As Cheney's Middle East Energy Strategy Collapses
United States Admits Peak Oil Is Coming
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/EnergyMay2007.htm
The Only Question Is When,
And What Will Be The Impact On Climate Change?

Energy Update, May 2007

"Many environmentalists seem to dismiss or ignore peak oil because they simply cannot see it as significant when compared to climate change. But this is to miss the point. Oil depletion is deadly serious in its own right, but it also has the capacity both to worsen emissions and destroy the wealth needed to fight global warming."
David Strahan - End of oil heralds climate pain
BBC Online, 29 March 2007

'Global Warming Turbo' Responding To Peak Oil With Increasingly Desperate Measures Above, Canadian Tar Sand Mining and Processing High CO2 Intensity Oil Production From Tar Sands Is Being Expanded As Global Conventional Oil Production Begins Its Post Peak Decline

US Has No Plans In Place To Address 'Peak Oil'
(Except Dick Cheney's Failed Criminal Ones)

"Britain's defense secretary during the Iraq war says London underestimated Vice President Dick Cheney's influence, adding another voice to the growing view that the U.S.-led coalition failed to plan properly for the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's ouster, a newspaper reported Wednesday.... Hoon said the British side had not comprehended Cheney's influence. Even when Blair and President Bush agreed on some matter, 'sometimes ... the decision actually came out of a completely different place. And you think: What did we miss? I think we missed Cheney,' Hoon was quoted as saying. He did not cite any examples of decisions apparently reversed by Cheney."
Cheney Iraq role reviewed in Britain
Associated Press, 2 May 2007

"The U.S. government is in need of a strategy to minimize potentially dire economic consequences after worldwide oil production peaks and begins to decline, the investigative arm of Congress said Thursday.... In letters to the GAO, the Energy Department and Interior Department agreed with most aspects of the report."
Report: Gov't needs plan for oil peak
Associated Press, 29 March 2007

And Neither Does Britain
Peak Oil Starts To Hammer UK National Budget
Gordon Brown Scrambles For Oil Company Taxes As North Sea Revenues Plummet
And Sours Relations With BP In The Process

"A £2.8bn black hole in North Sea tax revenues has opened up after Chancellor Gordon Brown was forced to admit he has got his sums badly wrong on last year's controversial raid on oil and gas revenues. Latest projections suggest the Treasury is finally admitting the North Sea's oil and gas reserves are in terminal decline. Brown last year doubled the supplementary tax charge on North Sea companies to 20% which, with existing rates of corporate tax, means the oil and gas companies are paying about half their North Sea revenues in tax. The Chancellor justified the increase on the super-profits being made by the oil companies. But buried in his Pre-Budget Report yesterday was an admission by the Chancellor that there will be a significant shortfall in the forecast tax take, reckoned to be around £2.8bn, next year because the Treasury has misjudged the increasing difficulty and cost of lifting the dwindling North Sea reserves. The report says this year's tax take will be on budget at just over £10bn. But while the oil is trading at $9 a barrel above the Treasury's projections, the 2007-8 take of £10.7bn is 'a much more modest increase than assumed in the Budget 2006 forecast'. The Pre-Budget Report admits to a catalogue of miscalculations, not least a significant drop in North Sea output this year, down 8% in the third quarter of 2006, 38% lower than in 2000. Output is expected to drop by 3% a year until 2011. 'The structural decline since 2000 reflects the rundown of reserves in the North Sea and increasing extraction costs for the remaining oil and gas,' says the report."
The £2.8bn North Sea black hole
Evening Standard, 7 December 2006

"Our forecasts of the current [budget] balance from 2007-08 to 2011-12 are affected by one major change in the last year - the sharply lower levels of production and yet higher costs in the North Sea - which have this year reduced tax revenues from £13 billion to £8 billion and for each year into the future cut them by an average of £4 billion a year."
Gordon Brown's 2007 budget
Reuters, 21 March 2007

"BP is Britain's biggest company, the fifth largest in the world. It employs 17,000 people in Britain and contributes £1.3 billion every year in tax revenue. Everyone who owns a car buys BP fuel, and everyone who has a pension fund is likely to be a shareholder. Asked in a recent interview whether there was anyone in Britain more powerful than him, Gordon Brown named four men, all businessmen. First on his list was Lord Browne, until this week boss of BP, ennobled by this Government in 2001 and dubbed the Sun King for the way he had built BP into an industry giant..... Four months ago, this newspaper was approached by Lord Browne's former lover, a young Canadian called Jeff Chevalier. We were told by him that, despite being honoured in public and befriended in private by the Chancellor, Lord Browne thought the Government's taxes on business so damaging that he had to consider drastic changes in the way BP operated. According to Mr Chevalier, Lord Browne threatened to move BP's headquarters abroad. If carried out, such a move would be devastating, not only for the Government's tax revenues but for the tens of thousands of highly-paid jobs an international business such as BP sustains when headquartered in Britain. This was a business story of great significance - but obviously Mr Chevalier's account had to be checked, and calls were put in to BP, outlining what he was saying. The first response came from a public relations consultant working directly for Lord Browne. He told us that while Mr Chevalier had been Lord Browne's lover, it was completely untrue that Lord Browne had made the alleged threat, and in any case Lord Browne never, ever discussed business matters with Mr Chevalier. At 10am the following morning, The Mail on Sunday's Political Editor took a phone call from BP's highly respected public relations chief. His message was the exact opposite: of course BP had looked at the problem Mr Chevalier outlined, nor should we forget that at the time of Lord Browne's threat the Government was contemplating a windfall tax on North Sea oil profits.... Neither PR man made any issue of Lord Browne's homosexuality, which was well-known in the world of business and politics. Neither was it to be the focus of our story beyond sufficient reference to explain how a 27-year-old Canadian had been privy to such information. We cleared space for a story which would report Mr Chevalier's claims, reflect the fact that there appeared to be conflict within BP over how to respond and include information on other major companies facing the same problem as BP and considering meeting it in the same way. What we did not know was that someone had advised Lord Browne to go to a firm of showbiz lawyers called Schillings....... He [Chevalier] produced a laptop Lord Browne had given him, opened it up, and sure enough it declared it was the property of BP and contained three months of Lord Browne's confidential company email traffic."
Privacy, and the perils of secret justice
Mail On Sunday, 6 May 2007

Or Anyone Else (Except Sweden)

"In March 1971, a Mexican fisherman named Rudesindo Cantarell took a few geologists from state-run oil company Petroleos Mexicanos to this spot, where he had seen oil slicks. Mr. Cantarell didn't know it, but he had stumbled across one of the largest offshore oil fields ever found. A few decades and 12 billion barrels of oil later, the field that bears Mr. Cantarell's name is dying, and Pemex, as the state-owned company is known, is struggling to stave off the field's demise. From January 2006 though February 2007, Cantarell lost a staggering one-fifth of its production, with daily output falling to 1.6 million barrels from two million. The oil industry was stunned. Cantarell, which currently produces one of every 50 barrels of oil on the world market, is fading so fast analysts believe Mexico may become an oil importer in eight years. That would batter Mexico's economy, which depends on oil exports to fund 40% of its government spending. The continued deterioration of the world's second-biggest field by output would also put pressure on prices on the global oil market, where supplies are barely keeping up with growing demand as it is. And it would leave the U.S. even more dependent on Middle Eastern supplies -- and that much more vulnerable to political tumult in that region. The demise of Cantarell highlights a global issue: Nearly a quarter of the world's daily oil output of 85 million barrels is pumped from the biggest 20 fields, according to estimates from Wood Mackenzie, a Scotland-based oil consulting firm. And many of those fields, discovered decades ago, could soon follow in Cantarell's footsteps. It's widely believed that the world's biggest oil fields have already been found. In the decades leading up to the 1970s, the world discovered eight big fields that produced between 500,000 to one million barrels a day, according to Matthew Simmons, a veteran oil industry banker. During the 1970s and 1980s, only two were found. Since then, only one -- the Kashagan field in Kazakhstan -- has the potential to easily top the 500,000 barrel-a-day mark. Two decades ago, about a dozen fields produced more than a million barrels a day. Now there are only four, one of which is Cantarell. The future of two others, discovered more than 50 years ago, remains in question. Some analysts speculate Saudi Arabia's Ghawar, the biggest field by far, could begin a gradual decline within a decade or so. Another, Kuwait's Burgan, is showing signs of maturity. In November of 2005, Kuwait Oil Co. lowered its estimate of the field's sustainable production level to 1.7 million barrels a day from 1.9 million a day."
Mexico Tries to Save A Big, Fading Oil Field
Wall St Journal, 5 April 2007

Still Don't Get The Picture?

"All the world’s extra oil supply is likely to come from expensive and environmentally damaging unconventional sources within 15 years, according to a detailed study. This will mean increasing reliance on hard-to-develop sources of energy such as the Canadian oil sands and Venezuela’s Orinoco tar belt. A report from Wood Mackenzie, the Edinburgh-based consultancy, calculates that the world holds 3,600bn barrels of unconventional oil and gas that need a lot of energy to extract. So far only 8 per cent of that has begun to be developed, because the world has relied on easier sources of oil and gas. Only 15 per cent of the 3,600bn is heavy and extra-heavy oil, with the rest being even more challenging. The study makes clear the shift could come sooner than many people in the industry had expected, even though some major conventional oil fields will still be increasing their production in 2020. Those increases will not be enough to offset the decline at other fields."
Study sees harmful hunt for extra oil
Financial Times, 18 February 2007

"The Bush administration wants Canada to bypass environmental rules to quintuple its export of oil sand crude to the United States. The two sides discussed the move during a January 2006 meeting in Houston, according to a transcript recently obtained and released by Radio-Canada, the Canadian Broadcasting Co.'s French network. Canada's natural resources agency and the U.S. Energy Department organized the meeting of government officials and oil company executives from both countries. Canada, the No. 1 oil exporter to the United States already, was urged to increase its production of crude from oil sands from 1 million barrels a day to 5 million barrels a day. Oil sands are deep geological sands mixed with oil that is separated at high temperatures. But the process is energy intensive and is Canada's largest emitter of new greenhouse gases."
U.S. urged Canada to increase oil sands
United Press International, 19 January 2007

"Kyoto committed Canada to cutting emissions by 6 percent from 1990 levels by 2012. Emissions are now 35 percent above that target and are set to rise more rapidly as oil-rich tar sands are opened up in western Canada....."
Canada faces U.N. grilling over Kyoto abandonment
Reuters, 12 November 2006

So What Now In The Post-Blair Era?

"There are three reasons why there should be an election for a new leader when Tony Blair finally goes. Only an election confers democratic legitimacy on the succession. Second, party members expect to have a choice about who should lead them. They have hardly been listened to for most of the last 13 years, and have every right to demand that their voice be listened to now. And third, there are major differences of view about the government's direction of travel which need to be understood, debated and voted on within the party. There are other, better alternatives..... We need a new climate change and energy policy if we are not to become over-dependent on imported fossil fuels. It is not sustainable, let alone not legal, to go on fighting wars to grab control of the remaining reserves of Middle East oil when anyway the oil will soon run out...... We need a profound change in every aspect of government and our way of life -- not just energy, but transport, industry, building, agriculture, public expenditure and taxation, and foreign policy, in order in every area to give absolute priority to combating climate change. We need a crash programme, as we have done before in wartime, to develop renewable sources of energy, in which we are very well endowed, plus a massive programme to improve energy efficiency and energy conservation. Peace, social justice, climate survival - those should be our top priorities."
Michael Meacher - Why I want to be prime minister
Guardian - Comment Is Free, 22 February 2007

"The recent cabinet agreement in Baghdad on the new draft oil law was hailed as a landmark deal bringing together the warring factions in the allocation of the country's oil wealth. What was concealed was that this is being forced through by relentless pressure from the US and will sow the seeds of intense future conflict, with serious knock-on impacts on the world economy.... Above all, the policy is flawed by its extreme short-sightedness. Even if the US were to win its war in Iraq, which now looks virtually impossible, its incremental gain before the oil runs out would be short-term, while its exposure to intensified and unending insurgency because of perceived US seizure of Iraqi oil rights, especially if extended to Iran, would be disproportionately enormous both in the Middle East and maybe also at home. It is diametrically the opposite of the policy to which the whole world will be forced ineluctably by the accelerating onset of climate change. Perhaps the single greatest gain of the west learning this lesson of weaning itself off its oil addiction is that it would end this interference in the internal affairs of Muslim countries simply because they happen to have oil - the central cause of world conflict today."
Michael Meacher - The rape of Iraq's oil
Guardian - Comment Is Free, 22 March 2007

"The US would also have even less justification under international law for such an attack on Iran than it had over Iraq. The UN security council would never authorise it because Iran has not breached the terms of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Nor can the US or Israel claim they had the right to a pre-emptive strike. By long-established law, a pre-emptive strike is justified only to defend against an 'imminent and certain' attack. To claim the right of self-defence against a threat that may or may not emerge in 5 years' time is to claim the right to wage aggressive war whenever one chooses. It is worth recalling that that was one of the two grounds on which Nazi leaders were convicted and executed at Nuremburg. The truth is, Iran has done nothing illegal. It has demonstrated no territorial ambitions and has not occupied any foreign country - unlike the US, Britain and Israel. It has complied with its obligations under the NPT to allow inspectors 'to go anywhere and see anything' - unlike the US and Israel which refuse this. Indeed, by comparison, Israel has refused to recognise the NPT, and holds between 200-500 thermonuclear weapons targeted at Iran and other Middle East countries. Nor do any of the West's arguments for war against Iran hold water. It is said repeatedly that Iran is about to produce a nuclear bomb, and cannot be allowed to do so. In fact, Iran is not about to produce a bomb or anywhere near it. Iran is believed to have enriched uranium to the 3.5% level, enough for use as nuclear fuel, but it would require 90% enrichment, with 50-100 kg of it, to make a single bomb. As to the argument that Iran should not be allowed to have nuclear weapons, who decides that? What right does the US have to decide who should or should not have nuclear weapons? ..... So why, against all this background, is the US so bent on attacking Iran? Two considerations are probably decisive. One is that President Bush clearly sees his role in the Middle East in messianic terms and will not let does-not-make-sense arguments stand in the way of what he regards as his manifest destiny. The other is oil. Iran holds the world's largest supplies of oil after Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and holds more oil and gas combined than any other country on the planet. As Peak Oil rapidly approaches, the US demand to control the lion's share of what is left - pitifully short-sighted though such a policy is - is now the dominant driving geopolitical force in world politics today."
Michael Meacher - A war down memory lane
Gardian - Comment Is Free, 11 January 2007

"Whilst it has taken 145 years to consume half of the 2-2½ trillion barrels of conventional oil supplies generally regarded as the total available, it is likely that, given the huge increases in demand from China and India, with rates of growth of 7pc-10pc a year in economies supplying two-fifths of the world population, the other half will be largely consumed within the next 40 years. The significance of this can hardly be over-stated. Oil is the fundamental underpinning of our civilization. Alternatives like biofuels, ethanol or biomass can play a marginal supportive role but nowhere near on the scale required.... Some 98pc of global crude oil comes from 45 nations, of which more than half may have peaked in oil production, including seven of the 11 Opec nations. Major oil field discoveries fell to zero for the first time in 2003. Worse still, the excess capacity held by Opec nations has dwindled, from an average of 30pc to about 1pc of global demand now. The political significance of this is almost incalculable. World oil and gas production is declining at an average of 4pc-6pc a year, while demand is growing at 2pc-3pc a year.... Global oil production is 84m barrels a day. As the president of Exxon Mobil Exploration, John Thompson, said in 2003: 'By 2015 we will need to find, develop and produce a volume of new oil and gas that is equal to eight out of every 10 barrels being produced today.' That is not just a problem of better technology. Additional oil on that scale is not available. There are three options to escape this dilemma. One, which the US is ruthlessly pursuing, is to grab by force of arms the lion's share of what remains. A second is to shift into unconventional sources of oil - tar sands, extra heavy oils and gas to liquids processing. A third is to accelerate the switch out of oil altogether into renewable sources of energy, especially wind power, biomass, tidal power and solar. What is so disturbing is that long-term global policymaking on this, perhaps the biggest decision this century, is virtually non-existent and driven instead by self-destructive short-termism. The first option was the real reason behind the first Gulf War in 1991, to deter Saddam gaining control of the Saudi oilfields. It was also a major reason for the orchestrated revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, as well as the military interventions in Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, all of which offer key oil transit routes from the Caspian Sea Basin, which holds the world's biggest untapped fossil fuel resources, worth up to $5 trillion. Equally it is also one major reason for Russian intervention in Chechnya, part of the northerly transit route between the Caspian and Black Sea under current Russian control. It is certainly another reason for US concern about Iran, holding only slightly lower oil reserves than Iraq. But, above all, option one was the main trigger for the Iraq war. Of more than 80 oilfields discovered in Iraq, only about 21 have been at least partly developed. Despite this, Iraq's proven oil reserves exceed 110bn barrels but its total reserves are likely to be far more, perhaps even 200bn barrels more. This explains US determination to control this fulcrum but it has involved an escalating political, military and economic price that must make this option unsupportable even for the US. An alternative strategy is to take advantage of the rising oil price to develop unconventional oil sources, notably the Athabascan tar sands in Canada and the Venezuelan Orinoco heavy oils. However, the downsides in terms of cost, manpower, water shortages and, above all, CO2, are prohibitive. Cost-wise, the International Energy Agency reckons that investment needed in oil and gas over the next 25 years to meet an expected 50pc increase in global demand, will be $5 trillion, equivalent to more than four times the entire GNP of the UK. The biggest constraint, however, is environmental. It takes almost as much energy to mine, process, refine and upgrade the oil extracted from tar sand as the energy contained in the light oil produced. Worse still, the processing releases five to 10 times more greenhouse gases than a barrel of conventional oil. This is the exact opposite to the scientists' requirement for the world to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 60pc by 2050. The third option is clearly the right way forward - a new energy world order. The potential for powering the world economy via renewables is almost infinite. Governments should now be switching to this option, far faster and on a far greater scale."
Michael Meacher - Former Blair Minister
Our only hope lies in forging a new energy world order
Daily Telegraph, 26 June 2006

"... professor Bartlett, he and I are the two Republican scientists in the House [of Representatives], and we're both very concerned about it [peak oil], we've both given speeches. In the evening we have what's called Special Orders after regular business is done. We can get up, and we can give speeches about things we are concerned about. He has now given something like thirty speeches on the need for energy conservation, so forth. I have joined him a number of times, and have also spoken on my own. It's just a tough sell. Sometimes people don't want to believe what they don't like, and that's the problem here. There is simply not an infinite amount of oil... we have to stop using so much energy. Not just gasoline, but all energy. It's a tough battle because we're all used to cheap energy....  We are running out of fossil fuels. And years ago, I advocated that we had to start developing alternative forms of energy.... my dream is someday that we'll have solar shingles on every house, instead of asphalt shingles, and that these solar shingles will provide a good deal of the energy that your house can use. So, there are a lot of options, we just have not pursued them. ... We have to do it. I have spent a lot of time trying to wake up the congress and wake up the country. A lot of people simply don't want to believe it, because they can't believe it. But, I've gotta tell you that, that's the story..."
U.S. Representative Vernon Ehlers of Michigan
Energy Bulletin, 6 May 2007

'We Are Going To Need To Think In Completely Different Ways'

".... if you look around and see what the world is now facing I don't think  in the last two or three hundred years we've faced such a concatonation of  problems all at the same time.....[including] the inevitability, it seems to me, of resource wars....  if we are to solve the issues that are ahead of us, we are going to need to think in completely different ways. And the probability, it seems to me, is that the next 20 or 30 years are going to see a period of great instability... I fear the [current] era of small wars is merely the precursor, the pre-shock, for something rather larger to come... we need to find new ways to be able to live together on an overcrowded earth."
Lord Paddy Ashdown, High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina 2002 -2006
BBC Radio 4, 'Start The Week', 30 April 2007

"This is Europe's first commercially operating power station using the Sun's energy this way and at the moment its operator, Solucar, proudly claims that it generates 11 Megawatts (MW) of electricity without emitting a single puff of greenhouse gas. This current figure is enough to power up to 6,000 homes. But ultimately, the entire plant should generate as much power as is used by the 600,000 people of Seville. It works by focusing the reflected rays on one location, turning water into steam and then blasting it into turbines to generate power..... The vision is of the sun-blessed lands of the Mediterranean - even the Sahara desert - being carpeted with systems like this with the power cabled to the drizzlier lands of northern Europe. A dazzling idea in a dazzling location." Power station harnesses Sun's rays BBC Online, 2 May 2007

"The International Energy Agency called on governments to curb growth in energy demand and greenhouse gases as it warned Tuesday that the world’s energy supply is rapidly running out.... 'On current trends, we are on course for a dirty, expensive and unsustainable energy future,' agency executive director Claude Mandil said at the report’s launch in London. 'In response, urgent government action is required. The key word is urgent.' ”
World’s energy forecast: Dire
Associated Press, 8 November 2006

The Beginning Of The End Of Official 'Peak Oil' Denial
As The Cheney-Blair Iraq Campaign Faces Defeat

Hoon Easily Fooled

"Britain's defense secretary during the Iraq war says London underestimated Vice President Dick Cheney's influence, adding another voice to the growing view that the U.S.-led coalition failed to plan properly for the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's ouster, a newspaper reported Wednesday.... Hoon said the British side had not comprehended Cheney's influence. Even when Blair and President Bush agreed on some matter, 'sometimes ... the decision actually came out of a completely different place. And you think: What did we miss? I think we missed Cheney,' Hoon was quoted as saying. He did not cite any examples of decisions apparently reversed by Cheney."
Cheney Iraq role reviewed in Britain
Associated Press, 2 May 2007

"Describing the task of dealing with the US administration as a 'multi-dimensional jigsaw puzzle,' Mr Hoon accepted that Britain had greatly underestimated the influence of the neo-con vice-president Mr Cheney and had lacked a comparable figure able to engage him regularly over the war."
Hoon admits fatal errors in planning for postwar Iraq
Guardian, 2 May 2007

"'Blair started talking about getting rid of Saddam Hussein way before September 11 ... in 1998. So I think that on Iraq he was more ready than Bush, who only really came into this conversation after 9/11."
Lady Catherine Meyer, wife of former British US Ambassador, Christopher Meyer
Independent, 20 March 2007

Defeat In Iraq Follows Oily Ambitions

"Insurgents in Iraq are right to try to force US troops out of the country, a former British army commander has said. Gen Sir Michael Rose also told the BBC's Newsnight programme that the US and the UK must 'admit defeat' and stop fighting 'a hopeless war' in Iraq. Iraqi insurgents would not give in, he said. 'I don't excuse them for some of the terrible things they do, but I do understand why they are resisting.'.... Sir Michael has written a book drawing similarities between the tactics of insurgents and George Washington's men in America's War of Independence. He told Newsnight: 'As Lord Chatham said, when he was speaking on the British presence in North America, he said 'if I was an American, as I am an Englishman, as long as one Englishman remained on American native soil, I would never, never, never lay down my arms'. 'The Iraqi insurgents feel exactly the same way.' He said it was time to bring troops home. 'It is the soldiers who have been telling me from the frontline that the war they have been fighting is a hopeless war, that they cannot possibly win it and the sooner we start talking politics and not military solutions, the sooner they will come home and their lives will be preserved."
Insurgents 'right to take on US'
BBC Online, 3 May 2007

"A top US commander predicted Friday intensifying fighting and more casualties as US and Iraqi forces move into sanctuaries used by Al-Qaeda to mount major terror bombings in Baghdad. 'As we have surged, we find the enemy surging as well,' said Major General Rick Lynch, who commands an area in central Iraq that wraps around southern Baghdad. 'We are taking the fight to the enemy to counter his capabilities, but over time, especially as we continue to put our forces in areas where they have never operated we can expect to take continued casualties,' he said. Thirteen US soldiers under Lynch's command were killed and 39 wounded last month, mainly as a result of roadside bombs, according to the general, who said the number of attacks in his area has increased."
US commander predicts intensifying fighting, casualties
Agence France Presse, 4 May 2007

"Four years ago, I watched, with other young officers, the invasion of Iraq on TV in the mess. We were sick with envy. Our brother officers were having the most exciting time of their lives, at the centre of history, while we, on ceremonial duties in London, marched about in red tunics and bearskin hats. The invasion, it seemed, was a necessary evil to be redeemed by the creation of a free, democratic Iraq. The WMD issue was a pretext, we all concurred, an honourable white lie to knock an evil dictator off his perch and breathe new hope into the lives of a brutally repressed people. Our turn soon came, and the ground truth in Basra and Maysan provinces was a shock. The statue-toppling euphoria had been replaced by the horrific chaos of a state in collapse, exacerbated by a rising insurgency and sectarian bloodshed. The truth gradually emerged. The police and army we were training were corrupt and probably loyal to the insurgency. The first supposedly democratic elections for half a century were a façade, dependent on the presence of our Warrior fighting vehicles at polling stations. Then we realised the issue was not replacing tyranny with democracy, but gaining long-term access to oil. Blair, in bowing to American oil-mad energy hunger, had deployed the British Army on a lie, a much bigger lie than the one about WMDs. Today, the appalling sectarian violence killing hundreds of Iraqi civilians every week is the direct result of our invasion and botched occupation. As Blair prepares to leave office, Iraq is descending into deeper human tragedy, and British troops are still dying....When you join the Army, you swear allegiance to Her Majesty the Queen and, by extension, the Prime Minister. We commit ourselves, with unquestioning loyalty, to the State. This is founded on trust in our political masters, and the belief that they are honourable people who will not lie to us, will resource us correctly and deploy us with sound judgement, after thorough strategic planning. This bond is unique, set in stone regardless of party politics. Today, this bond is broken. Catastrophes in Iraq and Afghanistan and years of resource-starvation have taken their toll; this is Blair's legacy. Late last year, the head of the Army, General Sir Richard Dannat, publicly called for our withdrawal from Iraq. Other senior officers voiced concern. Such public statements, unthinkable before Blair, are a glimpse of the military's anger and frustration. Of those officers I sat with in the mess four years ago, many, like me, have left the Army. Those who remain have no trust in the Government. One told me: 'We won't be fooled again.'"
Leo Docherty: We soldiers once assumed our political bosses would not lie to us. That is over
Independent, 6 May 2007
(Leo Docherty is author of 'Desert of Death: A Soldier's Journey from Iraq to Afghanistan', published by Faber and Faber)

Cheney's Failed Secret Plan
To Delay Global Oil Crisis

"Democratic leaders are using subpoenas, hearings and other legislative measures to look into the White House's use of faulty intelligence in 2002 and 2003, including its claim that Iraq sought uranium from Niger for a nuclear program.... 'The country needs to finally have an accounting of how we ended up in Iraq,' said Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.), whose House Oversight and Government Reform Committee issued a subpoena to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. 'It's a broader question than one speech or one issue alone. Why was it that we went to war over false pretenses?'.... The new push is infuriating many Republicans, who say Democrats should focus instead on finding a constructive solution to the crisis gripping Iraq, where sectarian violence and terrorist killings are causing mass dislocations and stifling development in much of the country.... Ms. Rice has so far refused to appear before the panel. She has argued that her interactions with the president as national-security adviser are off limits to Congress because of the doctrine of executive privilege. She has offered to answer the questions in writing -- which Mr. Waxman dismissed as insufficient. Democratic aides said they will seek a full House vote to find Ms. Rice in contempt of Congress if she fails to testify.' I don't want a confrontation with her, but a subpoena is not a request,' Mr. Waxman said. 'It is an insistence.'"
Fresh Fuel for Iraq Debate
Wall St Journal, 4 May 2007

"We're there because the fact of the matter is that part of the world controls the world supply of oil, and whoever controls the supply of oil, especially if it were a man like Saddam Hussein, with a large army and sophisticated weapons, would have a stranglehold on the American economy and on — indeed on the world economy."
Dick Cheney, US Secretary of Defense 1990
New York Times, 24 February 2006

"There are people in Washington ... who never intend to withdraw military forces from Iraq and they're looking for 10, 20, 50 years in the future ... the reason that we went into Iraq was to establish a permanent military base in the Gulf region, and I have never heard any of our leaders say that they would commit themselves to the Iraqi people that 10 years from now there will be no military bases of the United States in Iraq."
Former President Jimmy Carter, Feb. 3, 2006
San Francisco Chronicle, 30 April 2007

"The United States may want to keep a long-term military presence in Iraq to bolster moderates against extremists in the region and protect oil supplies, the army general overseeing US operations in Iraq has said. While the Bush administration has downplayed prospects for permanent US bases in Iraq, General John Abizaid told a House of Representatives subcommittee on Tuesday he could not rule that out.... Abizaid cited the need to fight al-Qaida and other extremists groups and 'the need to be able to deter ambitions of an expansionistic Iran' as potential reasons to keep some level of troops in the region in the long term.... 'Clearly our long-term vision for a military presence in the region requires a robust counter-terrorist capability,' Abizaid said.... Abizaid also said the United States and its allies have a vital interest in the oil-rich region. 'Ultimately it comes down to the free flow of goods and resources on which the prosperity of our own nation and everybody else in the world depend,' he said.... Representative David Price, a North Carolina Democrat, questioned 'what kind of signal that sends to the American people and to the Iraqis and the region ... if somehow there is ambiguity on our ultimate designs in terms of a military presence in Iraq'".
US 'may want to keep Iraq bases'
Reuters, 15 March 2006

"Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and abuse, said today that documents turned over by the Commerce Department, under court order as a result of Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit concerning the activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force, contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as 2 charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and 'Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.' The documents, which are dated March 2001, are available on the Internet at: www.JudicialWatch.org. ......Judicial Watch has been seeking these documents under FOIA since April 19, 2001. Judicial Watch was forced to file a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Judicial Watch Inc. v. Department of Energy, et al., Civil Action No. 01-0981) when the government failed to comply with the provisions of the FOIA law. U.S. District Court Judge Paul J. Friedman ordered the government to produce the documents on March 5, 2002."
CHENEY ENERGY TASK FORCE DOCUMENTS FEATURE MAP OF IRAQI OILFIELDS
Judicial Watch, 17 July 2003

"There is to be no withdrawal from Iraq, just as there has been no withdrawal from hundreds of places around the world that are outposts of the American empire. As UC San Diego professor emeritus Chalmers Johnson put it, 'One of the reasons we had no exit plan from Iraq is that we didn't intend to leave.'... The United States maintains 737 military bases in 130 countries across the globe. They exist for the purpose of defending the economic interests of the United States, what is euphemistically called 'national security.' In order to secure favorable access to Iraq's vast reserves of light crude, the United States is spending billions on the construction of at least five large permanent military bases throughout that country.... A new Iraq oil law, largely written by the Coalition Provisional Authority, is planned for ratification by June. This law cedes control of Iraq's oil to western powers for 30 years....The attack upon, and subsequent occupation of, Iraq can be seen as a direct result of the 2001 National Energy Policy Development Group (better known as vice president Cheney's energy task force) that was comprised largely of oil and energy company executives. This task force -- the proceedings of which have been kept secret by the administration on the grounds of 'executive privilege' -- recommended that the U.S. government support initiatives in Middle Eastern countries 'to open up areas of their energy sector to foreign investment.' As Antonia Juhasz, an analyst with Oil Change International wrote last month in the New York Times, 'One invasion and a great deal of political engineering by the Bush administration later, this is exactly what the proposed Iraq oil law would achieve.'"
Why there was no exit plan
San Francisco Chronicle, 30 April 2007

"How then will the exploitation of [energy] sources and the competing demand for products be mediated? That is the most urgent question raised by the emerging US posture for dealing with Iraqi oil. This is not a new question, but the most likely answers to it are in the process of taking a sharp turn. The US is setting the tone by making a military force supported move to preempt access to Middle Eastern, Caspian and Central Asian energy sources. At the same time, every major oil-using country is making independent moves to meet its present and future needs, and all of them are showing up in all the same places with a mix of frock-coated diplomats, oil experts, and uniformed standard bearers.  These developments suggest the answers to two long unanswered questions about the energy policy of the George W. Bush administration: Who attended Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force discussions, and what did they talk about? Without too much risk of being wrong, you can now answer both questions. The participants in the group mostly represented the US energy companies that took part in designing the new Iraqi oil law and that are now working on deals in Central Asia. What they discussed was the plan we now see unfolding in Baghdad and in various Caspian and Central Asian capitals. The name of the game is to enhance US and allied control over global energy resources by adding important long-term new sources of oil and gas. That sounds only prudent in a situation where the key resources cannot readily be replaced by substitutes. However, the game presently is being played by zero sum rules. Those rules mean that sooner or later there will be defined winners and losers. But the global economy is moving toward an urgent need for cooperative principles for allocating resources. If the game is played properly, there should only be winners who share the available pool of resources, the marginal consequences of scarcity, and the costs of adjustment. In the present and prospective global economy the free market approach, meaning sales to the highest bidders, is a distortion. Even in a less advanced global system it has led to conflicts, some of them wars. In the nuclear era such wars can be terminal. Cooperative solutions to this problem so far only have been discussed. We need to implement them now."
Terrell E. Arnold - What Cheney Energy Task Force Talked About
EVWorld, 12 April 2007
(Terrel E.Arnold is a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer of the US Department of State whose immediate pre-retirement positions were as Chairman of the Department of International Studies of the National War College and as Deputy Director of the State Office of Counter-Terrorism and Emergency Planning)

"The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq's oil before the  9/11 attacks, sparking a policy battle between neo-cons and Big Oil, BBC's Newsnight has revealed..... Two years ago today - when President George Bush announced US, British and  Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad - protesters claimed the US had a secret plan for Iraq's oil once Saddam had been conquered. In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of 'Big Oil' executives and US State Department 'pragmatists'. 'Big Oil' appears to have won. The latest plan, obtained by Newsnight from the US State Department was, we learned, drafted with the help of American oil industry consultants. Insiders told Newsnight that planning began 'within weeks' of Bush's first taking office in 2001, long before the September 11th attack on the US....The industry-favoured plan was pushed aside by a secret plan, drafted just before the invasion in 2003, which called for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oil fields. The new plan was crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel through massive increases in production above Opec quotas. The sell-off was given the green light in a secret meeting in London headed  by Ahmed Chalabi shortly after the US entered Baghdad, according to Robert Ebel. Mr Ebel, a former Energy and CIA oil analyst, now a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told Newsnight he flew to the London meeting at the request of the State Department.....Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA who took control of Iraq's oil production for the US Government a month after the invasion, stalled the sell-off scheme.... Ariel Cohen, of the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation, told Newsnight that an opportunity had been missed to privatise Iraq's oil fields..... New plans, obtained from the State Department by Newsnight and Harper's Magazine under the US Freedom of Information Act, called for creation of a state-owned oil company favoured by the US oil industry. It was completed in January 2004 under the guidance of Amy Jaffe of the James Baker Institute in Texas. Formerly US Secretary of State, Baker is now an attorney representing Exxon-Mobil and the Saudi Arabian government.... "
Secret US plans for Iraq's oil
BBC News, 17 March 2005

Duh... Hoon Buffoon Didn't Get It

"Britain's defense secretary during the Iraq war says London underestimated Vice President Dick Cheney's influence, adding another voice to the growing view that the U.S.-led coalition failed to plan properly for the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's ouster, a newspaper reported Wednesday.... Hoon said the British side had not comprehended Cheney's influence. Even when Blair and President Bush agreed on some matter, 'sometimes ... the decision actually came out of a completely different place. And you think: What did we miss? I think we missed Cheney,' Hoon was quoted as saying. He did not cite any examples of decisions apparently reversed by Cheney."
Cheney Iraq role reviewed in Britain
Associated Press, 2 May 2007

"Describing the task of dealing with the US administration as a 'multi-dimensional jigsaw puzzle,' Mr Hoon accepted that Britain had greatly underestimated the influence of the neo-con vice-president Mr Cheney and had lacked a comparable figure able to engage him regularly over the war."
Hoon admits fatal errors in planning for postwar Iraq
Guardian, 2 May 2007

"'Blair started talking about getting rid of Saddam Hussein way before September 11 ... in 1998. So I think that on Iraq he was more ready than Bush, who only really came into this conversation after 9/11."
Lady Catherine Meyer, wife of former British US Ambassador, Christopher Meyer
Independent, 20 March 2007

Iraq Is The Most Substantially Undeveloped Conventional Oil Province Left In The World

"The super-giant fields of southeastern Iraq are the largest concentration of super-giants to be found anywhere in the world....unlike neighbor Saudi Arabia, Iraq has been unable to deploy the latest technology, such as 3-D seismic, to find its reserves. Present reserve estimates of Iraq's oil are based on 2-D seismic technology from the 1980s. Still, the estimated success rate in Iraq ranges from one in two in the Mesopotamian Basin to one in four in the western and northwestern stable platform, with the overall success rate exceeding 72 percent - perhaps the highest success rate achievable anywhere in the world. Oil exploration costs are among the cheapest globally, with the current cost estimated at around 50 cents per barrel....To date, petroleum geologists have delineated and mapped over 526 prospects - drilling 131 prospects to discover 73 major fields. They have identified some 239 as having a high degree of certainty, but those prospects remain undrilled. Thirty fields have been partially developed and only 12 fields are actually onstream. Undrilled structures and undeveloped fields could represent the largest untapped hydrocarbon resource anywhere in the world.....Clearly, large parts of Iraq are still virgin - its large hydrocarbon reserves are still waiting to be developed to their full potential, while most other Middle East countries are fully exploiting their reserves. The main challenges facing the new Iraqi authority are to establish law and order as well as security. Once these issues are resolved, Iraq will perhaps be the most exciting place on Earth with regard to oil development and exploration....International oil companies are looking forward with great anticipation to the opening of Iraq, as they have been waiting for the past 40 years. Hopefully, Iraq will soon be able to offer them acreage, thereby allowing proper development of its huge potential. Open and fair competition will enable oil companies to apply the latest technologies in the search for, and development of, the country's hydrocarbon resources - thus helping Iraq realize its full hydrocarbon potential."
Assessing Iraq’s Oil Potential
Geotimes, October 2003

"Iraq's oil reserves are significantly untapped and daily production could be doubled within five years, a report has concluded.... If these reserves were exploited, it said, Iraq could overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's top oil producer. But a major improvement in security and investment was needed, it added.... The IHS survey, which examined Iraq's oil reserves both before and after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, is the most comprehensive conducted since the 2003 invasion. It found that Iraq had known reserves of 116 billion barrels and could be sitting on a further 100 billion barrels.... Current output of two million barrels a day is lower than in early 2003, when three million barrels were being pumped, and almost half that being produced in 1979. However, it said Iraq had the capacity to increase production to four million barrels by 2012 and to further increase that to six million within time. 'Iraq's reserves are clearly phenomenal,' said Ron Mobed, president and chief operating officer of IHS, adding that they represented a 'gold star opportunity'."
Iraqi oil wealth 'going untapped'
BBC Online, 19 April 2007

Washington Has Long Known That An Oil Crunch Is Coming

"Optimists about world oil reserves, such as the Department of Energy, are getting increasingly lonely. The International Energy Agency now says that world production outside the Middle Eastern Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (opec) will peak in 1999 and world production overall will peak between 2010 and 2020. This projection is supported by influential recent articles in Science and Scientific American. Some knowledgeable academic and industry voices put the date that world production will peak even sooner—within the next five or six years. The optimists who project large reserve quantities of over one trillion barrels tend to base their numbers on one of three things: inclusion of heavy oil and tar sands, the exploitation of which will entail huge economic and environmental costs; puffery by opec nations lobbying for higher production quotas within the cartel; or assumptions about new drilling technologies that may accelerate production but are unlikely to expand reserves. Once production peaks, even though exhaustion of world reserves will still be many years away, prices will begin to rise sharply. This trend will be exacerbated by increased demand in the developing world..... The recent report by the President's Committee of Advisers on Science and Technology... concluded  'A plausible argument can be made that the security of the United States is at least as likely to be imperiled in the first half of the next century by the consequences of inadequacies in the energy options available to the world as by inadequacies in the capabilities of U.S. weapons systems.   It is striking that the Federal government spends about 20 times more R&D money on the latter problem than on the former.'... The nearly $70 billion spent annually for imported oil represents about 40 percent of the current U.S. trade deficit.... Research is essential to produce the innovations and technical improvements that will lower the production costs of ethanol and other renewable fuels and let them compete directly with gasoline. At present, the United States is not funding a vigorous program in renewable technologies.... The United States cannot afford to wait for the next energy crisis to marshal its intellectual and industrial resources....Our growing dependence on increasingly scarce Middle Eastern oil is a fool's game—there is no way for the rest of the world to win. Our losses may come suddenly through war, steadily through price increases, agonizingly through developing-nation poverty, relentlessly through climate change—or through all of the above."
Senator Richard G. Lugar and R. James Woolsey (Former Director of the CIA)
The New Petroleum - Foreign Affairs January/February 1999