Yesterday was the 11th anniversary of the 2003 Iraq War - yet to this day, few media reflections on the conflict accurately explore the extent to which opening up Persian Gulf energy resources to the world economy was a prime driver behind the Anglo-American invasion.
The overwhelming narrative has been one of incompetence and failure in an otherwise noble, if ill-conceived and badly managed endeavour to free Iraqis from tyranny. To be sure, the conduct of the war was indeed replete with incompetence at a colossal scale - but this doesn't erase the very real mendacity of the cold, strategic logic that motivated the war's US and British planners in the first place.
According to the infamous Project for a New American Century (PNAC) document endorsed by senior Bush administration officials as far back as 1997, "While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification" for the US "to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security," "the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
So Saddam's WMD was not really the issue - and neither was Saddam himself.
The real issue is candidly described in a 2001 report on "energy security" - commissioned by then US Vice-President Dick Cheney - published by the Council on Foreign Relations and the James Baker Institute for Public Policy. It warned of an impending global energy crisis that would increase "US and global vulnerability to disruption", and leave the US facing "unprecedented energy price volatility."
The main source of disruption, the report observed, is "Middle East tension", in particular, the threat posed by Iraq. Critically, the documented illustrated that US officials had lost all faith in Saddam due his erratic and unpredictable energy export policies. In 2000, Iraq had "effectively become a swing producer, turning its taps on and off when it has felt such action was in its strategic interest to do so." There is a "possibility that Saddam Hussein may remove Iraqi oil from the market for an extended period of time" in order to damage prices:
"Iraq remains a destabilising influence to... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export programme to manipulate oil markets. This would display his personal power, enhance his image as a pan-Arab leader... and pressure others for a lifting of economic sanctions against his regime. The United States should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/diplomatic assessments. The United States should then develop an integrated strategy with key allies in Europe and Asia, and with key countries in the Middle East, to restate goals with respect to Iraqi policy and to restore a cohesive coalition of key allies."
The Iraq War was only partly, however, about big profits for Anglo-American oil conglomerates - that would be a bonus (one which in the end has failed to materialise to the degree hoped for - not for want of trying though).
The real goal - as Greg Muttitt documented in his book Fuel on the Fire citing declassified Foreign Office files from 2003 onwards - was stabilising global energy supplies as a whole by ensuring the free flow of Iraqi oil to world markets - benefits to US and UK companies constituted an important but secondary goal:
"The most important strategic interest lay in expanding global energy supplies, through foreign investment, in some of the world's largest oil reserves – in particular Iraq. This meshed neatly with the secondary aim of securing contracts for their companies. Note that the strategy documents released here tend to refer to 'British and global energy supplies.' British energy security is to be obtained by there being ample global supplies – it is not about the specific flow."
To this end, as Whitehall documents obtained by the Independent show, the US and British sought to privatise Iraqi oil production with a view to allow foreign companies to takeover. Minutes of a meeting held on 12 May 2003 said:
"The future shape of the Iraqi industry will affect oil markets, and the functioning of Opec, in both of which we have a vital interest."
A "desirable" outcome for Iraqi's crippled oil industry, officials concluded, is:
"... an oil sector open and attractive to foreign investment, with appropriate arrangements for the exploitation of new fields."
The documents added that "foreign companies' involvement seems to be the only possible solution" to make Iraq a reliable oil exporter. This, however, would be "politically sensitive", and would "require careful handling to avoid the impression that we are trying to push the Iraqis down one particular path."
Media analyses claiming lazily that there was no planning for the aftermath of the Iraq War should look closer at the public record. The reality is that extensive plans for postwar reconstruction were pursued, but they did not consider humanitarian and societal issues of any significance, focusing instead on maintaining the authoritarian structures of Saddam's brutal regime after his removal, while upgrading Iraq's oil infrastructure to benefit foreign investors.
A series of news reports, for instance, confirmed how the State Department had set up 17 separate working groups to work out this post-war plan. Iraq would be "governed by a senior US military officer... with a civilian administrator", which would "initially impose martial law", while Iraqis would be relegated to the sidelines as "advisers" to the US administration. The US envisaged "a broad and protracted American role in managing the reconstruction of the country... with a continued role for thousands of US troops there for years to come", in "defence of the country's oil fields", which would eventually be "privatised" along with "other supporting industries."
The centrality of concerns about energy to Iraq War planning was most candidly confirmed eight years ago by a former senior British Army official in Iraq, James Ellery, currently director of British security firm and US defence contractor, Aegis.
Brigadier-General James Ellery CBE, the Foreign Office's Senior Adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad since 2003, had confirmed the critical role of Iraqi oil reserves in alleviating a "world shortage" of conventional oil. The Iraq War has helped to head off what Ellery described as "the tide of Easternisation" – a shift in global political and economic power toward China and India, to whom goes "two thirds of the Middle East's oil." His remarks were made as part of a presentation at the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), University of London, sponsored by the Iraqi Youth Foundation, on 22nd April 2008:
"The reason that oil reached $117 a barrel last week was less to do with security of supply… than World shortage."
He went on to emphasise the strategic significance of Iraqi petroleum fields in relation to the danger of production peaks being breached in major oil reserves around the world:
"Russia's production has peaked at 10 million barrels per day; Africa has proved slow to yield affordable extra supplies – from Sudan and Angola for example. Thus the only near-term potential increase will be from Iraq."
Whether Iraq began "favouring East or West" could therefore be "de-stabilising" not only "within the region but to nations far beyond which have an interest."
"Iraq holds the key to stability in the region", Ellery continued, due to its "relatively large, consuming population," its being home to "the second largest reserve of oil – under exploited", and finally its geostrategic location "on the routes between Asia, Europe, Arabia and North Africa - hence the Silk Road."
Despite escalating instability and internal terrorism, Iraq is now swiftly reclaiming its rank as one of the world's fastest-growing exporters, cushioning the impact of supply outages elsewhere and thus welcomed by OPEC. Back in 2008, Ellery had confirmed Allied ambitions to "raise Iraqi's oil production from 2.5 million bpd today to 3 million by next year and maybe ultimately 6 million barrels per day."
Thus, the primary motive of the war - mobilising Iraqi oil production to sustain global oil flows and moderate global oil prices - has, so far, been fairly successful according to the International Energy Agency.
Eleven years on, there should be no doubt that the 2003 Iraq War was among the first major resource wars of the 21st century. It is unlikely to be the last.
Dr Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And How to Save It among other books. Follow him on Twitter @nafeezahmed
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Who ever doubted this.
Dr Nafeez Ahmed possibly? unless you've been under Uluru all this time most people realised it was about oil from the start. Cheney's Haliburton made a mint. Aznar and Blair got to give talks @ Yale as a reward for poodling to Bush, C Powell shaking vials of Anthrax in public for PR, well... you know the rest... over 1 million deaths.
The pennies were made from selling the oil, the real money comes from keeping the price lower than it would be and preventing oil being deployed as an economic weapon against the US.
There is money to be made from flogging it at the forecourts of US and EU petrol stations, far more money to be made by making sure it is there to be bought.
Nah, he's been saying this for a long time now.
That he feels there still remains the need to continue to provide this information is two fold and is pretty much laid out in the opening two paragraphs. First, yesterday was the 11th anniversary of the 2003 invasion. Second, the still prevailing media narrative.
From the article:
yet to this day, few media reflections on the conflict accurately explore the extent to which opening up Persian Gulf energy resources to the world economy was a prime driver behind the Anglo-American invasion.
The overwhelming narrative has been one of incompetence and failure in an otherwise noble, if ill-conceived and badly managed endeavour to free Iraqis from tyranny.
And also:
Media analyses claiming lazily that there was no planning for the aftermath of the Iraq War should look closer at the public record.
Anyone with half a brain knew it was about energy (oil and gas), so no surprises there then.
Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover gave presentation in 1957 called Energy resources and our future, in which he discussed historic sources of energy (slaves and draft animals), population growth, and future energy shortages. In this prescient paper written the year after Hubbert’s 1956 prediction of a peak in global oil production c 2000, Rickover argued that uncontrolled population growth and the finite nature of fossil fuel had the potential to cause industrialised societies to collapse, with this extract wrt the USA hitting the proverbial nail on the head:
We began life in 1776 as a nation of less than four million people - spread over a vast continent - with seemingly inexhaustible riches of nature all about. We conserved what was scarce - human labor - and squandered what seemed abundant - natural resources - and we are still doing the same today.
Further, whilst politicians and economists fail to discuss the issue peak oil, at least publically, preferring to echo the investment driven hype of energy abundance from unconventional sources, the military are well aware of the impact of energy shortages, as these quotes from a paper written by Sohbet Karbuz entitled Pentagon and Peak Oil: A Military Literature Review confirms:
Pentagon knows that the US is addicted to oil, the American way of life is non-negotiable, and we are late for alternatives. Pentagon is also well aware of the facts that American economy and the US dollar are in big danger.
Pentagon knows how important the future of oil is. Moreover, Pentagon is well aware of Peak Oil. More and more publication citing or discussing Peak Oil in military publications is just one indication.
So yes of course Iraq always was about oil, and Blair always knew it was; weapons of mass destruction my arse!
It was about oil. I was shocked to realise that the United States and Britain thought it was acceptable to drop bombs on 100,000 innocent Iraqis in the process though.
I'm more shocked of the conservative official estimate of 500,000 dead, along with the suggested more realistic estimates of in excess of 1million dead. It makes me sick that any human would be capable of taking such action for such reasons, made infinitely worse by the fact they are in charge of us!
"drop bombs on 100,000 innocent Iraqis"
Try 1,000,000 - you will be closer to the actual figure
mmmh
Oil imports pre war were actually higher for the US than after. One would wonder if oil was the main issue why this is the case
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MTTIMIZ1&f=M
Africa has been in decline since 2010 and we see no rise in Iraq imports so that connection is wrong. What has increased in Canada
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_m.htm
The plutocrats always assume they can drop a few bombs, install a new government, steal all the natural resources, and have the survivors give thank them.
It never works out that way, but the plutocrats are self-selected for their propensity for evil, not their intelligence.
So they murdered for oil but they didn't get it.
Don't feel sorry for them - they got hundreds of billions from war profiteering anyway.
This kind of argument always forget that it isn't only about oil imports for the US
It is about the basic below deal :
1) The US has the job of insuring "security" in the region (that is the flow of oil, and especially security of KSA UAE etc), one could say this has been made official since the Carter Doctrine and Reagan corollary, also leading to the set up of the United States Central command (CENTCOM) with a rather clear emblema :
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/35/Seal_of_United_States_Central_Command.png/768px-Seal_of_United_States_Central_Command.png
2) On the other hand the oil market is in $
3) The $ is the reserve currency
4) The US can sell treasury bonds like no other (even if now the FED is the biggest customer through QE)
Exactly. It was about the US $ as the global oil currency, as promised by Washington's friends the Saudi and UAE royalties. Without that the Federal Reserve bank could not print dollar bills unlimited as they are doing the last decades after dropping the gold standard.
Saddam Hussein could turn off Iraq's oil supply only for short periods: it was his financial lifeline.
Also China, India, Japan and others needed Iraqi oil as much or more than the US. The US had its guaranteed Saudi oil.
Sorry Greens, nothing to do with "peak oil".
Exxon and Rosneft are exploring for oil together in the Arctic as part of a $500 billion joint venture. Puts the sanctions that the US is imposing on the Russians into perspective.
China - main buyer of Iraqi oil.
China already buys nearly half the oil that Iraq produces, nearly 1.5 million barrels a day, and is angling for an even bigger share, bidding for a stake now owned by Exxon Mobil in one of Iraq’s largest oil fields.
“The Chinese are the biggest beneficiary of this post-Saddam oil boom in Iraq,” said Denise Natali, a Middle East expert at the National Defense University in Washington. “They need energy, and they want to get into the market.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/world/middleeast/china-reaps-biggest-benefits-of-iraq-oil-boom.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
China had up to 20,000 workers and technicians (or more - verify ??) in Libya before NATO did their infamous ´democratisation´ number.
Major banks and oil companies had to compensate them for losses sustained in Libya perhaps - also some mega engineering jobs they are the best on price, speed of completion and qq.. quality!! .. depends where!!!
They are looking to the future.
Beijing's modern war machine is closing rapidly on its 2050 target
Interesting, I've seen that date before.
With China increasingly reliant on Africa, the Middle East and South America for the resources to fuel the world's fastest-growing economy, the need for a military that can fight far from its borders is becoming apparent.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1547297/Beijings-modern-war-machine-is-closing-rapidly-on-its-2050-target.html
I must've clicked on the From the Guardian Archive section.
WTF? Are you new to the internet? People have been arguing about this since about 10 years before the war. There were even discussions about it on the message boards of the defence contractor I used to work for!
What makes you think you could possibly have anything new to add to one of the most talked about subjects of the last two decades?
What's wrong with talking again about the truth?
I have always distinguished between American objectives, lies, or whatever, and the outcomes for the various peoples of Iraq, which has proven to be quite a different matter. I have no disagreement with this post. But in regard to Iraq itself, Saddam crafted a regime deliberately modeled of a fusion of Hitler and Stalin's methods of rule. His minority Sunni dictatorship sought the extermination of the Kurds and was extraordinarily repressive toward the Shiite majority. Postwar Iraq has at least created a Shiite majority government and a vastly improved position for the Kurds. The great majority of the killing during the war and today has been at the hands of Sunni revanchists and foreign jihadists. The Shiites and Kurds can hardly be blamed for that. And, like Yugoslavia, dictatorships that sat on top of mutually hostile ethnic and religious groups, once removed, unleashed civil war. That should not be a reason to keep the dictators in power. So, one can despise George Bush, and agree that his reasons for the 2003 invasion were mendacious, but that does not mean in any way that it would be better to have Saddam back.
Does Pinochet ring bell for you at all?
You forget to speak of women; the Baathist record in Iraq and Syria is strong re education and the professions and the fact that Hussein was an implacable foe of "fundamentalists".
The role of women has gone backwards across the region over 30 years.
You are not in favour of the civilised treatment of women and girls, then? It is just a few days since the Guardian carried a shocking article about the so-called Ja'fari law. Where under Saddam (through a 1959 law passed shortly after the formation of the Iraqi Republic) women enjoyed the best legal protection in the Arab world, they are now being returned to the dark ages. The age of legal marriage for females will be reduced from 18 to 9, marital rape will be legalised, wives will not be allowed to leave their marital home without their husband's permission and husbands will not be not required to pay financial support when their wife is either a minor or a senior and hence unable to sexually satisfy them.
Do you really see this government as decent and humane?
These days Iraq is a member of OPEC in name only. It has a formal exemption to ignore oil production quotas set by OPEC. Of course, this is all a smokescreen in any case, as most members of OPEC are past peak production, and exporting declining barrels of oil, either above or below their nominal quota. In 2009 Saudi Arabia and Kuwait did cut back on production to put a floor on the oil price after the 2008 global recession, but all countries now are more or less producing flat out, unless they are suffering export sanctions, or civil war.
Iraq production is rising as new infrastructure is finally in place, but talk of it reaching 12 million barrels a day and becoming the new Saudi Arabia were always pure fiction. They will be lucky to reach and sustain 4 Mbpd. The Sunni/Shia insurgency is alive and kicking. Hundreds are dieing each week. The Kurds are still refusing to let the government control their oil sales, and are rapidly becoming a separate (and relaively stable) state.
As with all wars, nobody really won, but the Iraqi people without question lost.
As others have noted a lot of us suspected this was the case when we marched in London before the Iraq war. Regardless, the above article is needed and welcomed. The barbarians at the gates are us, unfortunately. This has been the case for a long time.
Yawn. Like we didn't know.
Though Blair had me going for a bit when he said his god told him to go in. Or something like it.
Yet, knowing this, we failed to punish the liars who made us accomplices in their crime.
Once again we fail to get an analysis of the trillions spent on war; if they had been spent "alternative/renewable/indigenous" energy.
Big Oil is blind and has all the levers of power.
For the price of this war we could have put solar panels on every roof in America and then we wouldn't need the oil. The war was about maintaining the energy status quo.
It was ever thus. Even today in The Times Tim Montgomerie was blathering on about the budget and that 'the nation continues to sign up to expensive renewable and nuclear power contracts that risk leaving us uncompetitive for years to come' meme. It's all about oil and it's influence of the right, it this case Tony Blair.
Oil history is really something and it isn't exagerating to say that it governs 90% of geopolotics "basic tensions" since the end of second world war, and even before.
With yet and even bigger importance since 1970 US oil production peak.
There is a really great documentary about it "la face cachée du pétrole" which unfortunately only exist in French and German to my knowledge (adapted from a book with the same title, translated in plenty of language but not English .. a bit strange)
Especially great for the list of key people interviewed : Yamani, James Akins, Gorbatchov, Ex CIA guy, plenty of others.
Below one (part 2 of two parts) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQJ-0jAr3LQ
There is another one, more recent but less good for me (except for the part on Africa, much more detailed than in the first one), which has been adapted in English by Al Jazeerah, links below :
http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22914&highlight=
Note that this adaptation is a bit "watered down" for instance interview of Collin Campbell have been shortened taking out the most alarming parts.
Original version :
http://www.politique-actu.com/dossier/petrole-secret-sept-soeurs-geostrategie/869118/
And regarding oil history, there if one myth which getting out of would be truly urgent, and that could be summarized as :
"first oil shock (73) = Yom Kippur/Arab embargo= geopolitical story= nothing to do with geologic constraints"
When the real story was much more :
- end 1970 : US production peak, the energy crisis starts from there, with some heating fuel shortages for instance (some articles can be found on NYT archive on that)
- Nixon name James Akins to go check what is going on.
- Akins goes around all US producers, saying this won't be communicated to the media, but needs to be known, national security question
- The results are bad : no additional capacity at all, production will only go down, the results are also presentede to the OECD
- The reserves of Alaska, North Sea, Gulf of Mexico, are known at that time, but to be developed the barrel price needs to be higher
- In parallel this is also the period of "rebalance" between oil majors and countries on each barrel revenus (Ghadaffi being the first to push 55/50 for instance), and creation of national oil companies.
- there is also the dropping of B Woods in 71 and associated $ devaluation, also putting a "bullish" pressure on oil price.
- So to be able to start Alaska, GOM, North Sea, and have some "outside OPEC" market share, the barrel price needs to go up (always good for oil majors anyway) and this is also US diplomacy strategy
- For instance Akins, then US ambassador in Saudi Arabia, is the one talking about $4 or $5 a barrel in an OAPEC meeting in Algiers in 1972
- Yom Kippur starts during an OPEC meeting in Vienna, which was about barrel revenus percentages, and barrel price rise.
- The declaration of the embargo pushes the barrel up on the spots markets (that just have been set up)
- But the embargo remains quite limited (not from Iran, not from Iraq, only towards a few countries)
- It remains fictive from Saudi Arabia towards the US : tankers kept on going from KSA, through Barhain to make it more discrete, towards the US Army in Vietnam in particular.
- Akins is very clear about that in below documentary interviews (which unfortunately only exists in French and German to my knowledge, and interviews are voiced over) :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fQJ-0jAr3LQ
For instance after 24:10, where he says that two senators were starting having rather "strong voices" about "doing something", he asked the permission to tell them what was going on, got it, told them, they shat up and there was never any leak. The first oil schock "episode" starts at 18:00
(the "embargo story" was in fact very "pratical", both for the US to "cover up" US peak towards US public opinion or western one in general, but also for major Arab producers to show "the arab street" that they were doing something for the Palestinians).
Note : About Akins, see for instance :
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/26/AR2010072605298.html
And then the second oil shock (79) result of Iranian revolution, and leading to the "Carter doctrine", with then the Reagan corollary and creation of CENTCOM.
Followed by the counter oil shock (for a big part the result of Reagan administration pushing the Saudis to produce more in order to bring the USSR down), about this for instance :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02F-3l1EKsA
By the way, Akins key article "the oil crisis : this time the wolf is here" (from april 73, so before Yom Kippur/Embargo in October) is still really a good read :
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~twod/oil/NEW_SCHOOL_COURSE2005/articles/for_aff_aikins_oil_crisis_apr1973.pdf
(he already talks about tar sands and shale ! but in the sense kerogen for shale, not shale oil as in the Bakken)
But his report to Nixon (in 71) is sill classfied to my knowledge, it would really be interesting to know if it could be accessed now .
Also about the first oil shock story, and links with dropping of Bretton Woods, below a recent talk and presentation slides from Michel Lepetit (from the shift project) , but in French, some slides in English, 3rd in the list :
http://theshiftproject.org/fr/cette-page/ateliers-du-shift-du-6-mars-2014
Appreciate this link is not the most reliable but:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/may2008/051608_rumsfeld_tape.htm
Mr. Rumsfeld among others had no bones about dealing with Iraq..
´´.. The tape also includes a conversation where Rumsfeld and the military analysts agree on the possible necessity of installing a brutal dictator in Iraq to oversee U.S. interests.``
… released under the Freedom of Information Act feature former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld talking with top military analysts about how a flagging Neo-Con political agenda could be successfully restored with the aid of another terrorist attack on America.``
General Wesley Clark just reiterates the above with the Pentagon 7 countries list.
Just carrying out plans laid down 100 years ago by Churchill, Rothschild, and Balfour with more recently Mr. B. Brezinsky adding the finishing touches….
No biz like the oil biz !!! Tragic for the Arabs!!!
They had no problem supplying him (Saddam) with chemical weapons
Donald Riegle, Chairman of the Senate committee that authored the aforementioned Riegle Report, said:
U.N. inspectors had identified many United States manufactured items that had been exported from the United States to Iraq under licenses issued by the Department of Commerce, and [established] that these items were used to further Iraq's chemical and nuclear weapons development and its missile delivery system development programs. ... The executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licenses for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think that is a devastating record.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control sent Iraq 14 separate agents "with biological warfare significance," according to Riegle's investigators.[31]
In 1984, Iran introduced a draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council, citing the Geneva Protocol of 1925, condemning Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons on the battlefield. In response, the United States instructed its delegate at the UN to lobby friendly representatives in support of a motion to take "no decision" on the use of chemical munitions by Iraq. If backing to obstruct the resolution could be won, then the U.S. delegation were to proceed and vote in favour of taking zero action; if support were not forthcoming, the U.S. delegate were to refrain from voting altogether.
USDEL should work to develop general Western position in support of a motion to take "no decision" on Iranian draft resolution on use of chemical weapons by Iraq. If such a motion gets reasonable and broad support and sponsorship, USDEL should vote in favor. Failing Western support for "no decision," USDEL should abstain.[32]
Representatives of the United States argued that the UN Human Rights Commission was an "inappropriate forum" for consideration of such abuses. According to Joyce Battle, the Security Council eventually issued a "presidential statement" condemning the use of unconventional weapons "without naming Iraq as the offending party."[13]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_war
Well done for writing this Nafeez, but we've known all along that it was a war for oil. Further, there is a critical point you overlook in your analysis, which was Saddam's decision in 2000 to begin trading Iraq's oil in euros instead of dollars.
This challenge to the dollar's (and therefore US) global hegemony was well publicised at the time. As early as January 2003, William R Clark, author of Petrodollar Warfare, wrote a lengthy award-winning essay on this topic which then became the benchmark for all other writers. He returned to the subject in August 2005 with a piece focussing on Iran's non-dollar oil bourse and the likely implications.
Both are excellent reads. Meanwhile, back in 2003 and 2004, the real reasons for the US/British invasion of Iraq were well known and being publicised, for example here, here and here.
Immediately after the invasion, when Iraqi oil returned to international markets in June 2003, it was, of course, traded in dollars, not euros. Job done.
Despite the shale oil blip we are about to start hitting supply contraints again. Why else would Iran mysteriously be brought in from the cold after 30 odd years of isolation?
Another reason for the invasion - Grabbing oil rich Kirkuk for Kurdistan which was already US/UK friendly. So even if everything else went tits up they would still have Kurdistan onside. It is practically it's own country now, to the point that anyone wanted by the Iraqi government can flee there and not be touched.
Kirkuk is not very oil-rich. The propagandists tell us that new wells will make Kurdistan oil-rich and independent. But only if you believe people who have a very powerful political interest in convincing you that it is the case. So far no new production has come on line, and even if it did, how is it going to be exported? Kurdistan doesn't have easy access to the sea.
You'll be telling us the Pope is a Catholic next.
Of course it was about oil. Countries dependent on foreign energy are like drug addicts that steal to support their habit.
so well over 11 years since the claims announced here were actually news.
To follow, US elects muppet to second term
then US elects first African-American president!
Before you know it, he'll be telling us about how an unelected surly backstabber moves into 10 Downing Street before being rejected by the people when he finally chose to let us vote.
Classic American response to pointing out that the US lost the fight: claim that there was never any such battle, although it kept us on the edge of our seats for five years.
Not many people seem to know that the West has been scrapping over Iraqi oil for nearly a century. The recent wars were just a continuation.
http://libcom.org/history/1904-2003-history-of-iraq