Central Asia, Washington and Beijing Energy Geo-politics

This editorial is long, but good reading. It strongly suggests that the Bush Administration has had some serious setbacks in the Middle East in recent months.



Central Asia, Washington and Beijing Energy Geo-politics


by F. William Engdahl

December 19, 2005
GlobalResearch.ca


On December 15, the state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) inaugurated an oil pipeline running from Kazakhstan to northwest China. That pipeline will undercut the geopolitical significance of the Washington-backed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline which opened this past summer amid big fanfare and support from Washington. The geopolitical chess game for the control of the energy flows of Central Asia and overall of Eurasia from the Atlantic to the China Sea is sharply evident in the latest developments....


In October this year, Beijing scored a second major geopolitical coup when China completed a $4.18 billion takeover of PetroKazakhstan Inc. It was, in a sense, revenge on Washington for the blocking of the China acquisition of Unocal. US oil majors had made major efforts to lock up Kazakhstan oil after discovery of major oil offshore in the Kashagan field. They failed. ExxonMobil was charged with bribery of Kazakh officials to win presence in the Kazakh oil business, and a senior Mobil executive was later jailed on US tax evasion in New York tied to the Kazakh bribery payments....

Given the nature of the Bush Administration’s rush to war in Iraq in 2003, where China had a major stake in oil development, and the subsequent US blocking of other Chinese attempts at securing energy independence including Unocal, it is not surprising that Beijing is taking extraordinary measures to secure its long-term oil and gas supply.

Energy is the Achilles Heel of China’s economic growth. Beijing knows that only too well. So does Washington. A decision to take military action against Iran would pull a far larger cast of actors into the fray than Iraq.


http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=%20EN20051219&articleId=1562

Global research Contributing Editor F. William Engdahl is author of the book, ‘A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Geopolitics and the New World Order, Pluto Press Ltd. And can be contacted via his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.