Bush's oil move backfires

Bush's oil move backfires

Now he will have to try diplomacy

Leader
Tuesday August 5, 2003
The Guardian

In a dream ending for the chapter of history being written now in Iraq, neo-conservatives fantasised before the war about a privatised, pro-American Iraqi oil industry. This would have access to the world's second largest hydrocarbon reserves and produce so much oil that Saudi Arabia, in charge of Opec, would lose its grip on petrol prices.

The world would then be swimming in inexpensive petrol - the cost of which would be dictated by the market, not by an anti-American price-fixing club run by Riyadh. Low prices would also mean falling revenues for oil-producers, which in the Middle East might precipitate the collapse of regimes hostile to the US. These hopes are now being dissipated like sand before the desert wind.

Oil is dribbling, rather than pumping, from Iraq's bomb-blasted oil industry. Sabotage and theft mean Iraq's oil production remains at a fraction of the levels achieved under Saddam. With reconstruction failing to take off, there is little sign of a post-Ba'athist dividend in the form of low oil prices. The result is that US action in Iraq has not weakened Opec, and hence Saudi Arabia, but strengthened it.

Last week's meeting of Opec ministers confirmed that with supplies being disrupted by political unrest in Venezuela and Nigeria, oil prices would remain where the Saudis want them to be - high. This is bad news for any putative global recovery and the US economy. Ever since Arab nations imposed an embargo on oil exports to America in 1973, the United States has tried, in theory, to wean itself off foreign oil. George Bush declared hydrocarbon independence a priority. But the real issue is not where the oil spurts from, but how much it costs to buy. (snip/...)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1012434,00.html

:kick:

:kick:

But we are only now getting into Iraq the stuff needed to restore the electrical damage we did with our smart "destroy the grid" bombs.

Come back in 2 months and they might have enough electricity to restore flow levels to one-half of Saddam levels. That is if the security situation improves and folks stop killing oil field workers.

This is truly the Gang that couldn't shot straight. Everytime I think that LIHOP is proven because they could not be that incompetent, I find more proof that perhaps they really can be "that incompetent".

I should be laughing at their incompetence, except there's too many dead people to make this funny...

I just can't find anything to CELEBRATE with so many people being KILLED.

Founded in ignorance and arrogance, they thought "smart weapons"
could be used to give the colonial enterprise a new lease on life,
despite the abundant history from the last hundred years showing
that this sort of thing NEVER pays for itself, NEVER comes out
clean and neat, and often leads to changes in government.

But this fellow is correct, it's been a singularly inept performance,
and the final act is still to come.

for 9/11.

what makes you think that they want CHEAP OIL?

They want the market to remain expensive so that they can claim a crisis, open up every last vestige of nature which sits over a drop of oil (and doesn't already have a ticket booth in front of it), and THEN have the cheap oil, but at inflated "value".

they also want to own the expensive oil.
That is the problem here.

n/t

... during one of the Senate hearings last week, Carl Levin (I think) pointed out that the amount of money needed to keep Iraq running PRE-WAR was about $35 billion.

Current estimates of revenues from the rusty, sabotaged Iraq oil industry is $5 billion.

Correct me if I'm wrong -- but doesn't that leave $30 billion to be made up by ???????. Fill in the blank at your leisure.



Edited to "correct" correct.