Cheap Oil As Illusory as WMD  

Brian Toohey's column in this weekend's Australian Financial Review is a good one (though unfortunately, like most AFR content, it is hidden behind their paywall), taking a look at the naive and foolish professed belief of Rupert Murdoch and the neocons that invading Iraq would provide the world with a gusher of cheap oil.

I tend to be rather cynical about this idea (as I suspect it's possible they were peak aware and the purpose of invading Iraq wasn't simply to provide cheaper oil) but either way, subsequent events have shown the flaws in all strategies behind the whole Iraq fiasco. The interesting part of the article to me is the continued discussion of the idea that Iraq may have larger oil reserves than Saudi Arabia.

The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be US$20 a barrel for oil.
Rupert Murdoch
February 12, 2003

One of the many supposed benefits of invading Iraq was that the price of oil would go down, not up. Iraq would soon produce a lot more oil, undermining the cartel run by OPEC and reducing US reliance on production from Saudi Arabaia, which supplied most of the terrorists for the September 11 atrocities. At least, that was the dream of the neo-conservatives surrounding President George Bush.

...

In the lead up to the March 2003 invasion, US vice president Dick Cheney told a Veterans Of Foreign Wars conference in August 2002 that controlling oil supplies from the Persian Gulf was one of the reasons to get rid of Saddam Hussein.

...

Others shared Murdoch's optimism. Bush's economic advisor, Larry Lindsay, told the Wall Street Journal in December 2002 "When there is regime change in Iraq, you could add 3 to 5 million barrels [a day] of production to world supply ... Successful prosecution of the war would be good for the economy."

...

A study from the Congressional research Service earlier this year said extra investment would allow Iraq to rival Saudi Arabia's output. ... The CRS says the avergae Iraqi oil well produces thousands of barrels a day, compared to a mere 10 a day in the US. Other sources put the cost of producing Iraqi oil, including exploration and capital outlays, at under US$1.50 a barrel - generating a tempting margin when sold for US$60.

The CRS says that Iraq has 115 billion barrels of proven reserves, compared with Saudi Arabia's 260 billion barrels. With many prospective areas not properly explored, Iraq's potential reserves are widely seen as at least as big as Saudi Arabia's.

In a dissenting view, a Texas oil consultant, Matthew Simmons, was reported this month as doubting that any major new fields remain to be discovered.

Of course, I'd say that both of these views at the end are correct.

In other news on Iraq, Jeff Vail has looked at the new US strategy of destroying bridges across the Euphrates and has concluded "The War is Lost" and Past Peak has a look at the disgraceful propaganda exercise following the death of Pat Tillman at the hands of "friendly fire".

Noam Chomsky confirms that he was to meet with Tillman upon Tillman's return. Imagine the PR disaster for the White House and the Pentagon if their hero had returned and publicly stood with Chomsky in outspoken criticism of Bush and Bush's war in Iraq.

All we know for sure is that Tillman was killed by "friendly fire", but as The Chronicle notes:

...[T]he medical examiner's report said Tillman was killed by three bullets closely spaced in his forehead...

Whatever the true facts of his death may have been beyond that, this much is clear: Tillman wasn't the White House's hero or the Pentagon's hero. As Dave Zirin writes in The Nation, Pat Tillman was, if anything, our hero. The real Pat Tillman, however, was erased, transformed into a cartoon image that is the complete opposite of the real man.

The very definition of Orwellian.

Finally, Pepe Escobar has a column on "The Conquest of Southwest Asia" (via Alert and Alarmed).

Just one day after the London July bombings, one remarkably named Aseem Jihad, a spokesman for the Iraqi Oil Ministry, told Iraqi media that 11 southern Iraqi oil fields, capable of producing at least 3 million barrels a day, were being put up for tender to international investors, to the tune of US$25 billion. … There is always the possibility that all those billions will never end up at Iraq's Oil Ministry, to the benefit of the Iraqi people. …

Moreover, the powerful oil plutocracy also does not have to worry about any Iraqi legal matters, as President George W Bush's Executive Order 13303 – which guarantees that any "judicial process" against any American corporate interests involved in any way with Iraq's oil "shall be deemed null and void" – was recently renewed. For global cynics, this is in fact the whole point of the "war on terror". …

It's clearly understood in vast swathes of the Middle East that the crucial trait of Bush's Greater Middle East implies a coup de grace against Arab nationalism … most borders in the Arab world are totally artificial, imposed above all by British colonialism. For Washington, the real enemy is not Islamic fundamentalism: it's Arab nationalism. For decades the ultimate target of Israeli foreign policy has been to sow disunion among Arabs. Secular Arab nationalism is the ultimate threat to Israel, thus to the US, in neo-con thinking. The crux is not religious: it's political.

… as Arabs see it, this is a war against Arab nationalists bearing a very long list of widely-documented grievances and exploitation and a very clear, concrete set of demands: self-determination in all its forms all over the Arab world and the end of foreign occupation, domination and interference. The key data in all this drama is what the people who live in the Middle East themselves think. A very helpful guide is a study on Middle Eastern public opinion … and released by the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan. The results are devastating. … the Arab street does not identify a "clash of civilizations"; they identify their woes as direct consequences of British colonialism and US foreign policy. ...

But the former incarnation of the "war on terror" can always be exhumed … The techniques are always the same: manipulation of public opinion; a widespread disinformation campaign; selected paid agents infiltrated in the media; paranoia campaign through color-coded terror alerts; alarmist announcements of another "inevitable" September 11. As Vice President Dick Cheney himself has announced, just like the war against communism the "war on terror" will go on for decades. ...

Syria, the weak link, is the next Washington target for destabilization in the next few months. The reason is simple: Syria is still committed to non-sectarian Arab nationalism, apart from being the only country in the region which has not yet succumbed to US-Israel pressure. ...

The scenario has been immensely complicated by the election of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei-blessed Mahmud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran- which means, among other things, that Iran's nuclear program won't be shelved – and a simultaneous Iranian victory in Iraq in terms of strategic influence. … an invasion of Iran is totally impossible. An attack on Iran would bring immediate retaliation inside Iraq. Among the vast Iranian diaspora there is a certainty: Iran will inevitably become a nuclear power, no matter what the Americans do. … its strategic influence over a Shi'ite-dominated Iraq won't go away. Saudi Arabia has made it clear that in the event of Iran going nuclear, it will do the same. ...

This is a diabolical shambles. That the home populations of the US/Britain/Australia might have been beaten into quiescence might allow the war machine to limp along (even though the Yanks have run out of bucks and run out of cannon fodder to fill the ranks of the troops). But the Arab populations (and Muslim supporters elsewhere) see differently. Of necessity, the American bucks will continue to flow (in deficit) and the cannon fodder will continue to be killed and suffer horrendous injuries. Until the home populations of the US/Britain/Australia wake from their slumber and decide that they have had enough.