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The new 'Great Game' being played out over oil
(Lutz C Kleveman, The Independent, 31 March 2003)
"No blood for oil" was a common slogan at the recent anti-war demos around the globe. Yet few people have an idea of just how momentous a strategic struggle is being waged behind the rhetoric of weapons inspections and human rights. What is at stake is nothing less than who controls the earth's remaining energy reserves. . . . This new "Great Game" (a modern variant of the imperial rivalry between Great Britain and Tsarist Russia in 19th-century Central Asia) is about to enter a crucial stage. . . . The new Great Game is being played out not only in the Middle East but also in other energy-rich regions such as West Africa and the Caspian Sea. There, too, the scramble for petrol reserves and pipeline routes is producing bloody conflicts. . . . Iraq, however, has become the linchpin in a US strategy to secure cheap oil while breaking the clout of the Arab-dominated oil cartel Opec. . . . With the help of $20bn (£13bn) of investment in new and existing facilities, Iraqi oil output could soar within a few years to seven million barrels a day. That would be roughly a 10th of global consumption. Abundant supply would lead to a price drop, which is just what lagging Western economies need. Last September George Bush's former economic adviser Larry Lindsey put the war aim bluntly when he said: "When there is a regime change in Iraq, you could add three to five million barrels of production to world supply [per day]. The successful prosecution of the war would be good for the economy." . . . Since the 1973 oil crisis, Opec has used oil as a pawn to gain leverage over the West. In an effort to decrease its dependency on the sheikhs, the US has sought for years to "diversify its oil supplies". . . . As long as the US needs Saudi oil and co-operation in a war against Iraq, officials in Washington proclaim their interest in maintaining good relations with Riyadh. However, a growing number of influential politicians is openly suggesting taking the war on terror to Saudi Arabia and occupying its oilfields. . . . Oil corporations are currently jockeying for the best deals in a post-Saddam Iraq. So, do the US war plans aim merely to open up Iraq for lucrative investments by US oil companies? Prima facie, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence for this view: the close connections between the Bush administration and big oil are well documented, for example. . . . It is not difficult to imagine that a regime installed in Baghdad by US forces would favour US firms in the allotment of drilling concessions. This blatant favouritism worries BP, which pioneered the discovery of petrol in Iraq in the early 20th century . . . Russian oil companies, likewise, have a lot to lose in Iraq. . . . As long as there is no end in sight to the age of fossil fuels, and the industrialised world's dependency on Middle Eastern oil continues to grow unabated, conflicts are likely to break out which are essentially about securing the earth's remaining energy reserves. . . . Political leaders would be well advised, therefore, to dilute our nefarious dependence on petrol through the promotion of renewable energy technologies. The task of protecting the climate against the greenhouse effect urgently requires these steps anyway. The events in Iraq and around the Caspian Sea demonstrate how a truly new energy policy – irrespective of its obvious ecological advantages – would also be a foresighted security policy.

posted by Lorenzo 10:18 AM