999 and overwhelmingly
approved changing everything for the Venezuelan people.
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- The Constitution established the foundation and legal
framework for President Chavez's revolutionary vision for structural change.
He's since transformed his nation into a model participatory social democracy
serving the needs of all Venezuelans instead of the privileged few alone
the way it nearly always had been in the past. It allowed the people to
choose their leaders and gave them unimaginable benefits like free quality
health care as a "fundamental social right and....responsibility of
the state....to guarantee it." It banned discrimination, established
the principle of participatory democracy from the grassroots for everyone,
guaranteed free speech, a free press, free elections, equal rights for
indigenous people, and mandated government make quality free education
available for all to the highest levels, and much more. Venezuela under
Hugo Chavez would never be the same again, and the great majority of Venezuelans
won't accept it any other way.
-
- Chavez had another goal as well - to resuscitate OPEC,
give oil producing states more power over their own resources and be fairly
compensated for them through prices they controlled, not Big Oil. It would
thus allow him to implement his Bolivarian Revolution from the greater
revenues he'd get from a stronger, more unified organization of 11 significant
oil producing nations. Chavez became a mediator to do it and undertook
a whirlwind tour of member states to sell his plan to their leaders.
-
- McQuaig explained his idea was based on the simple notion
that OPEC needed stable prices kept within a "price band" Chavez
proposed to be between $22 - $28 a barrel that today seems low. It wasn't
then with oil prices down around $10 a barrel and less. Making the plan
work was doable providing all OPEC nations agreed to abide by it and not
cheat as was common for added revenue. The idea was for a united OPEC
to cut production whenever prices dropped below its lower band and increase
it above the upper one, thus letting basic supply and demand forces do
their work. Chavez proposed an OPEC summit in Caracas in September, 2000,
all its nations agreed to come, and after discussion signed on to implement
the plan.
-
- McQuaig summed up Chavez's achievement saying: "After
being on the verge of extinction only a year earlier, OPEC was very much
alive" and still is. Chavez's vision was "shaking up the international
oil scene (but by doing it made) himself persona non grata in Washington."
He's been at it ever since with his revolutionary social programs endearing
himself to Venezuela's majority poor and working population who now receive
essential services unheard of before and unimaginable in America now.
He also promotes a bold new trade initiative called ALBA - the Bolivarian
Alternative for the Americas. Unlike Global North one-way neoliberal schemes,
it's an innovative "fair trade" alternative based on complementarity,
solidarity and cooperation among participating Latin American states.
-
- Chavez's policies are working. He built alliances with
regional states and is using his nation's oil revenues responsibly with
impressive results. He cut poverty in the country to around 25% of the
population (when benefits from state-funded social programs are factored
in) compared to its 1998 and 2003 post-management-led oil lockout high
of 62%. Unemployment also fell from 20% in early 2003 to 8% in May, 2007,
and inflation at, current high levels, is dropping as well with government
measures being taken to combat it. All the while, business is booming
with economic growth the highest in Latin America. It averaged around
10% or more per quarter for over the past three years, and finance minister
Rodrigo Cabezas told Venezuela's state-run ABN news agency the country
will exceed 8% growth this year. It's coming mainly from the private sector
that added over 1100 new businesses and industries in 2005 and 2006.
-
- Nonetheless, Chavez is Washington's Latin American "enemy
number one" having tried four times to remove him and failed. McQuaig
covered the dramatic two day CIA-orchestrated April, 2002 aborted coup.
It caused mass street outrage and unwillingness of the country's military
to go along. Chavez returned to office, survived an economically devastating
oil management-led industry lockout, and resuscitated his nation and people
impressively enough to win reelection as president last December by a nearly
2 - 1 margin.
-
- McQuaig sat down with him for an extended two and a half
interview at the Palacio de Miraflores (presidential palace) in Caracas
in March, 2004. Chavez eschews pomp and remains true to his part black,
part Indian roots. On December 3, 2006 election day, he drove himself
to his polling station in his signature red Volkswagen, accompanied by
his grandson. For his interview with McQuaig, he showed up casually dressed,
and near the end of the session ordered ice cream for his guest that came
in the form of chocolate sundaes topped with cherries.
-
- Addressing questions posed, Chavez stressed the Bush
administration was "invaded by madness." He's also certain it
tried ousting him in 2002, was behind the oil management lockout, the August,
2004 staged recall referendum to remove him that flopped badly, and several
attempts to kill him with more planned. He covered much more as well,
including his desire for closer cooperation among Global South nations
in their common interest to shake off the yoke of longstanding Global North
neocolonial domination.
-
- McQuaig also briefly covered America's involvement with
Venezuela after oil was discovered there early last century. Ever since,
Venezuela's oligarch elites and foreign oil interests collaborated to see
"the country's immense oil wealth largely disappeared into private
hands, both at home and abroad." There were occasional flirtations
with change with leaders like Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo (a founding member
of OPEC) asserting more control over his nation's resources. Aligned against
him, however, were powerful business interests, and little success was
achieved. Although the nation nationalized its oil industry in the mid-1970s
(along with most other oil producing countries), its state oil company
PDVSA was run by Venezuelan managers deferential to foreign oil interests,
mainly US ones.
-
- Chavez is changing that and making impressive progress
doing it, but still has miles to go toward establishing his social democracy
(or socialism) for the 21st century. His task is enormous and involves
no less than reversing generations of entrenched privilege and institutionalized
corruption in a nation beholden to capital interests closely tied to Washington.
He has two vital things going for him though - mass people-power support
determined to keep him as President as long as he wants the job and the
country's military on board as well. If Chavez can survive Washington's
aim to remove him, he may remain Venezuela's leader for many years to come.
-
- From Coffins to World Destruction
-
- Here McQuaig dealt with one of the most vital issues
of our time getting increasing attention but few efforts to address meaningfully.
Today, global warming looms large as an urgent, pressing challenge demanding
action now. It emerged on the political radar in the mid-1980s and got
world attention at an international scientific conference in Toronto in
June, 1988. Conservative Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, an unabashed
corporatist, was its opening speaker. Astonishingly, he sounded an alarm
saying "humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally
pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequences are second only to nuclear
war."
-
-
- Early persuasive evidence of trouble ahead began surfacing
back then. Today, it shows conclusively that human activity in modern
industrial states is warming the earth's air and surface from fossil fuel
burning greenhouse gas emissions causing:
-
- -- arctic ice cap melting;
-
- -- rising sea levels;
-
- -- changed rainfall patterns;
-
- -- increased frequency and intensity of weather extremes
like floods, droughts, killer heat waves, wildfires, and hurricanes and
cyclones;
-
- -- water scarcity;
-
- -- agricultural disruption and loss of arable land;
-
- -- as many as one-third of plant and animal species extinct
by 2050 by some credible estimates; and
-
- -- increasing disease, displacement and economic losses
from extreme weather-related events, lowering of ocean pH, reductions in
the ozone layer, and the possible introduction of new phenomena unseen
before or never extreme enough to threaten human life or ecological sustainability
that will when we experience them.
-
- There's no longer a debate in the scientific community
on global warming. The near-majority consensus is the urgency to address
it. It was almost as true in 1990 when McQuaig noted the independent Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) met. It was headed by Robert Watson whose
credentials included having been a senior NASA scientist. IPCC's first
assessment report powerfully stated the problem. It said the "greenhouse
effect" is real and the earth's surface has become noticeably warmer
since the inception of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century.
-
- IPCC was even grimmer in a 2007 report suggesting a worst
case scenario of "devastating harvests, dwindling water supplies,
melting ice and loss of species (that likely understate) the threat facing
the world." The London Independent's Information Environment Editor,
Geoffrey Lean, made things sound even worse in his article titled "Global
Warming Is (accelerating) Three Times Faster Than Worst Predictions"
based on new authoritative studies. One is by the US National Academy
of Sciences (NAS) showing CO2 emissions increasing 3% a year now compared
to 1.1% in the 1990s. It's causing seas to rise twice as fast and Arctic
ice caps to melt three times faster than previously thought. Another grim
study was by the University of California's National Snow and Ice Data
Center. It showed "Arctic ice has declined by 7.8 percent over the
past 50 years, compared with an average by IPCC computer models of 2.5
per cent."
-
- Global warming scoffers abound in a state of denial.
They're in corporate boardrooms, halls of government and a few co-opted
climate scientists and some in academia willing to sacrifice their integrity
for whatever benefits they get in return. They say the evidence is inconclusive,
more study is needed, and the financial costs of action will be prohibitive
and hugely damaging to the economy. Watson's response is "The economic
costs of inaction may be (far more) prohibitive," and many economists
doubt addressing the problem will be harmful at all. McQuaig noted 2500
in the profession believe "(S)ound economic analysis shows that there
are policy options that would slow climate change without harming American
living standards, and these measures may, in fact, improve US productivity
(more than making up the difference)."
-
- McQuaig then mentioned a second 1995 IPCC report making
their case even stronger, but not as strong as their latest one. Twelve
years ago it said increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide buildup is seriously
altering the world's delicate ecosystem. Since then, we got an important,
if greatly inadequate first step, with the enactment of the Kyoto treaty.
It went into effect in February, 2005 after 141 nations signed it, absent
one vitally needed one to make it work - the US when the Bush administration
brazenly withdrew from the process in March, 2001, barely after assuming
office.
-
- No other administration in US history is more closely
aligned with dominant corporate energy interests showing they call many
of the shots in Washington. One energy giant especially stood out in the
rejection, and McQuaig put it this way: Giant "Exxon....found a friend.
The most powerful government on earth had linked up with the richest (and
likely most influential) company on earth - and the world no longer seemed
invincible."
-
- One of the leading causes of global warming is a popular
product first introduced in the early 1980s, gained popularity in the 1990s,
and now dominates the passenger car business. It's the so-called sport
utility vehicle, or SUV, that McQuaig said has "less to do with sportiness
and glamour, and more to do with security in an age of fear." She
refered to them as a "mobile version of a gated community (with a)
kind of me-first aggressiveness" pushing everything out of its way.
Thanks to the power of advertising, their sales soared from a humble start.
They now account for one-fourth of new car sales despite their cost, poor
fuel efficiency, and the fact that families got along fine without them
until Madison Avenue creative geniuses convinced millions they couldn't
live without them.
-
- Here's the problem. SUVs are huge gas guzzlers, and
the transportation sector accounts for over one-fourth of US greenhouse
gas emissions. SUVs are exempt from so-called CAFE standards referring
to "corporate average fuel economy." The result is they emit
around 40% more greenhouse gases per vehicle into the atmosphere causing
enormous damage. And no one needs these vehicles in the first place except
the auto industry earning huge profits selling them and not about stop
voluntarily. Like the energy industry, the auto sector has powerful friends
in Washington as well seeing nothing changes that hurts them.
-
- The global warming issue is so serious it must be addressed
and can be if Congress gets around to mandating it with a friendly administration
willing to go along. One answer is greater efficiency to achieve what
automakers won't address - making vehicles burn less gas using technology
now known to exist. McQuaig noted the Union of Concerned Scientists (USC)
said it can be done with current technology, and its engineers did it with
their own SUV design that's 30% more fuel efficient than production models.
Auto makers continue increasing vehicle efficiency but use it for more
powerful engines and other new design features increasing profits. They
reject fuel efficiency citing the cost, but it really comes down to applying
their technological expertise where it produces the greatest return.
-
- McQuaig summed up the situation saying it's clear "the
voluntary approach won't work with fuel efficiency." With stronger
mandated CAFE standards for cars and light trucks, including SUVs, oil
consumption will drop dramatically. US autos of all types are now projected
to consume 12 million barrels of oil a day by 2020. With easily attainable
CAFE standards, consumption could be cut to 7.5 million barrels or a 40%
savings. The Bush administration made things worse, not better, by adding
a generous new tax measure favoring SUVs in its 2003 $350 billion tax cut.
It allowed the self-employed to deduct the cost of a SUV purchase, thereby
making them more attractive to all kinds of new customers like doctors,
lawyers, accountants, the corner druggist, or anyone able to claim self-employment.
-
- There's hope for change, however, based on recent Senate
action. On June 21, that body passed the first comprehensive bill on new
CAFE standards in over 20 years, and it was a bipartisan effort. It wasn't
a perfect one but did raise the fleetwide average fuel efficiency standards
for all cars, trucks and SUVs by 10 miles per gallon over 10 years or from
25 to 35 miles per gallon by model year 2020. So far, no action is scheduled
in the House so it remains an open question what's ahead along with what
can be expected if final legislation reaches an obstructionist President.
-
- The Great Anaconda
-
- Enter the Oil Trust and man who built it and himself
into a hugely rich and powerful business titan and king of the original
"robber barons" - John D. Rockefeller. None had more power and
wealth or used it more ruthlessly than this corporate predator whose central
aim was crushing all competition and making himself omnipotent in the growing
oil industry. He did it by "employing a mix of enticement, threats,
coercion, double-dealing, lying, cheating, bullying and ultimately using
(his Oil Trust's) massive financial resources to crush opponents"
as McQuaig explained it. Sounds about the way corporate giants operate
today, except they now have friendly governments and courts making it easy
for them. John D. had to work for his power and wealth starting from the
bottom and building his oil empire from the ground up.
-
- Early on, he spotted an opportunity to do it shortly
after oil was first discovered in Titusville. He and a partner first invested
in an oil refinery in Cleveland that became one of the city's largest.
He then bought out his partner and started a second operation, opened
an oil-selling company in New York, and consolidated everything into what
he called Standard Oil Company. From there, McQuaig traces his rise to
the business heights he achieved that included entering into a phony, far-reaching
"combination" with major railways called the Southern Improvement
Company. It was a scheme for preferential rebates and eliminating competition.
-
- The story goes on to cover a four decade-long account
of how Rockefeller built and consolidated his empire, crushing competition
along the way ruthlessly but effectively. It came to a head in a New York
City courtroom in 1907 when Theodore Roosevelt-picked lawyers went head-to-head
in what McQuaig called "a titanic legal battle." In the end,
the government won when the Supreme Court agreed with an earlier guilty
verdict. It gave Standard Oil six months to divest all subsidiaries that
quickly dismembered the giant company into a number of smaller but still
large entities. The largest retained half the value of the original conglomerate.
It was Standard Oil of New Jersey, now giant ExxonMobil, the largest,
richest, most powerful company on earth and still one of the most predatory
and ruthless in the spirit of its founder.
-
- Today, the oil industry is more powerful than ever. It
remains "a tightly knit club" through its extensive interlocking
corporate ties and a cozy relationship with all administrations. None,
however, are more accommodating than the current one run by former oil
men and staffed by many energy industry officials making policies favoring
them.
-
- How Did Our Oil Get Under Their Sand
-
- McQuaig continued the story as Rockefeller's spawned
corporate empire began eyeing opportunities abroad. There were plenty around
with the Middle East as ground zero holding two-thirds of today's proved
reserves with most of Iraq's still uptapped and uncounted. She explained
by the early 1950s international oil companies gained effective control
of the region's oil and sought to get back what they lost when countries
like Iran nationalized their industries to get a larger share of their
own revenues.
-
- Mohammed Mossadegh was its force as the nation's democratic
leader. He no longer would tolerate the special concessions British-owned
Anglo-Iranian Oil got in 1901 and had up to his tenure. It greatly advantaged
Britain leaving Iran only a sliver of its own oil wealth. His government
changed things by nationalizing the company, causing the British to feel
he stole their property, that, in fact, belonged to Iran. In response,
the international oil companies reacted together and imposed a worldwide
boycott on the country's oil. It succeeded by devasting Iran's economy,
cutting its oil revenue from $400 million in 1950 to less than $2 million
in 1952. A Dwight Eisenhower-approved first ever CIA coup followed in
1953. It toppled the Mossadegh government, returned Shah Reza Pahlavi
to power, and began his 26 year tyrannical rule that, by all accounts,
was as repressive as Saddam's and far less socially accommodative.
-
- McQuaig called the coup "a defining moment in the
Middle East." It "became a powerful rallying point for anti-Western
nationalism. It was embodied in Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt whose advocacy
of Arab sovereignty and willingness to defy the West made him a hero throughout
the region. It also arose in Iran in the 1970s that resulted in the 1979
revolution. It deposed the Shah, installed fundamentalist Islamic rule
in his place, and sparked an anti-Western fundamentalist movement across
the region.
-
- McQuaig also traced how oil was discovered early in the
last century in the Middle East with the international oil cartel moving
in to capitalize on it. She detailed the wheeling and dealing that went
on with oil giants jousting among themselves and with rulers of the countries
whose oil they wanted favorable terms on to exploit. These powerful companies
mostly worked in collusion carving up world oil markets and fixing prices
among themselves to their advantage.
-
- McQuaig described how three of the giants, Shell, BP
and Exxon, met at Achnacarry Castle, Scotland in late summer, 1928 to end
price competition and stabilize world markets. Their leaders "hammer(ed)
out an agreement in writing that set the course for the international oil
order for decades to come," lasting through the early 1970s. It was
not to compete, but rather to set quotas, maintain existing market shares,
cooperate in sharing facilities, and avoid surplus production to keep prices
stable.
-
- They brought in Texaco, Gulf, Mobil and Atlantic to tighten
their grip on world markets and eliminate competitors by acquiring them.
The idea was to assure world production grew at a steady pace, and oil
shortages and gluts were avoided. The cartel was in charge reaping enormous
profits from their cozy arrangement. It was especially lucrative in the
Middle East where oil is easily accessible and production costs very low.
It's hard believe looking back to when Saudi oil sold for $1.80 a barrel,
but easy to understand with production costs in the Kingdom at just 8 or
9 cents leaving over $1.70 profit with most of it going to the giants.
-
- Things began changing when Libya's King Idris "was
the first to figure out how to avoid becoming yet another powerless country
in the oil companies' harem." He began using independents outside
the cartel. Current Libyan leader Mu'ammer al Qaddafi took power in 1969
and upped the anti further demanding a 40 cent increase in the country's
share of the revenue. He got it and broke the cartel's power to control
the oil game. At the same time, he rewrote the rules in place to that
time. As McQuaig put it: the "aura of (cartel) invincibility was
shattered. Inside the harem, things would never be the same again."
-
- The Harem Takes On the Sisters - The Rise of OPEC
-
- The "Libyan breakthrough" turned out to be
prologue for 5 original oil producing member nations (that became 11) to
assert control of their own resources through OPEC that was founded in
1960 but had no effective power until the 1970s. McQuaig reviewed its
history explaining it "was the brainchild of two men - Juan Pablo
Perez Alfonzo in Venezuela and Abdullah Tariki in Saudi Arabia. Alfonzo
was given responsibility for his country's oil affairs after 1945 and set
"guidlines (to redefine) the traditional (one-way) colonial relationship"
the oil cartel had with his country. A 1948 military coup disrupted his
plans until he reemerged as oil minister under a newly elected government
with much more ambitious plans in mind. His idea was for oil producing
states to control the international market for their essential product,
and why not. It's their oil. The idea was simple. Individually, the countries
were weak, but together they had collective strength.
-
- Abdullah Tariki had similar ideas in Saudi Arabia. He
opposed the oil cartel believing oil producing nations should control their
own destiny and assert their sovereign rights. Tariki was highly educated
and his country's only university trained oil geologist. He became minister
of oil affairs for the country's eastern province that was the location
of the cartel's Aramco important Ghawar oil field operations. In that
capacity, he saw how little revenue Saudis retained, compared to the oil
giants, and, as a result, wanted to change the rules. How? By having
Arab oil states unite to assert their collective strength.
-
- McQuaig noted, Tariki understood the advantage of making
"common cause with Venezuela." He wanted and got a secret gentlemen's
agreement between the two countries in 1958 that "constituted the
first seed of the creation of OPEC" that was later born in Baghdad
in September, 1960 with five original members having 80% of oil exports
among them - Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq and Kuwait.
-
- It was a beginning but not as auspicious as conceived
as in March, 1962 Tariki lost his job as Saudi oil minister. It was after
King Faisal decided to tilt more toward Washington and adopt more Aramco
favorable oil policies as the way to do it. Tariki was out, and the more
accommodating Sheikh Zahi Yamani was in. McQuaig described him as a "charming,
urbane, thirty-two year old lawyer....who loved New York and Western culture,"
and enjoyed lots of it in his new job. Alfonzo in Venezuela lost his job
as well, and OPEC would never live up to his vision for it. However, McQuaig
explained "it would soon at least ensure that its members were admitted
to the feast."
-
- Things then changed dramatically in 1973. Supplies were
tight, and the notion that oil producing nations should control their own
resources gained prominence in the Middle East. Industry nationalizations
began occurring, and in October, 1973 OPEC nations demanded much higher
prices. They got them at a time of anger over the West's support for what
became known as the "Yom Kippur War." Egypt and Syria fought
it against Israel between October 6 - 26 and almost won, save for the help
from America that turned Israeli defeat into victory. People old enough
to remember recall the energy crunch and long gas lines when prices rose
from $3 dollars a barrel in steps to $11.65 and Saudi Arabia cut off shipments
to the US until March, 1974.
-
-
- Angst and rising prices in America affected politics
in Washington, but the oil companies loved it. Industry profits rose "beyond
anything they'd seen in the previous thirty years (raising the speculation)
what role the companies" may have had orchestrating the whole scheme
that benefitted them and oil producing states hugely at the expense of
oil consuming nations. As borne out later, they played an important role.
In the face of recession, demand fell and production was adjusted down
to meet it while keeping prices high. They're now around $70 a barrel that
in 1973 dollars would only be in the mid-teens and would have to hit $100
a barrel to match the $38 dollar price in 1980.
-
- McQuaig noted, all in all, "as pressure tactics
go, the (1973 - 74) oil embargo was pretty mild (and long) gas lines may
have been annoying, but nobody died in them." Of greater significance
was where the extra revenue ended up. It was in "the wrong part of
the world" with it rising from $22 billion in 1973 over fourfold to
$90 billion the following year and far higher after the huge additional
price hikes following the 1979 Iranian Revolution. It made oil producing
states rich but got them to recycle much of their surplus back into Western
investments, and in the case of Saudi Arabia, in particular, into huge
dollar purchases of US weapons as well.
-
- McQuaig then explained OPEC's reformist zeal waned after
Saudi King Faisal's 1975 death that had "far-reaching consequences
for both OPEC and the world." New Saudi King Fahd tilted toward a
"special relationship" with Washington and became accommodating
on the amount of oil it would produce to please his powerful ally responsible
for his security. It meant OPEC's power as a unified force was gone.
-
- King of the Vandals
-
- In 428 AD, the title belonged to Geiseric the Lame (or
Genseric) who ruled for 50 years and transformed his Germanic tribe into
a major Mediterranean power after he invaded North Africa to pillage and
plunder. A more notable predator, Alexander the Great, did it a century
earlier and others like the Ottomans, Mussolini and Hitler took their turns
later on. Fast forward to today and you get the picture about a modern-day
plunderer doing the same thing for much greater stakes than Genseric or
Alexander could have imagined.
-
- For the past three decades, Washington's attitude toward
the Middle East hardened with some in the capitol believing America has
a birthright to the region's oil, and we'll send in the Marines any time
we choose to claim it. So we have, but with consequences partly anticipated
in a 1975 US Congressional Research Service study assessing the difficulties
of occupying the region for its resources. McQuaig explained it concluded
"seizing oil installations intact, securing them (possibly for years),
operating them without the owners' assistance, and guaranteeing safe passage
overseas of supplies and petroleum products....would be possible only if
there were minimal damage to oil installations and no Soviet armed intervention"
intervened, and no armed resistance now.
-
- At first, the strategy was to arm and rely on local powers,
like Iran under the Shah and Saudi Arabia, to serve as proxy forces along
with neighboring Turkey and Israel. Chomsky notes these nations were to
be what Nixon called our "cops on the beat - the local gendarmes"
to keep order in the neighborhood. We still have them mainly in Israel
and Turkey, but after the 1979 Iranian Revolution the decision was taken
to assume a more direct role in managing our regional interests that moved
us "a step closer to establishing...military control over the area."
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