[WCUSP] [pdx] Kuluongoski: It's about Oil.

Tue Feb 27 17:46:20 CST 2007

> Oregon's governor tells the truth YvonneSubject:
[pdx] Kuluongoski: It's about Oil.
> Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 15:16:54 -0800
> To: roweenayvonne at yahoo.com
> From: "Michael Munk" <lastmarx at comcast.net>
> 
> At a Monday news conference on global warming, Gov.
> Ted Kulongoski decried the lack of a
> "straightforward conversation about what is
> America's national interest in continuing in Iraq. 
> "It surely cannot be about weapons of mass
> destruction or regime change or bringing democracy
> into the Middle East. There has to be some other
> reason we're doing this, And I think ultimately it's
> about the very topic we're talking about today,"
> Kulongoski said, pounding his fist on the lectern.
> "It's about oil." 
> 
> The Oregonian, Feb 27. Full story at
>
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1172550312133770.xml&coll=7)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The Governor's observation confirmed:
> 
> 
> 
>                 Asia Times (Hong Kong)
>                 Feb 28, 2007  
>      
>
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IB28Ak01.html
>  
>      
>   THE ROVING EYE
>                   US's Iraq oil grab is a done deal
>                   By Pepe Escobar 
> 
>                   By 2010 we will need [a further]
> 50 million barrels a day. The Middle East, with
> two-thirds of the oil and the lowest cost, is still
> where the prize lies. - US Vice President Dick
> Cheney, then Halliburton chief executive officer,
> London, autumn 1999 
> 
>                   US President George W Bush and
> Vice President Dick Cheney might as well declare the
> Iraq war over and out. As far as they - and the
> humongous energy interests they defend - are
> concerned, 
> 
> 
>                   only now is the mission really
> accomplished. More than half a trillion dollars
> spent and more than half a million Iraqis killed
> have come down to this. 
> 
>                   On Monday, Prime Minister Nuri
> al-Maliki's cabinet in Baghdad approved the draft of
> the new Iraqi oil law. The government regards it as
> "a major national project". The key point of the law
> is that Iraq's immense oil wealth (115 billion
> barrels of proven reserves, third in the world after
> Saudi Arabia and Iran) will be under the iron rule
> of a fuzzy "Federal Oil and Gas Council" boasting "a
> panel of oil experts from inside and outside Iraq".
> That is, nothing less than predominantly US Big Oil
> executives. 
> 
>                   The law represents no less than
> institutionalized raping and pillaging of Iraq's oil
> wealth. It represents the death knell of
> nationalized (from 1972 to 1975) Iraqi resources,
> now replaced by production sharing agreements (PSAs)
> - which translate into savage privatization and
> monster profit rates of up to 75% for (basically US)
> Big Oil. Sixty-five of Iraq's roughly 80 oilfields
> already known will be offered for Big Oil to
> exploit. As if this were not enough, the law reduces
> in practice the role of Baghdad to a minimum. Oil
> wealth, in theory, will be distributed directly to
> Kurds in the north, Shi'ites in the south and Sunnis
> in the center. For all practical purposes, Iraq will
> be partitioned into three statelets. Most of the
> country's reserves are in the Shi'ite-dominated
> south, while the Kurdish north holds the best
> prospects for future drilling. 
> 
>                   The approval of the draft law by
> the fractious 275-member Iraqi Parliament, in March,
> will be a mere formality. Hussain al-Shahristani,
> Iraq's oil minister, is beaming. So is dodgy Barnham
> Salih: a Kurd, committed cheerleader of the US
> invasion and occupation, then deputy prime minister,
> big PSA fan, and head of a committee that was
> debating the law. 
> 
>                   But there was not much to be
> debated. The law was in essence drafted, behind
> locked doors, by a US consulting firm hired by the
> Bush administration and then carefully retouched by
> Big Oil, the International Monetary Fund, former US
> deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz' World Bank,
> and the United States Agency for International
> Development. It's virtually a US law (its original
> language is English, not Arabic). 
> 
>                   Scandalously, Iraqi public opinion
> had absolute no knowledge of it - not to mention the
> overwhelming majority of Parliament members. Were
> this to be a truly representative Iraqi government,
> any change to the legislation concerning the highly
> sensitive question of oil wealth would have to be
> approved by a popular referendum. 
> 
>                   In real life, Iraq's vital
> national interests are in the hands of a small bunch
> of highly impressionable (or downright corrupt)
> technocrats. Ministries are no more than political
> party feuds; the national interest is never
> considered, only private, ethnic and sectarian
> interests. Corruption and theft are endemic. Big Oil
> will profit handsomely - and long-term, 30 years
> minimum, with fabulous rates of return - from a
> former developing-world stalwart methodically
> devastated into failed-state status. 
> 
>                   Get me a PSA on time 
>                   In these past few weeks, US
> Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has been crucial in
> mollifying the Kurds. In the end, in practice, the
> pro-US Kurds will have all the power to sign oil
> contracts with whatever companies they want. Sunnis
> will be more dependent on the Oil Ministry in
> Baghdad. And Shi'ites will be more or less midway
> between total independence in the south and
> Baghdad's dictum (which they control anyway). But
> the crucial point remains: nobody will sign anything
> unless the "advisers" at the US-manipulated Federal
> Oil and Gas Council say so. 
> 
>                   Nobody wants to have
> colonial-style PSAs forced down their throat
> anymore. According to the International Energy
> Agency, PSAs apply to only 12% of global oil
> reserves, in cases where costs are very high and
> nobody knows what will be found (certainly not the
> Iraqi case). No big Middle Eastern oil producer
> works with PSAs. Russia and Venezuela are
> renegotiating all of them. Bolivia nationalized its
> gas. Algeria and Indonesia have new rules for future
> contracts. But Iraq, of course, is not a sovereign
> country. 
> 
>                   Big Oil is obviously ecstatic -
> not only ExxonMobil, but also ConocoPhillips,
> Chevron, BP and Shell (which have collected
> invaluable info on two of Iraq's biggest oilfields),
> TotalFinaElf, Lukoil from Russia and the Chinese
> majors. Iraq has as many as 70 undeveloped fields -
> "small" ones hold a minimum of a billion barrels. As
> desert western Iraq has not even been exploited,
> reserves may reach 300 billion barrels - way more
> than Saudi Arabia. Gargantuan profits under the PSA
> arrangement are in a class by themselves. Iraqi oil
> costs only US$1 a barrel to extract. With a barrel
> worth $60 and up, happy days are here again. 
> 
>                   What revenue the regions do get
> will be distributed to all 18 provinces based on
> population size - an apparent concession to the
> Sunnis, whose central areas have relatively few
> proven reserves. 
> 
>                   The Sunni Arab muqawama
> (resistance) certainly has other ideas - as in
> future rolling thunder against pipelines, refineries
> and Western personnel. Iraq's oil independence will
> not go down quietly - at least among Sunnis. On the
> same day the oil law was being approved, a powerful
> bomb at the Ministry of Municipalities killed at
> least 12 people and injured 42, including Vice
> President Adel Abdul Mahdi. Mahdi has always been a
> feverish supporter of the oil law. He's a top
> official of the Shi'ite party, the Supreme Council
> for the Islamic Revolution of Iraq (SCIRI). 
> 
>                   A whole case can be made of SCIRI
> delivering Iraq's Holy Grail to Bush/Cheney and Big
> Oil - in exchange for not being chased out of power
> by the Pentagon. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the SCIRI's
> leader, is much more of a Bush ally than Maliki, who
> is from the Da'wa Party. No wonder SCIRI's Badr
> Organization and their death squads were never the
> target of Washington's wrath - unlike Muqtada
> al-Sadr's Mehdi Army (Muqtada is fiercely against
> the oil law). The SCIRI certainly listened to the
> White House, which has always made it very clear:
> any more funds to the Iraqi government are tied up
> with passing the oil law. 
> 
>                   Bush and Cheney got their oily
> cake - and they will eat it, too (or be drenched in
> its glory). Mission accomplished: permanent,
> sprawling military bases on the eastern flank of the
> Arab nation and control of some of largest, untapped
> oil wealth on the planet - a key geostrategic goal
> of the New American Century. Now it's time to move
> east, bomb Iran, force regime change and - what
> else? - force PSAs down their Persian throats.  
>            
>      
> 


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