The Peakist

The Pentagon vs Peak Oil By Michael T. Klare

Sixteen gallons of oil. That’s how much the average American soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan consumes on a daily basis — either directly, through the use of Humvees, tanks, trucks, and helicopters, or indirectly, by calling in air strikes. Multiply this figure by 162,000 soldiers in Iraq, 24,000 in Afghanistan, and 30,000 in the surrounding region (including sailors aboard U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf) and you arrive at approximately 3.5 million gallons of oil: the daily petroleum tab for U.S. combat operations in the Middle East war zone. (more…)

“It is already the world’s biggest country, spanning 11 time zones and stretching from Europe to the far east. But yesterday Russia signalled its intention to get even bigger by announcing an audacious plan to annex a vast 460,000 square mile chunk of the frozen and ice-encrusted Arctic…” writes Luke Harding in in the Guardian (more…)

David Strahan, author of The Last Oil Shock, argued that peak oil was the motivation for the invasion of Iraq in Guardian last week:

In a world of looming fuel shortage, Britain and the US formalised their energy fears with a war… (more…)

As Baghdad burns, destabilising the entire region and sending the price of oil soaring, Calgary booms.

“The invasion of Iraq has set off what could be the largest oil boom in history,” writes Naomi Klein in Friday’s Guardian (June 1, 2007). “All the signs are there: multinationals free to gobble up national firms at will, ship unlimited profits home, enjoy leisurely “tax holidays”, and pay a laughable 1% in royalties to the government.

This isn’t the boom in Iraq sparked by the proposed new oil law - that will come later. This boom is already in full swing, and it is happening about as far away from the carnage in Baghdad as you can get, in the wilds of northern Alberta. For four years now, Alberta and Iraq have been connected to each other through a kind of invisible seesaw: as Baghdad burns, destabilising the entire region and sending oil prices soaring, Calgary booms.” (more…)

Paul McLeary asks, ‘Are China and the United States heading for a showdown over Africa?’

In a trip that went almost totally unnoticed in the United States, Chinese President Hu Jintao took an eight-country jaunt across the African continent in early February, signing trade and investment agreements at every stop along the way, while forgiving debts and offering interest-free loans worth hundreds of millions more.Within a week’s time, President Bush announced that a new combatant command for Africa, AFRICOM, would begin operations in September 2008. (more…)

Falling fuel costs probably not a coincidence, oil traders say

NBC News reports: Oil traders and others believe that the Saudi decision to let the price of oil tumble has more to do with Iran than economics. Their belief has been reinforced in recent days as the Saudi oil minister has steadfastly refused calls for a special meeting of OPEC and announced that the nation is going to increase its production, which will send the price down even farther. Saudi Oil Minister Ibrahim al-Naimi even said during a recent trip to India that oil prices are headed in the “right direction.” Not for the Iranians. Moreover, the traders believe the Saudis are not doing this alone, that the other Sunni-dominated oil producing countries and the U.S. are working together, believing it will hurt majority-Shiite Iran economically and create a domestic crisis for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose popularity at home is on the wane. The traders also believe (with good reason) that the U.S. is trying to tighten the screws on Iran financially at the same time the Saudis are reducing the Islamic Republic’s oil revenues. (more…)

Oil Drum USA reports: “With little media fanfare as of yet, a major report by the political heavyweight think tank Council on Foreign Relations was recently released. “Independent Task Force Report #58 - National Security Consequences of Oil Dependency” (pdf warning) paints a somewhat more urgent picture of our energy situation than most other oil and energy research coming out of Washington. Though there is no mention of the words “Peak Oil’ in the 90 page report, to the astute reader it is clear that this group of experts, led by ex-CIA chiefs, John Deutsch and James Schlesinger, understand that the era of cheap energy is ending, and that our dependency on oil has major geopolitical implications with few easy answers. The bombshell in this report is the admission that the United States will be unable to achieve energy independence, and should focus instead on reducing our dependency on oil. Though this concept is nothing new to readers of this site, coming from a highly respected mainstream think tank (CFR), recommendations such as conservation, gasoline taxes, and gasoline rationing might be an uncomfortable but necessary wake up call to some of the conservative (cornucopian?) decisionmakers in our nations capital. Indeed, this report may be the next integral step of political eye-opening (the first being the Hirsch Report last year) that hastens our national efforts towards addressing our energy addiction.” Oil Drum review of the report.

Chris Floyd, t r u t h o u t UK Correspondent writes: “The reason that George W. Bush insists that “victory” is achievable in Iraq is not that he is deluded or isolated or ignorant or detached from reality or ill-advised. No, it’s that his definition of “victory” is different from those bruited about in his own rhetoric and in the ever-earnest disquisitions of the chattering classes in print and online. For Bush, victory is indeed at hand. It could come at any moment now, could already have been achieved by the time you read this. And the driving force behind his planned “surge” of American troops is the need to preserve those fruits of victory that are now ripening in his hand. At any time within the next few days, the Iraqi Council of Ministers is expected to approve a new “hydrocarbon law” essentially drawn up by the Bush administration and its UK lackey, the Independent on Sunday reported. (more…)

A bitter energy dispute jeopardised oil supplies to western Europe today as Belarus struck out at neighbouring Russia by cutting off a vital transit pipeline crossing Belarusssian territory. The closure of the 2,500-mile Druzhba pipeline (druzhba means “friendship” in Belarussian), one of Europe’s biggest, meant no Russian oil was being pumped along it to Germany, Poland or Ukraine. (more…)

In a dramatic demonstration of W Joseph Stroupe’s argument concerning the emerging new world oil order Shell has given in to pressure from the Kremlin over control of the massive Sakhalin-2 gas project.

Terry Macalister and Tom Parfitt of The Guardian write: “The steady drip of months of pressure and accusations against Shell from the Russian authorities have taken their toll. The company is about to back down in its struggle over Sakhalin-2, the huge liquefied natural gas project off the country’s far eastern coast. Shell, which took the lead role in the scheme under the first production sharing agreement with the Kremlin in 1994, has been accused of violating a series of “green” regulations in the pristine environment of the region. The pressure has been mounting since the summer.” (more…)

Dear Friends:
Over the past 10 years, we at Oilwatch have been building a strong and active network of resistance to the negative impacts of fossil fuels activities on peoples and their
environment. With member organizations from over 50 countries, we are dedicated to developing global strategies for the communities affected by the oil operations and of
supporting their processes of resistance in the struggle against those activities. (more…)

Russia attacks the West’s Achilles’ heel
By W Joseph Stroupe

Russia has found the Achilles’ heel of the US colossus.

(more…)

Russia tips the balance
By W Joseph Stroupe

Russia has set the agenda for the global transition to an entirely new model of international energy security designed to address intensifying concerns, especially those of the rising East.

(more…)

By William Mellor and Le-Min Lim

Sept. 27 (Bloomberg) — In a steamy jungle clearing in Myanmar, a lone drilling rig topped by limp red flags bears testimony to China’s insatiable thirst for oil. (more…)

Bahman Aghai Diba PhD International Law - Persian Journal

The officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran have threatened that if the United Nations Organization adopts serious sanctions against the regime of Iran (due to the nuclear case of Iran which is currently in the Security Council of the UNO), they may resort to the “oil weapon”. This threat has been also used in the past for countering the Western efforts for stopping the Iranian nuclear program of Iran and the struggle to get the regime in Iran changed from the Islamic Republic to something else. (1) But, what is the oil weapon and what does it mean for the regime of Iran and the others? (more…)