[A-List] US imperialism: global oil stitch-up

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Why Blair is an appeaser

Britain plays poodle partly because the US is stitching up the world's oil
supplies

George Monbiot
Tuesday November 5, 2002
The Guardian

Tony Blair's loyalty to George Bush looks like slow political suicide. His
preparedness to follow him over every precipice jeopardises Britain's
relationships with its allies, conjures up enemies all over the world and
infuriates voters of all political colours. And yet he never misses an
opportunity to show what a trusting friend he is.

There are several plausible and well-established explanations for this
unnatural coupling. But there might also be a new one. Blair may have
calculated that sticking to Bush is the only way in which our unsustainable
economy can meet its need for energy.

Britain is running out of time. According to the Oil Depletion Analysis
Centre the UK's North sea production has been declining since 1999. Nuclear
power in Britain is, in effect, finished: on Saturday the EU revealed that
it had prohibited the government's latest desperate attempt to keep it
afloat with massive subsidies. But, partly because of corporate lobbying,
partly because of his unhealthy fear of "Mondeo man" or "Worcester woman",
or whatever the floating voter of Middle England has now become, Tony Blair
has also flatly rejected both an effective energy reduction policy and a
massive investment in alternative power. The only remaining way of meeting
future energy demand is to import ever greater quantities of oil and gas.

And here the government runs into an intractable political reality. As
available reserves decline, the world's oil-hungry nations are tussling to
grab as much as they can for themselves. Almost everywhere on earth the
United States is winning. It is positioning itself to become the gatekeeper
to the world's remaining oil and gas. If it succeeds, it will both secure
its own future supplies and massively enhance its hegemonic power.

The world's oil reserves, the depletion analysis centre claims, appear to be
declining almost as swiftly as the North sea's. Conventional oil supplies
will peak within five or 10 years, and decline by around 2 million barrels
per day every year from then on. New kinds of fossil fuel have only a
limited potential to ameliorate the coming crisis. In the Middle East, the
only nation which could significantly increase its output is Iraq.

In 2001, a report sponsored by the US Council on Foreign Relations and the
Baker Institute for Public Policy began to spell out some of the
implications of this decline for America's national security. The problem,
it noted, is that "the American people continue to demand plentiful and
cheap energy without sacrifice or inconvenience". Transport, for example, is
responsible for 66% of the petroleum the US burns. Simply switching from
"light trucks" (the giant gas-guzzlers many Americans drive) to ordinary
cars would save nearly a million barrels per day of crude oil. But, as the
president's dad once said, "the American way of life is not up for
negotiation."

"The world," the report continues, "is currently precariously close to
utilising all of its available global oil production capacity." The
impending crisis is increasing "US and global vulnerability to disruption".
Over the previous year, for example, Iraq had "effectively become a swing
producer, turning its taps on and off when it has felt such action was in
its strategic interest". If the global demand for oil continues to rise,
world shortages could reduce the status of the US to that of "a poor
developing country".

This crisis, the report insists, demands "a reassessment of the role of
energy in American foreign policy... Such a strategy will require difficult
tradeoffs, in both domestic and foreign policy. But there is no alternative.
And there is no time to waste". By assuming "a leadership role in the
formation of new rules of the game", the United States will prevent any
other power from exploiting its dependency and seizing the strategic
initiative.

The US government has not been slow to act upon such intelligence. Over the
past two years, it has been seizing all the Caspian oil it can lay hands on,
cutting out both Russia and Iran by negotiating to pipe it out through
Azerbaijan, Georgia and Afghanistan. Last week, though all the sages of the
British and American right insisted during the Afghan war that it couldn't
possibly happen, the presidents of Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Pakistan
met to discuss the first of the Afghan pipelines. American soldiers have now
been stationed in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan,
Kazakhstan and Georgia, all of which are critical to the Caspian oil trade.
According to the security firm Stratfor, "the US military presence will help
ensure that a majority of oil and gas from the Caspian basin will go
westward - bypassing the United States' geopolitical rivals, Russia and
China". The reason why Vladimir Putin is so determined to keep Chechnya
under Russian control, whatever the cost to both the Chechens and the
Russians may be, is that Chechnya is one of the last available routes for
Caspian oil.

The US has been playing the same game in the Middle East. A recent report by
the Brookings Institution notes that "US strategic domination over the
entire region, including the whole lane of sea communications from the
strait of Hormuz, will be perceived as the primary vulnerability of China's
energy supply". Last month a senior US general, Carlton Fulford, visited Sao
Tomé and Principe, the islands halfway between Nigeria and Angola, to
discuss the possibility of establishing a military base there. Both nations
see the base as a threatening staging post, which the US could use to help
gain exclusive access to West African oil. Earlier this year, George Bush
negoti ated a "North American energy initiative" with Canada and Mexico. The
US is hoping to extend the arrangement to the rest of the Americas, which
could help to explain the coup which nearly toppled Venezuela's president in
April.

Oh, and there's the small matter of the one nation in the Middle East whose
oil production could be substantially increased, with the help of a little
external encouragement. Last week the leader of the exiled Iraqi National
Congress met executives from three major American oil companies, to start
negotiations about who gets what once the US has taken over. This carve-up
would mean cancelling the big contracts Russia and France have struck with
Saddam Hussein. Lord Browne, the head of BP, warned that Britain might also
be squeezed out of Iraq.

The United States, in other words, appears rapidly to be monopolising the
world's remaining oil. Every government knows this. Ours appears to have
calculated that the only way it can obtain the energy required to permit the
men and women of middle England to stay in their cars is to appease the
United States, whatever the cost may be. Britain's role in the impending war
is that of the egret in the crocodile's mouth, picking the scraps of flesh
from between its teeth.

In 1929 the novelist Ilya Ehrenburg observed that "the automobile can't be
blamed for anything. Its conscience is as clear as Monsieur Citroën's
conscience. It only fulfils its destiny: it is destined to wipe out the
world." Our struggle over the next few months is to prove him wrong.