This article can be found on the web at

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030512&s=klare

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It's the Oil, Stupid

by MICHAEL T. KLARE

[from the May 12, 2003 issue]

On the second day of the invasion of Iraq, US commandos seized two Iraqi offshore oil terminals in the Persian Gulf, capturing their defenders without a fight. "Swooping silently out of the Persian Gulf night," exulted James Dao of the New York Times, Navy SEALs claimed "a bloodless victory in the battle for Iraq's vast oil empire."

Dao's dramatic turn of phrase revealed more about the Administration's plans for Iraq than almost every other report from the battlefield. While American forces turned a blind eye to the looting of Iraq's archeological treasures, they moved quickly to gain control over oilfields, refineries and pipelines. Even before Iraqi resistance had been squelched, top US officials were boasting that Iraq's oil infrastructure was safely in American hands.

Oil had nothing to do with Washington's motives for the invasion, we were told. "The only interest the United States has in the region is furthering the cause of peace and stability, not in [Iraq's] ability to generate oil," said press secretary Ari Fleischer in late 2002. But at a January briefing an unnamed "senior Defense official" revealed that Gen. Tommy Franks and his staff "have crafted strategies that will allow us to secure and protect those fields as rapidly as possible in order to preserve those prior to destruction, as opposed to having to go in and clean them up after."

When pressed, the "senior Defense official" (presumably Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz) claimed that these fields would be protected so as to benefit the Iraqi people "at some point in the future." Other officials spoke of holding the fields "in trust" for the Iraqis. Nonetheless, the White House has talked with US energy companies about assuming a major role in the postconflict development of Iraq's mammoth reserves.

For now, the Administration's main concern appears to be to put existing oilfields back into operation as rapidly as possible so as to help subsidize the costs of occupying and reconstructing Iraq. To insure that this process will move quickly, the Defense Department awarded a noncompetitive, multimillion-dollar contract to Halliburton, the Houston-based oil-services firm once headed by Dick Cheney to fight fires and repair damage in the oilfields and begin the task of rehabilitation. In coming months other US oil-services firms, including Fluor and Bechtel (both with close ties to the Administration), will be invited to bid for even more lucrative contracts to rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure. Ultimately, about billion will be needed to restore Iraqi oil production to the levels achieved before the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War and the 1991 Gulf War.

Managing this complex enterprise will be an "interim authority" made up of Iraqis selected or approved by the US government, presumably including expatriates like Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), who enjoys close ties with the CIA and Defense. It can be safely assumed, however, that US occupation officials will retain ultimate authority over the oilfields during this period. Washington will seek United Nations Security Council resolutions lifting the economic sanctions in order to allow sales of Iraqi oil. But Administration officials vow to exclude the UN from decision-making on the disposition of Iraqi oil assets.

Once the fields are back in operation, the next item on the Administration's agenda will be to determine the fate of the Iraqi National Oil Company, the state-owned firm that has managed Iraq's oil assets since their nationalization in the 1970s. Most of INOC's current managers wish to keep the company under state ownership, but some of the exile leaders being courted by the Bush team, including Chalabi, favor privatizing the firm and parceling it out in large pieces to major American and British oil companies. "American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil," Chalabi declared in September 2002. This approach was given further support by a meeting of expatriate Iraqi oil officials convened by the State Department in early March. The officials, members of the oil and energy panel of State's Future of Iraq Project, declared that any post-Saddam Iraqi government should "develop the right economic environment to allow investment in and utilization of its oil and gas resources."

American oil firms have admitted to meeting with representatives of the INC and other exile groups to discuss postwar access to Iraqi oil. While exploitation of Iraq's existing fields, with total reserves estimated at 112 billion barrels (second only to Saudi Arabia's holdings of 261 billion barrels) is appealing enough, what US firms really want is to be able to tap into Iraq's "virgin" (undeveloped) fields in remote parts of the country.

According to the Energy Department, these undeveloped fields may hold as much as 200 billion barrels of oil, making this the largest pool of unexploited petroleum in the world. Saddam had awarded contracts to firms in Russia, China and France to develop some of these fields, but any government installed by the United States--certainly one headed by Chalabi--would declare those contracts void. With most big fields in the United States and other mature producing areas in decline, access to these reserves could prove essential to the survival and future prosperity of some of the major American energy firms. It is this fact, more than any other, that belies the Administration's claim that oil had nothing to do with the decision to invade and occupy Iraq.

...do you think they were after the Oil?

yeah whats going on here? I figured by now we'd have tankers lined up to be filled. whats the delay? I mean were just gonna claim the oil and take it right? That should be no problem. If this oil is not in my SUV by the end of the month I swear i'm gonna lose it.

According to

http://www.aeronautics.ru/news/news002/news057.htm

40% of the Russian economy is oil related - and they can't make a profit with prices so low.

Moscow's little arms race just got a ca$hectomy.

not a White House spokesman. Of course he will try to present this as a war for oil.

For 13 years now we've been hearing about how this is a war for oil. . . despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

(Some of you youngsters may not remerber that the same chant was used in 1990.)

Consider: In 1991, the US had control of all of Southern Iraq, including vast oil fields. . . it left without taking a barrel.

In 1991, the US had control of all of Kuwait's oil fields. After extinguishing the fires, the US left without taking a barrel.

After 1991, the US supported UN sanctions on the sale of Iraqi oil. Not only were we not taking Iraqi oil, we weren't buying it either.

Meanwhile, the US peacefully buys oil from dozens of other nations, and never once invaded any of them. If its all about oil -- why have we not invaded Canada, Saudi, Nigeria, Russia, Venezuala, Mexico, UAE, Egypt. Could it be that those are not regimes ruled by bloodthirsty dictators illegally possessing WMD's??? Duh.

At anytime up until March 2003, Saddam would have been overjoyed to have the sanctions lifted so he could begin selling oil on the world market. If the US wanted his oil, this what they would have done.

Since March 2003, the US has prevented the Iraqi dictator from scuttling his people's oil. We have not confiscated a single barrel.

But, for those of you blinded by hatred of the US, none of this will matter. It is an artcile of faith that the US is imperialist, and facts don't matter.

...it's all about the oil! Never mind the facts...I know the TROOOOOOTH!"

/left wing rant off

test test test test test

hurry the fuck up

Some pages load data but blank out.

Other pages show ' document contain no data'.

A few pages load and respond.

The news wire loads.

The latest comments page fails.

Good luck.

I hope IMC is not an example of the way you're going to run the national infrastructure after the "revolution".

Can you say "bread line"?

Just be sure you've got lots of milk and apples to feed to Diogenese and its comreds - else you might get sent to the "reeducation" camps to improve your productivity.

my hippie friends explained it plain and simple were gonna take the oil. We set this whole war up so we could pump iraq dry. for free. were not gonna pay for it or what was the point? I heard there running a pipeline straight to gwb's ranch