The Peakist

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…)

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…)

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed writes: In a little-noted article printed in early August in the Armed Forces Journal, a monthly magazine for officers and leaders in the United States military community, early retired Major Ralph Peters sets out the latest ideas in current US strategic thinking. And they are extremely disturbing.

Ethnically Cleansing the Entire Middle East

Maj. Peters, formerly assigned to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence where he was responsible for future warfare, candidly outlines how the map of the Middle East should be fundamentally re-drawn, in a new imperial endeavor designed to correct past errors. “Without such major boundary revisions, we shall never see a more peaceful Middle East,” he observes, but then adds wryly: “Oh, and one other dirty little secret from 5,000 years of history: Ethnic cleansing works.” (more…)

As decision-time approaches, the USA pulls levers on Iraqi oil policy.

“The oil belongs to the Iraqi people. It’s their asset,” declared George W. Bush in a press conference on the White House lawn in June.

He had just returned from his surprise visit to Baghdad, in which oil had been one of the main subjects of discussion. “We talked about how to advise the government to best use that money for the benefit of the people”, he clarified.

Since the Iraqi government was formed in May, the US government has scaled up such “advice” even while senior American and British officials warn of potential civil war in the country.

A new framework to restructure Iraq’s oil industry is under preparation, and has been presented to the US government and multinational oil companies before even being seen by the Iraqi parliament. Meanwhile, Iraqi civil society and public are being excluded altogether. (more…)

Richard Heinberg writes: There is considerable danger that the smoke and fire from these three geographic flashpoints—Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon—could converge in a larger regional conflagration. In light of all this potential for apocalyptic mayhem, a discussion of the oil business may seem almost frivolous. But it is important to remember that, historically, the drawing of borders in the Middle East; the establishment of British, French, and later US-backed puppet governments in these faux nations; and the rise of a radical Islamic fundamentalist movement to challenge the Western-backed regimes, have all been fueled by the wealth produced by oil, and by the need for oil on the part of importing countries.

For decades there was a petroleum status quo of sorts in the Middle East: the capacity for production exceeded demand, and OPEC worked to restrain exports in order to keep prices from collapsing; meanwhile big producers like Saudi Arabia served as the world’s petroleum bankers, maintaining the solvency of the system. On only one occasion—the embargo of 1973-74—did the swing producers withhold needed oil flows for political reasons, or cause prices to reach levels unacceptable to consumers (the other major post-1970 oil shocks, due to wars or revolutions, were beyond OPEC’s control).

Now the status quo is crumbling—not so much for political reasons (though those are certainly imaginable, given the situations outlined above), but for reasons of geology. (more…)

The Israeli offensive in Lebanon contributed to pushing oil prices rising above above $78 a barrel for the first time in the last week - just as demand for fuel is increasing with
the start of the U.S. holiday season. The US has given the green light to a massive Israeli offensive in order to hit the one element of what is perceived by the administration
as an emerging ‘Shi’a axis’ that it can without propelling the world into a total oil price meltdown. Having failed massively in its attempt to remodel the region to suit its own
hydrocarbon needs the US has instead unwittingly collapsed the Iraqi state and strengthened the position of Iran. (more…)

“Oil has literally made foreign and security policy for decades…it…provoked the division of the Middle East after WW1; aroused Germany and Japan to extend their tentacles beyond their borders; the Arab oil embargo; Iran vs Iraq; the Gulf War. This is all clear.”

Bill Richardson, U.S. Secretary of Energy, 1999

“[The invasion of Iraq]… has nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do with oil.”

Donald Rumsfeld, Nov 2002

“Let me deal with the conspiracy theory that this is somehow to do with oil. There is no way whatever if oil were the issue that it would not be infintely simpler to cut a deal with Saddam.”

Tony Blair to the House of Commons, 2003

“Every single empire, in its official discourse has said that is it not like all the others. That its circumstances are special , that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort.”

Edward Said

Kevin Phillips is a former Republican strategist, (chief analyst on Nixon’s 1968 campaign) now bitterly opposed to the house of Bush and the religious right’s power in the
Republican Party. In his magisterial work “American Theocracy: the peril and politics of radical religion, oil, and borrowed money in the 21st century” (2006) Phillips argues
that every empire has been brought down by a combination of imperial over-reach , militant religion, ballooning debt and diminishing resources. Each of the modern world
powers depended on its leading command of an emerging energy technology regime – the Dutch water and wind power, the British coal and the US oil. And each
develops inertial forces that mitigate against it dominating the next historically emergent energy regime (such as the US built environments dependence on cars). For Phillips
it is not simply that American empire depends on oil, rather:

“…The Bush administration knew that the peak oil crisis probably posed strategic dangers far beyond those publicly acknowledged. The dollar’s role as the world’s reserve
currency was also tied to oil”. [p.69]

“…a final decision to invade Iraq seems to have been made in early 2001, for reasons that had been mounting since 1997. During the election year and 2001, five political
and policy end games – all felt by important constituencies to be pressing or even desperate [were] underway in what was historically an extraordinary convergence.” (more…)

In recent months Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney have sought to rebrand “the war on terror” as the epochal “Long War.” Presumably “the war on terror” has been going on long enough, and Osama bin Laden, the ‘Goldstein’ of the philo-semitic US right, has been ‘escaping justice’ long enough that the neo-cons think the US public is ready for a perceptual shift. What was, immediately post 9/11, branded as circling the wagons and raising a posee is now explicitly being touted as the Cold War for the New American Century. The once proud, freedom-loving anti-Soviet mujahideen of Afghanistan are today’s fanatical enemies of freedom, bent on destroying the West out of sheer hatred of our liberal values and taking over the world - “We have always been at war with East Asia”. (more…)

Last Monday we posted concerning the geopolitical imperative of oil depletion behind the US invasion of Iraq (”Three Years on from “Operation Iraqi Freedom” - A Stable
Gulf?”). Having looked into the issue further it is apparent that the neo-conservative ambitions for the reshaping of the Middle East were far more ambitious than had first been supposed; but that the US ‘ultra establishment’ in alliance with Big Oil finally pulled the plug on them. Incredibly, the plan had the initial moniker “Operation Iraqi Liberation” which due to its unfortunate acronym was swiftly renamed “Operation Iraqi Freedom” (a semantic gaff only rivalled by Bush’s post 9/11 declaration of a ‘crusade’ against Islamic terrorism).

While Tony “45 minutes” Blair calls the idea that oil played a part in the invasion of Iraq a conspiracy theory, investigative journalist Greg Palast has uncovered a neocon planning document which details that the real aim of the invasion was to smash the OPEC cartel and institute a new world energy order. (more…)

On March 19, 2003 – three years ago next week – “Operation Iraqi Freedom” was launched against Saddam Hussein’s regime and on May 1st President Bush gave his ill-fated speech announcing the end of ‘major combat operations’. There is no need for to rehearse all that has subsequently ensued. What was the purpose of the invasion of Iraq?

According to the US Geological Survey the area with the probable largest amount of undiscovered oil lies in Iraq, Kuwait and western Iran. Despite its attractive potential for development only 17 of the 80 fields discovered in Iraq have been developed. A paper by the Global Policy Forum estimates total profit from Iraqi oil alone ranging from approximately $600 billion to $9 trillion. The “most probable” estimate yields annual profits from Iraq production of $95 billion per year for 50 years, a rate three times greater than the 2002 worldwide profits of the five largest international companies (more…)

A recent report published by the Global Policy Institute, “Crude Designs: The Rip Off of Iraq’s Oil Wealth,” puts the invasion of Iraq and subsequent US and UK machinations to control Iraqi oil reserves firmly in the context of peak oil: (more…)