"The real reasons Bush went to war " - UK Guardian article...

[Petrodollar Warfare]

...well, Mr. Chapman is only about 1.5 years late to the thesis that I posted here in Dec 2002, but I suppose its better to be late than never...

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'The real reasons Bush went to war' by John Chapman
July 28, 2004

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1270414,00.html

WMD was the rationale for invading Iraq. But what was really driving the US were fears over oil and the future of the dollar

"There were only two credible reasons for invading Iraq: control over oil and preservation of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. Yet the government has kept silent on these factors, instead treating us to the intriguing distractions of the Hutton and Butler reports."


.."In 1999, Iran mooted pricing its oil in euros, and in late 2000 Saddam made the switch for Iraqi oil. In early 2002 Bush placed Iran and Iraq in the axis of evil. If the other Opec countries had followed Saddam's move to euros, the consequences for Bush could have been huge. Worldwide switches out of the dollar, on top of the already huge deficit, would have led to a plummeting dollar, a runaway from US markets and dramatic upheavals in the US.

<<<snippet>>>

"...Oil and the dollar were the real reasons for the attack on Iraq, with WMD as the public reason now exposed as woefully inadequate. Should we now look at Bush and Blair as brilliant strategists whose actions will improve the security of our oil supplies, or as international conmen? Should we support them if they sweep into Iran and perhaps Saudi Arabia, or should there be a regime change in the UK and US instead?

If the latter, we should follow that up by adopting the pious aims of UN oversight of world oil exploitation within a world energy plan, and the replacement of the dollar with a new reserve currency based on a basket of national currencies."

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...for those interested in these complex issues, you might find this recent article on Venezuela somewhat interesting too. Although Dr. Koth has the wrong Clark (not a lawyer in CA, and not with an "e" on the end hte name), but his analysis is rather astute...

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'Why should the United States care who is the President of Venezuela?' (June 29, 2004)
by Karl Koth
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=21779

"We know, for example, that the US wishes to get rid of constitutionally-elected President Hugo Chavez Frias, but what precisely is behind this goal is less clear.

Let us first eliminate some of the more obvious perceived reasons behind the US attitude..."

<<<snippet>>>

"...So, what then is the reason? What is behind the constant manipulation, the virulent hostility, the verbal abuse, and the probable (I admit, not yet proven) support to Colombian paramilitaries who recently invaded the country? I believe that the answer, albeit complicated, is to be found in the interesting thesis constructed by a Californian lawyer by the name of William Clarke, and which, obviously, has not been given wide coverage in the news media . I say interesting, because this plausible and well-constructed analysis allows us inter alia to understand primarily the real reasons behind the attack on Iraq, as well the hostility towards Iran and North Korea, the so-called Axis of Evil. What we are dealing with, in fact, is geo-politics in its most serious strategic implications!

The Clark Thesis : Clark’s thesis was first made public via the Internet about a year ago. He deftly argues that the economic problem plaguing the US at the moment is the financing of a huge external trade deficit (almost $500 billion per annum), not to speak of the total debt, which has reached more than US $7 trillion. His thesis is made more plausible when one considers that other countries, especially China, now hold an economic club over the head of the US because of their holdings of US treasury bills.

<snippet>

"....Why should the US care who is the President there?

The answer is that a president favorable to Washington would be one who did not implement a nationalist Venezuela policy, which is to say doing what it deems right and honorable with its oil production and sales. In other words, a pro-US president would not be making the deals that President Chavez has done, namely swapping oil for commodities and supporting OPEC’s move to the Euro as these actions impinge on the exclusivity of the Petrodollar as intermediary currency in oil transactions. Yes, Venezuela is supporting an OPEC move to switch from the US dollar to the Euro, and that in the foreseeable future . This makes President Chavez anathema in the eyes of the US. But that is not all. He is guilty of even a worse “crime” in the eyes of the US: Venezuela accepts oil-for-service swaps with poor countries, such as Cuba, that don’t have sufficient US dollar reserves with which to buy the oil it desperately needs, effectively avoiding the use of the Petrodollar."

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FWIW- If someone wants to read the full-blown thesis, and have lots of time to read a long essay, here you go....

"Revisited - The Real Reasons for the Upcoming War With Iraq:
A Macroeconomic and Geostrategic Analysis of the Unspoken Truth"

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/RRiraqWar.html

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Yup, this was posted Dec 2002

1.Peak Oil 2. Dollar Hegemony

http://www.rupe-india.org/34/military.html

Real Reasons for the US Invasion:
Military Solution to an Economic Crisis

Indeed the US has taken the contrary course. It plans to reverse the various trends mentioned above by seizing the world’s richest oil-producing regions. This it deems necessary for three related reasons.

1. Securing US supplies: First, the US itself is increasingly dependent on oil imports—already a little over half its daily consumption of 20 million barrels is imported. It imports its oil from a variety of sources—Canada, Venezuela, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, even Iraq. But its own production is falling, and will continue to fall steadily, even as its consumption continues to grow. In future, inevitably, it will become increasingly dependent on oil from west Asia-north Africa—a region where the masses of ordinary people despise the US, where three of the leading oil producers (Iraq, Iran and Libya) are professedly anti-American, and the others (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates) are in danger of being toppled by anti-American forces. The US of course doing its best to tie up or seize supplies from other regions—west Africa, northern Latin America, the Caspian region. And yet the US cannot escape the simple arithmetic:

“The US Department of Energy and the International Energy Agency both project that global oil demand could grow from the current 77 million barrels a day (mbd) to 120 mbd in 20 years, driven by the US and the emerging markets of south and east Asia. The agencies assume that most of the supply required to meet this demand must come from OPEC, whose production is expected to jump from 28 mbd in 1998 to 60 mbd in 2020. Virtually all of this increase would come from the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia.

“A simple fact explains this conclusion: 63 per cent of the world’s proven oil reserves are in the Middle East, 25 per cent (or 261 billion barrels) in Saudi Arabia alone...

“Although Asian demand for oil is expected to grow dramatically in coming decades, no other economy rivals that of the United States for the growth of its oil imports. Over the past decade, the increase in the US share of the oil market, in terms of trade, was higher than the total oil consumption in any other country, save Japan and China. The US increase in imports accounts for more than a third of the total increase in oil trade and more than half of the total increase in OPEC’s production during the 1990s. This fact, together with the fall in US oil production, means that the US will remain the single most important force in the oil market.” (“The Battle for Energy Dominance”, Edward L. Morse and James Richard, Foreign Affairs, March-April 2002; emphases added)

Given its growing dependence on oil imports, the US cannot afford to allow the oil producing regions to be under the influence of any other power, or independent.1

2. Maintaining dollar hegemony: Secondly, if other imperialist powers were able to displace US dominance in the region, the dollar would be dealt a severe blow. The pressure for switching to the euro would become irresistible and would ring the death knell of dollar supremacy. On the other hand, complete US control of oil would preserve the rule of the dollar (not only would oil producers continue to use the dollar for their international trade, but the dollar’s international standing would rise) and hurt the credibility of the euro.

In the 1990s the major OPEC countries, after two decades of discouraging or prohibiting foreign investment in oil and gas fields, raced to invite foreign investment again to carry out massive new developments. In the late 1990s Venezuela, Iran, and Iraq struck massive deals with foreign firms for major fields. Even Saudi Arabia invited proposals for development of its untapped natural gas reserves, a move that oil giants responded to with alacrity in the hope the country’s mammoth oil fields too would later be opened to foreign investment. However, American firms were shut out of Iran and Iraq by their own government’s sanctions; French, Russian and Chinese firms got the contracts instead. Chavez’s increasing assertiveness threatens to shut American firms out of Venezuela as well. The Saudi deal—which the American firms were to lead—stands cancelled, apparently because of the Saudi government’s fear of public resentment. Thus, if it does not invade the west Asian region, the US stands to lose dollar hegemony by losing control of the major oil field development projects in the next decade.

[Petrodollar Warfare]

2. 'Global oil production now flat out' - Petroleum Review

<<<Well, here's another minor news item for today...>>>

Petroleum Review - Editorial - August 2004
http://www.energyinst.org.uk/index.cfm?PageID=948

Global oil production now flat out

By the time this is being read, currently available oil production capacity all around the world will be producing flat out. How sustainable this proves to be remains to be seen.

For many years now non-Opec production has been operated at capacity, leaving Opec to fine tune production in order to achieve its price objectives. In economic terms, because no company or country had the capacity to challenge Opec, they had no choice but to be price takers, maximising earnings by maximising production.

Opec's record production of 31.7mn b/d in 1977 wasn't exceeded until November 2003, since then it has never been under that level. It reached 32.2mn b/d in March, dropped back a little in April and May, and then in June reached 32.65mn b/d.

On p26 Dr Salameh tackles the thorny question of how accurate are Middle East reserve estimates. His conclusion that these may be overstated by up to 300bn barrels, or roughly five North Seas, will certainly give pause for thought. If his assessments are right, the world faces very major challenges in developing and securing the oil supplies it will require.


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This news story reminds me of a passage in "Hubbert's Peak," written by Dr. Kenneth F. Deffeyes. He recalls sitting at home in the spring of 1971, and read an interesting one-sentence item in the San Franciso Chronicle that very few people could decipher at the time....

"The Texas Railroad Commission announced a 100 percent allowable for next month."

...but that single item announced that peak domestic U.S. oil production had indeed occured in 1970. According to Deffeyes, he thought to himself. 'Well, Dr. Hubbert was right'....(Hubbert was in Houston working for Shell at that time, and in 1956 had predicted U.S. peak oil b/t 1966 and 1972, for which he received much ridicle and skeptisim...)

I think the above article is my own "moment of clarity."

So, I'll share my feelings with these quotes...


“All truth passes through three stages: First it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” - Schopenhauer, Philosopher

“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” - Inscription on the marble entranceway of the CIA headquarters, Langley, Virginia

“Every generation has its taboo, and ours is this: that the resource upon which our lives have been built is running out. We don't talk about it because we cannot imagine it. This is a civilization in denial.” - George Monibot, UK Guardian, December 2, 2003

“The world is not running out of oil. Or rather, not for a long time. What it is running out of is cheap oil, and soon.” - Colin J. Campbell, founder of The Association of the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO)

[BlueEyedSon]

3. Thanks GN4, your posts are always the best.... n/t

[Dancing_Dave]

4. Right on!

But the American people will not go on and on paying that price in blood for oil. Most have turned against the Bush Regime's corporate colonization of Iraq already.

Kerry can only win if he comes up with a real plan to negotiate our soldiers out of Iraq as quickly as possible. We are not "cleaning up the mess we made". The mess gets worse every day we are there and the only way out of the nightmare is to bring our troops home.

[BlueEyedSon]

5. Actually it was more like "blood for nothing"

based on all the Iraqi oil flooding the market.... NOT!