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Gary Edwards

The Real Reason for the Iraq War | VICE United Kingdom - 1 views

www.vice.com/...asnt-waged-for-oil-greg-palast

Oil Iraq neocons Saudi Banksters Oilsters

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Like most lefty journalists, I assumed that George Bush and Tony Blair invaded Iraq to buy up its oil fields, cheap and at gun-point, and cart off the oil. We thought we knew the neo-cons true casus belli: Blood for oil. But the truth in the Options for Iraqi Oil Industry was worse than "Blood for Oil". Much, much worse.
  • Within days, our chief of investigations, Ms Badpenny, delivered to my shack in the woods outside New York a 323-page, three-volume programme for Iraq's oil crafted by George Bush's State Department and petroleum insiders meeting secretly in Houston, Texas. I cracked open the pile of paper – and I was blown away.
  • I'd already had in my hands a 101-page document, another State Department secret scheme, first uncovered by Wall Street Journal reporter Neil King, that called for the privatisation, the complete sell-off of every single government-owned asset and industry. And in case anyone missed the point, the sales would include every derrick, pipe and barrel of oil, or, as the document put it, "especially the oil". That plan was created by a gaggle of corporate lobbyists and neo-cons working for the Heritage Foundation. In 2004, the plan's authenticity was confirmed by Washington power player Grover Norquist. (It's hard to erase the ill memory of Grover excitedly waving around his soft little hands as he boasted about turning Iraq into a free-market Disneyland, recreating Chile in Mesopotamia, complete with the Pinochet-style dictatorship necessary to lock up the assets – while behind Norquist, Richard Nixon snarled at me from a gargantuan portrait.) The neo-con idea was to break up and sell off Iraq's oil fields, ramp up production, flood the world oil market – and thereby smash OPEC and with it, the political dominance of Saudi Arabia.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • General Jay Garner also confirmed the plan to grab the oil. Indeed, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld fired Garner, when the General, who had lived in Iraq, complained the neo-con grab would set off a civil war. It did. Nevertheless, Rumsfeld replaced Garner with a new American viceroy, Paul Bremer, a partner in Henry Kissinger's firm, to complete the corporate takeover of Iraq's assets – "especially the oil".
  • But that was not to be. While Bremer oversaw the wall-to-wall transfer of Iraqi industries to foreign corporations, he was stopped cold at the edge of the oil fields. How? I knew there was only one man who could swat away the entire neo-con army: James Baker, former Secretary of State, Bush family consiglieri and most important, counsel to Exxon-Mobil Corporation and the House of Saud.
  • There was no way in hell that Baker's clients, from Exxon to Abdullah, were going to let a gaggle of neo-con freaks smash up Iraq's oil industry, break OPEC production quotas, flood the market with six million bbd of Iraqi oil and thereby knock the price of oil back down to $13 a barrel where it was in 1998.
  • Big Oil could not allow Iraq's oil fields to be privatised and taken from state control. That would make it impossible to keep Iraq within OPEC (an avowed goal of the neo-cons) as the state could no longer limit production in accordance with the cartel's quota system. The US oil industry was using its full political mojo to prevent their being handed ownership of Iraq's oil fields. That's right: The oil companies didn't want to own the oil fields – and they sure as hell didn't want the oil. Just the opposite. They wanted to make sure there would be a limit on the amount of oil that would come out of Iraq. Saddam wasn't trying to stop the flow of oil – he was trying to sell more. The price of oil had been boosted 300 percent by sanctions and an embargo cutting Iraq's sales to two million barrels a day from four. With Saddam gone, the only way to keep the damn oil in the ground was to leave it locked up inside the busted state oil company which would remain under OPEC (i.e. Saudi) quotas. The James Baker Institute quickly and secretly started in on drafting the 323-page plan for the State Department. With authority granted from the top (i.e. Dick Cheney), ex-Shell Oil USA CEO Phil Carroll was rushed to Baghdad in May 2003 to take charge of Iraq's oil. He told Bremer, "There will be no privatisation of oil – END OF STATEMENT." Carroll then passed off control of Iraq's oil to Bob McKee of Halliburton, Cheney's old oil-services company, who implemented the Baker "enhance OPEC" option anchored in state ownership.
  • This week, VICE readers can download, for free, Greg Palast's investigation of the war in Iraq in the BBC film, Bush Family Fortunes, at www.GregPalast.com – as well as the illustrated poster of "The Secret History of War over Oil in Iraq" from Palast's international bestseller, Armed Madhouse, also at www.GregPalast.com
  • Some oil could be released, mainly to China, through limited, but lucrative, "production sharing agreements". And that's how George Bush won the war in Iraq. The invasion was not about "blood for oil", but something far more sinister: blood for no oil. War to keep supply tight and send prices skyward. Oil men, whether James Baker or George Bush or Dick Cheney, are not in the business of producing oil. They are in the business of producing profits. And they've succeeded. Iraq, capable of producing six to 12 million barrels of oil a day, still exports well under its old OPEC quota of three million barrels. The result: As we mark the tenth anniversary of the invasion this month, we also mark the fifth year of crude at $100 a barrel. As George Bush could proudly say to James Baker: Mission Accomplished!
  • Paul Merrell on 29 Mar 13
     
    The Sherman Act forbids conspiracies in restraint of trade and is at its zenith in price-fixing cases. This looks to be the mother of all price-fixing cases, to say the least.   
  • Gary Edwards on 30 Mar 13
     
    Wow, Marbux has it right.  This report from the legendary Greg Palast of the BBC News Network is a stunning reversal of what everyone believed to be the truth.  To wit, the militarist and global strategist - resource control hungry neocon contingent of the Repubican party was always thought to be behind the Iraqi war.  For control of cheap, plentiful oil and, the protection / destruction of Israel's enemies.   Funny, but it turns out America was fighting for higher oil prices and limited supplies.  Just as in the first Gulf War, Americans were fighting to protect Saudi and big oil profits. excerpt: Big Oil could not allow Iraq's oil fields to be privatised and taken from state control. That would make it impossible to keep Iraq within OPEC (an avowed goal of the neo-cons) as the state could no longer limit production in accordance with the cartel's quota system. The US oil industry was using its full political mojo to prevent their being handed ownership of Iraq's oil fields. That's right: The oil companies didn't want to own the oil fields - and they sure as hell didn't want the oil. Just the opposite. They wanted to make sure there would be a limit on the amount of oil that would come out of Iraq. Saddam wasn't trying to stop the flow of oil - he was trying to sell more. The price of oil had been boosted 300 percent by sanctions and an embargo cutting Iraq's sales to two million barrels a day from four. With Saddam gone, the only way to keep the damn oil in the ground was to leave it locked up inside the busted state oil company which would remain under OPEC (i.e. Saudi) quotas. The James Baker Institute quickly and secretly started in on drafting the 323-page plan for the State Department. With authority granted from the top (i.e. Dick Cheney), ex-Shell Oil USA CEO Phil Carroll was rushed to Baghdad in May 2003 to take charge of Iraq's oil. He told Bremer, "There will be no privatisation of oil - END OF STATEMENT." Carroll then passed off control
Gary Edwards

Russia Breaking Wall St Oil Price Monopoly | New Eastern Outlook - 0 views

journal-neo.org/...ing-wall-st-oil-price-monopoly

Banksters petro-dollars

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • In the period up until the end of the 1980’s world oil prices were determined largely by real daily supply and demand. It was the province of oil buyers and oil sellers. Then Goldman Sachs decided to buy the small Wall Street commodity brokerage, J. Aron in the 1980’s. They had their eye set on transforming how oil is traded in world markets. It was the advent of “paper oil,” oil traded in futures, contracts independent of delivery of physical crude, easier for the large banks to manipulate based on rumors and derivative market skullduggery, as a handful of Wall Street banks dominated oil futures trades and knew just who held what positions, a convenient insider role that is rarely mentioned inn polite company. It was the beginning of transforming oil trading into a casino where Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP MorganChase and a few other giant Wall Street banks ran the crap tables.First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2016/01/09/russia-breaking-wall-st-oil-price-monopoly/
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Jan 16
     
    "Russia has just taken significant steps that will break the present Wall Street oil price monopoly, at least for a huge part of the world oil market. The move is part of a longer-term strategy of decoupling Russia's economy and especially its very significant export of oil, from the US dollar, today the Achilles Heel of the Russian economy. Later in November the Russian Energy Ministry has announced that it will begin test-trading of a new Russian oil benchmark. While this might sound like small beer to many, it's huge. If successful, and there is no reason why it won't be, the Russian crude oil benchmark futures contract traded on Russian exchanges, will price oil in rubles and no longer in US dollars. It is part of a de-dollarization move that Russia, China and a growing number of other countries have quietly begun. The setting of an oil benchmark price is at the heart of the method used by major Wall Street banks to control world oil prices. Oil is the world's largest commodity in dollar terms. Today, the price of Russian crude oil is referenced to what is called the Brent price. The problem is that the Brent field, along with other major North Sea oil fields is in major decline, meaning that Wall Street can use a vanishing benchmark to leverage control over vastly larger oil volumes. The other problem is that the Brent contract is controlled essentially by Wall Street and the derivatives manipulations of banks like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP MorganChase and Citibank. First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2016/01/09/russia-breaking-wall-st-oil-price-monopoly/"
Paul Merrell

ClubOrlov: Whiplash! - 0 views

cluborlov.blogspot.com/...whiplash.html

oil-market forecast pipelinestan-wars geopolitics

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • Over the course of 2014 the prices the world pays for crude oil have tumbled from over $125 per barrel to around $45 per barrel now, and could easily drop further before heading much higher before collapsing again before spiking again. You get the idea. In the end, the wild whipsawing of the oil market, and the even wilder whipsawing of financial markets, currencies and the rolling bankruptcies of energy companies, then the entities that financed them, then national defaults of the countries that backed these entities, will in due course cause industrial economies to collapse. And without a functioning industrial economy crude oil would be reclassified as toxic waste. But that is still two or three decades off in the future.
  • An additional problem is the very high depletion rate of “fracked” shale oil wells in the US. Currently, the shale oil producers are pumping flat out and setting new production records, but the drilling rate is collapsing fast. Shale oil wells deplete very fast: flow rates go down by half in just a few months, and are negligible after a couple of years. Production can only be maintained through relentless drilling, and that relentless drilling has now stopped. Thus, we have just a few months of glut left. After that, the whole shale oil revolution, which some bobbleheads thought would refashion the US into a new Saudi Arabia, will be over. It won't help that most of the shale oil producers, who speculated wildly on drilling leases, will be going bankrupt, along with exploration and production companies and oil field service companies. The entire economy that popped up in recent years around the shale oil patch in the US, which was responsible for most of the growth in high-paying jobs, will collapse, causing the unemployment rate to spike.
  • The game they are playing is basically a game of chicken. If everybody pumps all the oil they can regardless of the price, then at some point one of two things will happen: shale oil production will collapse, or other producers will run out of money, and their production will collapse. The question is, Which one of these will happen first? The US is betting that the low oil prices will destroy the governments of the three major oil producers that are not under their political and/or military control. These are Venezuela, Iran and, of course, Russia. These are long shots, but, having no other cards to play, the US is desperate. Is Venezuela enough of a prize? Previous attempts at regime change in Venezuela failed; why would this one succeed? Iran has learned to survive in spite of western sanctions, and maintains trade links with China, Russia and quite a few other countries to work around them. In the case of Russia, it is as yet unclear what fruit, if any, western policies against it will bear. For example, if Greece decides to opt out of the European Union in order to get around Russia's retaliatory sanctions against the EU, then it will become entirely unclear who has actually sanctioned whom.
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  • The US is making a desperate attempt to knock over a petro-state or two or three before its shale oil runs out, with the Canadians, their tar sands now unprofitable, hitching a ride on its coat-tails, because if this attempt doesn't work, then it's lights out for the empire. But none of their recent gambits have worked. This is the winter of imperial discontent, and the empire is has been reduced to pulling pathetic little stunts that would be quite funny if they weren't also sinister and sad.
  • But a bunch of deluded people muttering to themselves in a dark corner, while the rest of the world points at them and laughs, does not an empire make. With this level of performance, I would venture to guess that nothing the empire tries from here on will work to its satisfaction.
  • Because it will recover. The fix for low oil prices is... low oil prices. Past some point high-priced producers will naturally stop producing, the excess inventory will get burned up, and the price will recover. Not only will it recover, but it will probably spike, because a country littered with the corpses of bankrupt oil companies is not one that is likely to jump right back into producing lots of oil while, on the other hand, beyond a few uses of fossil fuels that are discretionary, demand is quite inelastic. And an oil price spike will cause another round of demand destruction, because the consumers, devastated by the bankruptcies and the job losses from the collapse of the oil patch, will soon be bankrupted by the higher price. And that will cause the price of oil to collapse again. And so on until the last industrialist dies. His cause of death will be listed as “whiplash”: the “shaken industrialist syndrome,” if you will. Oil prices too high/low in rapid alternation will have caused his neck to snap.
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Jan 15
     
    Dmitry Orlov with a humorous yet inscisient take on the state and future of the oil market. Spoiler: He sees signs of desperation amongst the leaders of the American Empire, reduced to no viable options. 
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Jan 15
     
    "inscisient"? Make that "incisive." Follow reading Orlov's piece by reading Mike Whitney's latest at http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/20/are-plunging-petrodollar-revenues-behind-the-feds-projected-rate-hikes/ A lot of confirmation of what Orlov said in Whitney's article, citing hard numbers. Mass layoffs in the U.S. and Canadian oil industry; the petrodolar has stopped providing liquidity for the dollar; and the Fed plans to raise interest rates to force an influx of dollars from developing nations, in order to replace the petrodollar liquidity crisis. Whitney makes a strong case that it's a plot by the big banksters to steal another huge pile of cash at the expense of a huge number of jobs in the U.S. Both Orlov and Whitney say that it's going to be a very rough ride for the 99 per cent and for the population of developing nations. Indeed, Whitney's numbers say we are already over the precipice on jobs and well into free-fall.
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Jan 15
     
    But last night, Obama had the gall to claim that all is just peachy-k een on the jobs front. As he helps the banksters offshore another huge number of U.S. jobs.
Paul Merrell

Moon of Alabama - 0 views

www.moonofalabama.org

war & peace Syria U.S.-foreign-policy moderate-rebels military-defeat

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Aug 15 - Cached
  • Over the last year the U.S. bombed Jabhat al-Nusra personal and facilities in Syria some five or six times. The al-Qaeda subgroup also has a history of attacking U.S. paid "relative moderate" proxy forces in Syria. The Pentagon recently inserted another U.S. mercenary group into north Syria. This was accompanied by a media campaign in which the administration lauded itself for the operation. The newly inserted group is especially trained and equipped to direct U.S. air attacks like those that earlier hit al-Nusra fighters. Now that freshly inserted group was attacked by Jabhat al-Nusra. Some of its members were killed and others were abducted. The Obama administration is shocked, SHOCKED, ABSOLUTELY SHOCKED that Jabhat al-Nusra would do such a ghastly deed. "Why would they do that?" "Who could have known that they would attack U.S. proxy forces???"
  • There is no longer an Jihadist ISIS or ISIL in Syria and Iraq. The people leading that entity declared (pdf) today, at the highly symbolic beginning of Ramadan, themselves to be a new caliphate:
  • Could someone explain to the fucking dimwits in the Pentagon and the Obama administrations that people everywhere, and especially terrorists group, hate it when you bomb them and kill their leaders? That those people you bomb might want to take revenge against you and your proxies? That people you bombed will not like your targeting team moving in next door to them? That alQaeda is not an "ally"? These people are too pathetically clueless to even be embarrassed about it. The accumulated intelligence quotient of the administration and Pentagon officials running the anti-Syria operation must be below three digits. But aside from their lack of basic intelligence the utter lack of simple "street smarts" is the real problem here. These people have no idea how life works outside of their beltway cages.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • On more thought from me on why the dimwits did not foresee that Nusra would attack. The White House insisted on calling a part of Nusra the "Khorasan group" and explained that it was only bombing this groups of alQaeda veterans now part of Nusra because the "Khorasan group" planning to hit in "western" countries. No expert nor anyone on the ground in Syria thought that this differentiation was meaningful. Nusra is alQaeda and so are all of its members. But the White House and Pentagon probably thought that Nusra would accept the artificial separation they themselves had made up. That Nusra would understand that it is seen as an "ally" and only the "Khorasan group" is seen as an enemy. If that was the line of thinking, and the situation seems to point to that, then these people have fallen for their own propaganda stunt. They probably believed that the "Khorasan group" was an accepted narrative because they were telling that tale to themselves. Poor idiots.
  • UPDATE: The one sane guy at the Council of Foreign relations, Micah Zenko, foresaw this debacle and wrote on March 2: [The U.S. trained mercenaries] will immediately be an attractive target for attacks by the Islamic State, Assad’s ground and air forces, and perhaps Nusra and other forces. Killing or taking prisoner fighters (or the families of those fighters) who were trained by the U.S. military will offer propaganda value, as well as leverage, to bargain for those prisoners’ release. He compared the whole operation to the 1961 CIA invasion of Cuba: Last September, the White House and Congress agreed to authorize and fund a train-and-equip project similar to the Bay of Pigs, but this time in the Middle East, without any discussion about phase two. The Syrian project resembles 1961 in two ways: What happens when the fighting starts is undecided, and the intended strategic objective is wholly implausible.
  • The attack on Friday was mounted by the Nusra Front, which is affiliated with Al Qaeda. It came a day after the Nusra Front captured two leaders and at least six fighters of Division 30, which supplied the first trainees to graduate from the Pentagon’s anti-Islamic State training program. In Washington, several current and former senior administration officials acknowledged that the attack and the abductions by the Nusra Front took American officials by surprise and amounted to a significant intelligence failure. While American military trainers had gone to great lengths to protect the initial group of trainees from attacks by Islamic State or Syrian Army forces, they did not anticipate an assault from the Nusra Front. In fact, officials said on Friday, they expected the Nusra Front to welcome Division 30 as an ally in its fight against the Islamic State....A senior Defense Department official acknowledged that the threat to the trainees and their Syrian recruiters had been misjudged, and said that officials were trying to understand why the Nusra Front had turned on the trainees. Like other Obama administration operations this one did not fail because of "intelligence failure" but because an utter lack of common sense.
  • U.S. media can no agree with itself if Russia is giving ISIS an airforce or if Russia pounds ISIS with the biggest bomber raid in decades. Such confusion occurs when propaganda fantasies collide with the observable reality. To bridge such divide requires some fudging. So when the U.S. claims to act against the finances of the Islamic State while not doing much, the U.S Public Broadcasting Service has to use footage of Russian airstrikes against the Islamic State while reporting claimed U.S. airstrike successes. The U.S. military recently claimed to have hit Islamic State oil tankers in Syria. This only after Putin embarrassed Obama at the G-20 meeting in Turkey. Putin showed satellite pictures of ridiculous long tanker lines waiting for days and weeks to load oil from the Islamic State without any U.S. interference.
  • The U.S. then claimed to have hit 116 oil tankers while the Russian air force claims to have hit 500. But there is an important difference between these claims. The Russians provided videos showing how their airstrikes hit at least two different very large oil tanker assemblies with hundreds of tankers in each. They also provided video of several hits on oil storage sites and refinery infrastructure. I have found no video of U.S. hits on Islamic State oil tanker assemblies. The U.S. PBS NewsHour did not find any either. In their TV report yesterday about Islamic State financing and the claimed U.S. hits on oil trucks they used the videos Russia provided without revealing the source. You can see the Russian videos played within an interview with a U.S. military spokesperson at 2:22 min.
  • The U.S. military spokesperson speaks on camera about U.S. airforce hits against the Islamic State. The video cuts to footage taken by Russian airplanes hitting oil tanks and then trucks. The voice-over while showing the Russian video with the Russians blowing up trucks says: "For the first time the U.S. is attacking oil delivery trucks." The video then cuts back to the U.S. military spokesperson. At no point is the Russian campaign mentioned or the source of the footage revealed. Any average viewer of the PBS report will assume that the black and white explosions of oil trucks and tanks are from of U.S. airstrikes filmed by U.S. air force planes. The U.S. military itself admitted that its strikes on IS oil infrastructure over the last year were "minimally effective". One wonders then how effective the claimed strike against 116 trucks really was. But unless we have U.S. video of such strikes and not copies of Russian strike video fraudulently passed off as U.S. strikes we will not know if those strikes happened at all.
  • The wannabe Sultan Erdogan did not get his will in Syria where he had planned to capture and annex Aleppo. The Russians prevented that. He now goes for his secondary target, Mosul in Iraq, which many Turks see as historic part of their country
  • Mosul, Iraq's second biggest city with about a million inhabitants, is currently occupied by the Islamic State. On Friday a column of some 1,200 Turkish soldiers with some 20 tanks and heavy artillery moved into a camp near Mosul. The camp was one of four small training areas where Turkey was training Kurds and some Sunni-Arab Iraqis to fight the Islamic State. The small camps in the northern Kurdish area have been there since the 1990s. They were first established to fight the PKK. Later their Turkish presence was justified as ceasefire monitors after an agreement ended the inner Kurdish war between the KDP forces loyal to the Barzani clan and the PUK forces of the Talabani clan. The bases were actually used to monitor movement of the PKK forces which fight for Kurdish independence in Turkey. The base near Mosul is new and it was claimed to be just a small weapons training base. But tanks and artillery have a very different quality than some basic AK-47 training. Turkey says it will increase the numbers in these camps to over 2000 soldiers.
  • Should Mosul be cleared of the Islamic State the Turkish heavy weapons will make it possible for Turkey to claim the city unless the Iraqi government will use all its power to fight that claim. Should the city stay in the hands of the Islamic State Turkey will make a deal with it and act as its protector. It will benefit from the oil around Mosul which will be transferred through north Iraq to Turkey and from there sold on the world markets. In short: This is an effort to seize Iraq's northern oil fields. That is the plan but it is a risky one. Turkey did not ask for permission to invade Iraq and did not inform the Iraqi government. The Turks claim that they were invited by the Kurds: Turkey will have a permanent military base in the Bashiqa region of Mosul as the Turkish forces in the region training the Peshmerga forces have been reinforced, Hürriyet reported. The deal regarding the base was signed between Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani and Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioğlu, during the latter’s visit to northern Iraq on Nov. 4. There are two problems with this. First: Massoud Barzani is no longer president of the KRG. His mandate ran out and the parliament refused to prolong it. Second: Mosul and its Bashiqa area are not part of the KRG. Barzani making a deal about it is like him making a deal about Paris.
  • The Iraqi government and all major Iraqi parties see the Turkish invasion as a hostile act against their country. Abadi demanded the immediate withdrawal of the Turkish forces but it is unlikely that Turkey will act on that. Some Iraqi politicians have called for the immediate dispatch of the Iraqi air force to bomb the Turks near Mosul. That would probably the best solution right now but the U.S. installed Premier Abadi is too timid to go for such strikes. The thinking in Baghdad is that Turkey can be kicked out after the Islamic State is defeated. But this thinking gives Turkey only more reason to keep the Islamic State alive and use it for its own purpose. The cancer should be routed now as it is still small. Barzani's Kurdistan is so broke that is has even confiscated foreign bank accounts to pay some bills. That may be the reason why Barzani agreed to the deal now. But the roots run deeper. Barzani is illegally selling oil that belongs to the Iraqi government to Turkey. The Barzani family occupies  not only the presidential office in the KRG but also the prime minister position and the local secret services. It is running the oil business and gets a big share of everything else. On the Turkish side the oil deal is handled within the family of President Erdogan. His son in law, now energy minister, had the exclusive right to transport the Kurdish oil through Turkey. Erdogan's son controls the shipping company that transports the oil over sea to the customer, most often Israel. The oil under the control of the Islamic State in Iraq passes the exactly same route. These are businesses that generate hundreds of millions per year.
  • It is unlikely that U.S., if it is not behinds Turkey new escapade, will do anything about it. The best Iraq could do now is to ask the Russians for their active military support. The Turks insisted on their sovereignty when they ambushed a Russian jet that brushed its border but had no intend of harming Turkey. Iraq should likewise insist on its sovereignty, ask Russia for help and immediately kick the Turks out. The longer it waits the bigger the risk that Turkey will eventually own Mosul.
  • Another fake news item currently circling is that Trump has given order to the military to create safe zones for Syria. The reality is still far from it: [H]is administration crafted a draft order that would direct the Pentagon and the State Department to submit plans for the safe zones within 90 days. The order hasn't yet been issued. The draft of the order, which will be endlessly revised, says that safe zones could be in Syria or in neighboring countries. The Pentagon has always argued against such zones in Syria and the plans it will submit, should such an order be issued at all, will reflect that. The safe zones in Syria ain't gonna happen
  • Paul Merrell on 03 Aug 15
     
    So the first group of U.S. trained "moderate" Syrian opposition fighters are an epic fail. Who'd of thunk? 
Gary Edwards

Interview with Harold Hamm: How North Dakota Became Saudi Arabia - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...4226204576602524023932438.html

Harold-Hamm Oil-Natural-Gas Energy Obammunism Jackboot-Obammunism watermelons

shared by Gary Edwards on 01 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 01 Oct 11
     
    A USA Oil and Natural Gas revolution - WSBJ Stephen Moore interview Harold Hamm of Continental Resources.  Hamm recounts his discussion with the watermelon in chief, Obama. (Green on the outside and red on the inside).  Seems Obama really believes his green energy will totally replace oil and natural gas within the next five years.  What an idiot. excerpt: Harold Hamm, the Oklahoma-based founder and CEO of Continental Resources, the 14th-largest oil company in America, is a man who thinks big. He came to Washington last month to spread a needed message of economic optimism: With the right set of national energy policies, the United States could be "completely energy independent by the end of the decade. We can be the Saudi Arabia of oil and natural gas in the 21st century." "President Obama is riding the wrong horse on energy," he adds. We can't come anywhere near the scale of energy production to achieve energy independence by pouring tax dollars into "green energy" sources like wind and solar, he argues. It has to come from oil and gas. You'd expect an oilman to make the "drill, baby, drill" pitch. But since 2005 America truly has been in the midst of a revolution in oil and natural gas, which is the nation's fastest-growing manufacturing sector. No one is more responsible for that resurgence than Mr. Hamm. He was the original discoverer of the gigantic and prolific Bakken oil fields of Montana and North Dakota that have already helped move the U.S. into third place among world oil producers. How much oil does Bakken have? The official estimate of the U.S. Geological Survey a few years ago was between four and five billion barrels. Mr. Hamm disagrees: "No way. We estimate that the entire field, fully developed, in Bakken is 24 billion barrels."
Paul Merrell

Yellowstone Oil Spills Expose Threat to Pipelines Under Rivers Nationwide | Inside Clim... - 0 views

insideclimatenews.org/...elines-under-rivers-nationwide

environment pipeline-river-crossings pipelinestan

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • At the time the Poplar pipeline ruptured, about 110 feet of it was completely uncovered along the bottom of the Yellowstone River, exposing it to damage.
  • Bridger Pipeline LLC was so sure its Poplar oil line was safely buried below the Yellowstone River that it planned to wait five years to recheck it. But last month, 3.5 years later, the Poplar wasn't eight feet under the river anymore. It was substantially exposed on the river bottom—and leaking more than 30,000 gallons of oil upstream from Glendive, Montana. An ExxonMobil pipeline wasn't buried deeply enough for the Yellowstone River, either. High floodwaters in 2011 uncovered the Silvertip pipe, leaving it defenseless against the fast-moving current and traveling debris. It broke apart in July, and sent 63,000 gallons of oil into the river near Laurel, Montana.
  • Both companies underestimated the river's power and its penchant for scouring away the earth that's covering and protecting their pipelines. That miscalculation led to the Exxon Silvertip spill and it's likely to be declared a significant factor, at a minimum, in the Poplar spill. Such misjudgments have potentially troubling implications nationwide, since pipelines carrying crude oil and petroleum products pass beneath rivers and other bodies of water in more than 18,000 places across America. Many of them are buried only a few feet below the water. "There were a lot of people who wanted to think that the last pipeline spill in the Yellowstone River in 2011 was a freak accident that would never happen again. After this most recent spill, no one believes that anymore," said Scott Bosse, Northern Rockies director for American Rivers. "The truth is, there are probably hundreds of pipelines across the country that are at considerable risk of rupturing under our rivers."
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • While corrosion is the No. 1 cause of pipeline spills, a sizable number of pipelines at water crossings have ruptured or been endangered by river scour. Among them: ► The Poplar (Jan. 2015) and Silvertip (July 2011) pipeline failures on the Yellowstone River. ► More than 20 pipeline river crossings in Montana were found to be "dangerously close to exposure" during inspections of nearly 90 pipeline crossings in 2011, according to one report. Many of them have since been reburied significantly deeper. The Poplar pipeline was not among the crossings tagged as being close to exposure. ► Nearly half of the 55 oil and gas pipelines that cross the Missouri River were found to have sections buried 10 feet or less below the riverbed, according to the Wall Street Journal. A study by the U.S. Geological Survey, meanwhile, found that the Missouri riverbed had deepened by nine to 41 feet in 27 places because of severe scouring during the 2011 floods. ► An Enterprise Products Partners LLP pipeline that was uncovered by river scouring and ruptured in August 2011. The line spilled more than 28,350 gallons of a gasoline additive into the Missouri River in Iowa. ► A June 2012 spill in Alberta, Canada, where an oil pipeline owned by Plains Midstream Canada failed along the Red Deer River and released more than 122,000 gallons of light crude. Investigators concluded that the pipe was uncovered by scour during high flood waters and subjected to vibrations from the river flow that led a weld to fail.
  • Three Enbridge Corp. crude oil pipelines crossing Minnesota's Tamarac River were exposed by floodwater erosion years ago, and were still exposed in mid-2014. None of the pipes had failed at that point, but one was being propped up by steel legs, according to an MPR News account. Federal regulations aren't much help. The only rule that addresses pipe burial at major river crossings requires petroleum pipelines to be laid at least four feet below the riverbed at the time of construction. Once a pipeline's installed, there are no requirements regarding burial depth. There is no rule requiring exposed pipelines to be reburied, though a spill under those conditions would invite regulatory penalties for leaving the line exposed to hazards. What's more, federal rules put the pipeline companies in charge of identifying all threats that could cause a spill in highly populated or environmentally sensitive areas, and the companies get wide latitude in deciding what to do about them, according to Rebecca Craven, program manager at the Pipeline Safety Trust, a nonprofit group that tracks pipeline risks and regulations.
  • Indeed, the required four-foot minimum initial burial depth for pipelines can be completely eliminated by natural erosion over time or by a single flood event. Active free-flowing rivers can carve with enough ferocity to lower their riverbeds by 20 feet or shift the waterway onto an entirely new path, which can add new stresses to the pipeline or put the river over pipe that has less cover or lacks reinforcement or protective cement casings. The hotly debated Keystone XL oil pipeline project would cross nearly 2,000 rivers, streams and reservoirs in Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska, according to one estimate. The route takes the pipe across the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers, where owner TransCanada has pledged to install the pipeline 35 feet below the riverbeds.
  • See Also: Ruptured Yellowstone Oil Pipeline Was Built With Faulty Welding in 1950sIce Hinders Cleanup of Yellowstone Oil Pipeline SpillExxon Overlooked, Masked Safety Threats in Years Before Pegasus Pipeline BurstDilbit in Exxon's Pegasus May Have Contributed to Pipeline's Rupture
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Feb 15
     
    One of the hidden costs of oil dependence. 
Paul Merrell

US Warplanes Avoid Bombing ISIS Held Syrian Oil Fields | Global Research - Centre for R... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5488678

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Syria ISIL oilfields

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • They provide a key source of ISIS income, millions of dollars through an illegal pipeline to Turkey where it’s sold, according to Turkish journalist Alptekin Dursunoglu, Sputnik News reported. America’s bombing campaign avoided striking ISIS-held Syrian oil fields so far. “This fact really makes (me) wonder, given that one of the steps of Obama’s plan to fight ISIL was the destruction of sources of the Islamic State’s income,” Dursunoglu noted. Drone and satellite spotted tanker trucks carrying ISIS oil are allowed to cross into Turkey freely. Did US tactics change? If so, why? According to The New York Times, US warplanes are attacking “oil fields that the Islamic State controls in eastern Syria…” Claiming it’s to “disrupt one of the terrorist group’s main sources of revenue,” according to unnamed US officials is rubbish. If Washington wanted this revenue source cut off, bombing the oil fields would have begun last year, disrupting them enough to halt production. So why now and why not the essential distribution network, the pipeline used and openly visible tanker trucks?
  • Weeks earlier, US warplanes attacked the Aleppo province 1,000 megawatt power plant and separate transformer complex, knocking out electricity for around 2.5 million residents – killing plant personnel and other civilians, not ISIS fighters, the terror attack ignored by US media scoundrels. Another power station and distribution transformer east of Aleppo was struck days earlier. Vladmir Putin commented, saying:  US warplanes “bombed out an electrical power plant and a transformer in Aleppo. Why have they done this? Whom have they punished there? What’s the point? Nobody knows.”  Infrastructure is targeted and destroyed as part of Washington’s strategy in all wars – systematically turning nations to rubble, harming noncombatant civilians most.  Attacking ISIS held Syrian oil fields now appears part of a plan to prevent their use by Damascus if its army regains control. They’ve been protected to provide income for America’s proxy terrorist foot soldiers.  Washington wants Assad deprived of an important revenue source. If his forces recapture ISIS held oil fields and facilities, they’ll likely find them turned to rubble.
  • The New York Times didn’t explain – saying nothing about Washington letting ISIS produce and transport Syrian oil freely so far, ignoring why tactics now may have changed, maintaining the fiction about America waging war on terrorism instead of informing readers about reality on the ground.  Amply documented, Washington created ISIS and similar groups, using them strategically as proxy foot soldiers.
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Nov 15
     
    Russia has made the U.S. failure to attack the ISIL oil pipeline to Turkey an issue in the Vienna peace talks. 
Paul Merrell

One Map That Explains the Dangerous Saudi-Iranian Conflict - 0 views

theintercept.com/...ngerous-saudi-iranian-conflict

war & peace Saudis Shia Sunni oil pipelinestan-wars

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia executed Shiite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr on Saturday. Hours later, Iranian protestors set fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran. On Sunday, the Saudi government, which considers itself the guardian of Sunni Islam, cut diplomatic ties with Iran, which is a Shiite Muslim theocracy. To explain what’s going on, the New York Times provided a primer on the difference between Sunni and Shiite Islam, informing us that “a schism emerged after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632” — i.e., 1,383 years ago. But to the degree that the current crisis has anything to do with religion, it’s much less about whether Abu Bakr or Ali was Muhammad’s rightful successor and much more about who’s going to control something more concrete right now: oil.
  • In fact, much of the conflict can be explained by a fascinating map created by M.R. Izady, a cartographer and adjunct master professor at the U.S. Air Force Special Operations School/Joint Special Operations University in Florida. What the map shows is that, due to a peculiar correlation of religious history and anaerobic decomposition of plankton, almost all the Persian Gulf’s fossil fuels are located underneath Shiites. This is true even in Sunni Saudi Arabia, where the major oil fields are in the Eastern Province, which has a majority Shiite population. As a result, one of the Saudi royal family’s deepest fears is that one day Saudi Shiites will secede, with their oil, and ally with Shiite Iran.
  • This fear has only grown since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq overturned Saddam Hussein’s minority Sunni regime, and empowered the pro-Iranian Shiite majority. Nimr himself said in 2009 that Saudi Shiites would call for secession if the Saudi government didn’t improve its treatment of them.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • As Izady’s map so strikingly demonstrates, essentially all of the Saudi oil wealth is located in a small sliver of its territory whose occupants are predominantly Shiite. (Nimr, for instance, lived in Awamiyya, in the heart of the Saudi oil region just northwest of Bahrain.) If this section of eastern Saudi Arabia were to break away, the Saudi royals would just be some broke 80-year-olds with nothing left but a lot of beard dye and Viagra prescriptions. Nimr’s execution can be partly explained by the Saudis’ desperation to stamp out any sign of independent thinking among the country’s Shiites. The same tension explains why Saudi Arabia helped Bahrain, an oil-rich, majority-Shiite country ruled by a Sunni monarchy, crush its version of the Arab Spring in 2011. Similar calculations were behind George H.W. Bush’s decision to stand by while Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons in 1991 to put down an insurrection by Iraqi Shiites at the end of the Gulf War. As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman explained at the time, Saddam had “held Iraq together, much to the satisfaction of the American allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia.”
  • Of course, it’s too simple to say that everything happening between Saudis and Iranians can be traced back to oil. Disdain and even hate for Shiites seem to be part of the DNA of Saudi Arabia’s peculiarly sectarian and belligerent version of Islam. In 1802, 136 years before oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia, the ideological predecessors to the modern Saudi state sacked Karbala, a city now in present-day Iraq and holy to Shiites. The attackers massacred thousands and plundered the tomb of Husayn ibn Ali, one of the most important figures in Shiite Islam. Without fossil fuels, however, this sectarianism toward Shiites would likely be less intense today. And it would definitely be less well-financed. Winston Churchill once described Iran’s oil – which the U.K. was busy stealing at the time — as “a prize from fairyland far beyond our brightest hopes.” Churchill was right, but didn’t realize that this was the kind of fairytale whose treasures carry a terrible curse.
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Jan 16
     
    A very interesting map, indeed. It explains a lot the situation in the Mideast. And if Pepe Escobar is right about the U.S. moving to reduce its dependency on Saudi oil with a corresponding tilt toward Iran, the map tells a lot about why the U.S. would do so. But to make it work, I can't see the U.S. pulling it off unless a deal is cut with Iran for it to step into the Saudi's shoes in maintaining the petrodollar, i.e., Iran would have to insist on being paid in U.S. dollars for all of its oil and gas. Was a side deal made to that effect during the negotiations over Iran's nuclear energy development program? If so, that's bad news for the Saudis and for its new ally, the right-wing government of Israel, which has ambitions to be dominant military *and* economic power in the Mideast and to extend its borders from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in Iraq and east across the Arabian Peninsula. But what Israel cannot bring to the table is large oil and gas reserves. Iran can.  
Paul Merrell

OPEC, Russia and the New World Order Emerging | New Eastern Outlook - 0 views

m.journal-neo.org/...rging-new-world-order-emerging

economic-warfare OPEC NWO must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • By the day it’s becoming clearer that what I have recently been saying in my writings is coming to be. The OPEC oil-producing states of the Middle East, including Iran, through the skillful mediation of Russia, are carefully laying the foundations for a truly new world order. The first step in testing this will be if they collectively succeed in eliminating the threat to Syria of the Islamic State, and prepare the basis for serious, non-manipulated elections there.
  • In the political, more accurately geo-political sphere, we are now witnessing huge tectonic motion, and destructive it is not. It involves a new attractive force drawing the Middle East OPEC countries, including Saudi Arabia and Iran and other Arab OPEC countries, into what will soon become obvious as a strategic partnership with the Russian Federation. It transcends the huge religious divides today between Sunni Wahhabism, Sufi, Shi’ism, Orthodox Christianity. That tectonic motion will soon cause a political earthquake that well might save the planet from extinction by the endless wars the Pentagon and their string pullers on Wall Street and the military industrial complex and the loveless oligarchs who own them seem to have as their only strategy today.
  • In an interview with the London Financial Times, Russia’s most important oilman, Igor Sechin, CEO of the state-owned Rosneft, confirmed rumors that Saudi Arabia’s monarchy is seeking a formal market-share agreement with Russia, even going so far as offering Russia membership in OPEC, to stabilize world oil markets. In the interview, Sechin, considered one of President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies, confirmed the Saudi offer. The Financial Times (FT) is an influential media owned until this past July by the Pearson Group an asset tied to the Rothschild family who historically also dominate Royal Dutch Shell. The London paper chose to emphasize Sechin’s rejection of the Saudi offer. However, most instructive is to read between the lines of what he said. He told a Singapore commodities conference organized by the FT, “It needs to be recognised that Opec’s ‘golden age’ in the oil market has been lost. They fail to observe their own quotas [for Opec oil output]. If quotas had been observed, global oil markets would have been rebalanced by now.”
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  • Sechin well knows the background to the Saudi oil price war and the fact it was triggered by a meeting between US State Department’s John Kerry and the late Saudi King Abdullah in the desert Kingdom in September 2014, where Kerry reportedly urged the Saudis to crash oil prices. For Kerry the aim was to put unbearable pressure on Russia, then hit by US and EU financial sanctions. For the Saudis, it was a golden opportunity to eliminate the biggest disturbing factor in the OPEC domination of world oil markets–the booming production of US unconventional shale oil that had made the USA the world’s largest oil producer in 2014. Ironically, as Sechin told the FT, the US-Saudi deal and the US financial sanctions have backfired on the US strategists. The Russian ruble lost more than 50% of its dollar value by January 2015. Oil prices similarly fell from $103 a barrel in September 2014 to less than $50 today. But Russian oil production costs are calculated in rubles, not dollars. So, as Sechin states, the dollar cost of Rosneft oil production has dropped dramatically today from $5 a barrel before the sanctions to only $3 a barrel, a level similar to that of Arab OPEC producers like Saudi Arabia. Rosneft is not hurting despite sanctions. USA shale oil by contrast is unconventional and vastly more costly. Industry estimates depending on the shale field and the company, put costs of shale in a range of $60-80 a barrel just to break even. The current ongoing shakeout in the US shale industry and prospects of rising US interest rates dictate the demise of shale oil from the US for years if not decades to come as Wall Street lenders and shale company junk bond investors suffer huge losses.
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Sep 15
     
    A must-read.
Paul Merrell

US Marines Enter Ground Combat in Iraq to Defend Oil Fields -- News from Antiwar.com - 0 views

news.antiwar.com/...t-in-iraq-to-defend-oil-fields

war & peace Iraq boots-on-the-ground oil-fields mission-creep

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Even as Pentagon officials have sought to emphasize their claims of ISIS being “on the run,” ever more US ground troops are being deployed into Iraq to try to cope with ISIS offensives, with the battle of Makhmur leading to the introduction of US Marines in front-line combat roles.
  • Officials are trying to downplay the operation as “force protection” for Iraqi ground troops, who have been massing in the area in an effort to ultimately launch an attack on the ISIS-held city of Mosul, not far away. The explanation is unsatisfying for several reasons, but primarily because this “tactical assembly area” already includes thousands of Iraqi troops and Kurdish Peshmerga, and these are the same troops who are supposed to attack Mosul. Yet these troops are apparently unable to even hold Makhmur, let alone advance toward Mosul. The Makhmur District is also a key to holding oil fields around Kirkuk, and the ISIS offensive is seen by many analysts as part of an effort to ultimately regain control over those lucrative oil fields, and have been “outgunning” the thousands of Iraqi troops in the area. Whether they’re trying to save Iraqi ground troops who still can’t stand up to ISIS, or save oil fields, however, the latest escalation puts US troops even further in harm’s way, and has put the war even further afield from the “no boots on the ground” affair initially promised by the Obama Administration.
Paul Merrell

Israel: Gas, Oil and Trouble in the Levant | Global Research - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5362955

war & peace pipelinestan Israel Syria Lebanon Palestine negotiations zionists Biden

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Israel is set to become a major exporter of gas and some oil, if all goes to plan. The giant Leviathan natural gas field, in the eastern Mediterranean, discovered in December 2010, is widely described as “off the coast of Israel.”
  • Coupled with Tamar field, in the same location, discovered in 2009, the prospects are for an energy bonanza for Israel, for Houston, Texas based Noble Energy and partners Delek Drilling, Avner Oil Exploration and Ratio Oil Exploration.
  • However, even these estimates may prove modest. In their: “Assessment of Undiscovered Oil and Gas Resources of the Levant Basin Province, Eastern Mediterranean”, the US Department of the Interior’s US Geological Survey, wrote in 2010: “We estimated a mean of 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil and a mean of 122 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas in this province using a geology based assessment methodology.”
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  • Whilst Israel claims them as her very own treasure trove, only a fraction of the sea’s wealth lies in Israel’s bailiwick as maps (iv, v, see below) clearly show. Much is still unexplored, but currently Palestine’s Gaza and the West Bank between them show the greatest discoveries, with anything found in Lebanon and Syria’s territorial waters sure to involve claims from both countries.
  • In a pre-emptive move, on Christmas Day, Syria announced a deal with Russia to explore 2,190 kilometres (850 Sq. miles) for oil and gas off its Mediterranean coast, to be: “… financed by Russia, and should oil and gas be discovered in commercial quantities, Moscow will recover the exploration costs.” Syrian Oil Minister, Ali Abbas said during the signing ceremony that the contract covers “25 years, over several phases.”
  • The agreement is reported to have resulted from “months of long negotiations” between the two countries. Russia, as one of the Syrian government’s main backers, looks set to also become a major player in the Levant Basin’s energy wealth. (vi) Lebanon disputes Israel’s map of the Israeli-Lebanese maritime border, filing their own map and claims with the UN in 2010. Israel claims Lebanon is in the process of granting oil and gas exploration licenses in what Israel claims as its “exclusive economic zone.” That the US in the guise of Vice President Joe Biden, as honest broker, acting peace negotiator in the maritime border dispute would be laughable, were it not potential for Israel to attack their neighbour again. In a visit to Israel in March 2010, Biden announced: “There is absolutely no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel’s security- none at all”, also announcing on arrival in Israel:”It’s good to be home.” Given US decades of  “peace brokering” between Israel and Palestine, this is already a road of pitfalls, one sidedness and duplicity, well traveled. There is trouble ahead.
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Dec 13
     
    More evidence that oil and gas natural resources play a role in Mideast politics and wars. And Joe Biden's "It's good to be home" remark on arrival in Israel adds further evidence that the U.S. is not an honest negotiator/mediator when it comes to Israel/Palestine and the Syrian peace process. It's actually pretty outrageous that a U.S. Vice  President would stoop so low as to call Israel his "home." It's indicative of divided loyalty at best.
Paul Merrell

Russia's Gazprom Neft to Sell Oil for Rubles, Yuan | Business | RIA Novosti - 0 views

en.ria.ru/...-Sell-Oil-For-Rubles-Yuan.html

BRICS Russia EU oil rubles yuan Gazprom-Neft de-dollarization U.S.-foreign-policy sanctions

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • MOSCOW, August 27 (RIA Novosti) - The Russian oil company Gazprom Neft has agreed to export 80,000 tons of oil from Novoportovskoye field in the Arctic; it will accept payment in rubles, and will also deliver oil via the Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline (ESPO), accepting payment in Chinese yuan for the transfers, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported Wednesday. The Russian government and several of the country’s largest exporters have widely discussed the possibility of accepting payments in rubles for oil exports. Last week, Russia began to ship oil from the Novoportovskoye field to Europe by sea. Two oil tankers are expected to arrive in Europe in September. According to Kommersant, the payment for these shipments will be received in rubles.
  • Gazprom Neft will not only accept payments in rubles; subsequent transfers via the ESPO may be paid for in yuan, the newspaper reported. According to the newspaper, the change in currency was made because of the Western sanctions against Russia.
  • Gazprom Neft gained control over the Novoportovskoye field in 2012. The field’s recoverable reserves exceed 230 million tons of oil and 270 billion cubic meters of gas. It is located in the Arctic and is part of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District.
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Aug 14
     
    Russia allegedly has oil buyers in Europe willing to pay in rubles or yuan. That can't make the Obama team happy. Look for the U.S. to move to shut off that option.
Paul Merrell

Venezuela and Russia Reach $14 Billion Oil and Gas Deal | venezuelanalysis.com - 0 views

venezuelanalysis.com/11400

war & peace economic-warfare Russia Venezuela oil-gas-development

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 May 15 - No Cached
  • Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro concluded an agreement with Russia's state-owned Rosneft that will see an additional $14 billion in investment in the South American country's oil and gas industry over the coming years.    The move was announced by the socialist leader on Wednesday following a meeting he convened between the president of Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA, Eulogio de Pino, and Rosneft president Igor Sechin.    "We had a great meeting and agreed on investment of over $14 billion,” declared Maduro in a television address from Miraflores palace.    The new investment will reportedly go towards further developing Venezuela's Orinoco Belt in the country's northeast, which is home to some of the worlds largest reserves of crude oil and already contains 250 oil fields. PDVSA aims to double Venezuela's oil output to 6 million barrels a day by 2019, four million of which are to come from the Orinoco Belt. 
  • Speaking from the 9th meeting of the High Level Intergovernmental Commission in Moscow, Venezuelan foreign minister Delcy Rodriguez expressed her solidarity with Russia, affirming that both Venezuela and Russia "have become victims of unconventional war".    "We are convinced that we share the same idea about what is occuring on the global level. Just as the Soviets did their best to overcome the Nazis, today Russia is battling with all its strength to navigate a new geopolitical power structure that permits it to reduce the hegemony and expansionism of imperialism."
  • Paul Merrell on 30 May 15
     
    Interesting. Are China, Russia, and Venezuela getting positioned to drive down the price of oil produced by the Gulf Coast States that is only sold for U.S. dollars? China has already invested mightily in Venezuela's oil and gas infrastructure. Note that it's unlikely that Russia and Venezuela could pull off such a move without heavy subsidies from China. (This deal is seemingly against Russia's interests in its revenue from its own gas and oil.) 
Paul Merrell

Farsnews - 0 views

en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx

war & peace Syria Turkey Erdogan-resignation Russia ISIL oil-smuggling

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova said following independent reports in support of Moscow's intel and evidence on the Turkish scandal of oil trade with the ISIL Takfiri terrorist groups, it's now President Erdogan's turn to act on his words and resign.Addressing a weekly press briefing in Moscow on Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that her country's information about smuggling of ISIL oil in Turkey has been confirmed by other sources now. "For instance, Danish newspaper Klassenkampen has published report on Turkish participation in oil smuggling, which has been prepared by consulting company Rystad Energy," she said. The Spokesperson stressed that Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan had stated earlier that he would step down if ISIL oil smuggling would be confirmed, but Russia has presented evidence on Turkish partnership in the smuggling, implying that it's now Erdogan's turn. "I would like to remind you that not too long ago, Turkish President announced his readiness to resign if it is proven that oil deliveries by Ankara or with the help of the government of Ankara from the terrorist group [are taking place], that ‘if this fact is proven, I’ll leave this chair,’ Erdogan told journalists on the sidelines of the climate summit in Paris. I’d like to understand: What’s up with that chair?" the Russian FM spokeswoman underlined.
  • "Russia is implementing all measures in countering oil smuggling by the ISIL and hopes that other countries will join in cooperating with Moscow," Zakharova said. "As you know, and we’ve said this constantly, Russia is implementing measures in order to stop and close the paths of oil deliveries by terrorists. We hope for active actual cooperation with other countries towards goals," she added. Earlier, the Russian defense ministry announced that Erdogan and his family members are directly involved in illegal oil deliveries from ISIL oil fields in Syria. Turkey’s leadership, including president Erdogan and his family, is involved in illegal oil trade with ISIL militants, the Russian Defense Ministry had said, stressing that Turkey is the final destination for oil smuggled from Syria and Iraq. Satellite and drone images showed hundreds and hundreds of oil trucks moving from ISIL-held territory to Turkey to reach their destination at Turkish refineries and ports controlled by Turkish president's family.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Dec 15
     
    As articles begin to break into U.S. mainstream media about Turkey's interactions with ISIL and al-Nusrah, Erdogan hasn't heard the last call for his resignation. Alternative media are helpfully cataloging Erdogan's sins. See e.g., http://journal-neo.org/2015/12/24/turkey-a-criminal-state-a-nato-state/
Paul Merrell

Free Syrian Army to Sputnik: We Have Proof of Turkey's Oil Deals With Daesh - 0 views

sputniknews.com/...turkey-oil-daesh-proof.html

war & peace Turkey ISIL oil-smuggling Free-Syrian-Army

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Major-General Hosam Al-Awak of the Intelligence Service at the Free Syrian Army has confirmed to Sputnik Arabic that they have the proof of crude oil purchases by Turkey from Daesh (also known as ISIL/ISIS) in Syria and Iraq.Major-General Hosam Al-Awak has confirmed to Sputnik Arabic that the Free Syrian Army (FSA) has photos of the oil deals and contracts signed by a Turkish party to buy oil from Daesh (also known as ISIL/ISIS) terror organization, which controls large areas in Syria and Iraq.
  • “Since the very start of the Syrian crisis in 2011, Turkey has been supporting the Islamists (extremists) and terrorists in Syria in every possible way against moderate groups,” he added. “We have photos of the contracts of oil deals signed between the Turkish party and Daesh… We also have photos of [buying] vehicles – Toyota cars bought by Qatar, which have the name of “al-ghanem” – [which] entered Syria along with armored vehicles used by militants of Daesh for their leaders’ transportation.”
  • “We noticed that extremist Islamic factions gain support from Turkey before the emergence of “Daesh”…. This support reached them through Qorsayah Mountain, near to Bawabet as-Salam on the Turkish-Syrian borders.” The Major-General also explained that the Turkish intelligence service used these deals (signed with the extremist parties) for other purposes – it obtained facilities from those parties, so that they “could steal factories and laboratories in Aleppo for the benefit of the Turkish companies.” Hosam Al-Awak noted that the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria was supervising these organizations and coordinating with them, in order to put an end to the Free Syrian Army and other moderate groups. The Major-General stressed that his groups held the Head of the Turkish Intelligence Hakan Baydan accountable [for the deals] and added that they showed the evidence to their friends in the region and in the world, however, President Erdogan of Turkey insists on supporting extremism, Islamist parties and terror organizations in the region.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • “We believe that Russia is the rational party in the world. In terms of the Syrian cause, Russians could cooperate better with all moderate parties and factions, including the Free Syrian Army.” The officer said that he believes that the Russian intervention into Syria could achieve better results and promised to “maintain Russian interests in Syria in the future.” This is only the latest evidence to come to light of Ankara's oil contacts with the jihadist group, which have been vehemently denied by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan even vowed to leave office if any proof is provided that Turkey has been buying oil from the terrorist group. His comments, in turn, came in response to President Putin's remarks that Moscow has evidence that the Su-24 was shot down by Turkey to protect Daesh oil deliveries, and that oil from the fields it controls is being exported to Turkey on an industrial scale.
Paul Merrell

U.S. expands secret facility in Iraq - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - 0 views

www.post-gazette.com/...201407120083

war & peace Iraq Kurds CIA

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • IRBIL, Iraq — A supposedly secret but locally well-known CIA station on the outskirts of Irbil’s airport is undergoing rapid expansion as the United States considers whether to engage in a war against Islamist militants who have seized control of half of Iraq in the past month. Western contractors hired to expand the facility and a local intelligence official confirmed the construction project, which is visible from the main highway linking Irbil to Mosul, the city whose fall June 9 triggered the Islamic State’s sweep through northern and central Iraq. Residents around the airport say they can hear daily what they suspect are U.S. drones taking off and landing at the facility. Expansion of the facility comes as it seems all but certain that the autonomous Kurdish regional government and the central government in Baghdad, never easy partners, are headed for an irrevocable split — complicating any U.S. military hopes of coordinating the two entities’ efforts against the Islamic State.
  • Overnight, Kurdish troops seized oil fields operated by Iraq’s Northern Oil Co., whose exports had been controlled by the central government, “These two are among the main wells producing oil in Iraq,” said Assam Jihad, the Oil Ministry spokesman. “They are the spine of Iraq’s oil wealth and produce 400,000 barrels a day.” Oil industry publications said they had produced a little less than half that in recent months, but nonetheless represent a significant share of Iraq’s oil production. In 2012, Iraq produced on average of 3 million barrels of oil per day, according to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. “Half of this production goes to the local market, and the other half goes for export,” said Mr. Jihad, criticizing the Kurds’ seizure of the field as a “constitutional breach” and “violation of Iraq’s sovereignty.”
  • The developments all come as the United States, which has said it won’t come to Iraq’s assistance unless Mr. Maliki takes steps to make his government more inclusive, is expected to announce early next week its assessment of the military situation in the country. Pentagon officials said the assessment might be made public as soon as Monday. But U.S. officials have known for some time that it was likely that they would need to coordinate any steps taken in Baghdad and in Irbil, where the peshmerga has worked closely over the years with the CIA, U.S. special forces and the Joint Special Operations Command, the military’s most secretive task force, which has become a bulwark of counterterrorism operations. Peshmerga forces already are manning checkpoints and bunkers to protect the facility, which sits just a few hundred yards from the highway.
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  • Other contractors who deal extensively with moving heavy equipment through Irbil’s airport, which has supported a rapidly expanding oil and gas drilling industry, said they were aware of the expansion. One British oil executive said he’d detected a “low-key but steady stream of men, equipment and supplies for an obvious expansion of the facility.” The local Kurdish intelligence official described what was taking place as a “long-term relationship with the Americans.” In a statement July 3, U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced that Irbil would host such a center, in addition to one being set up in Baghdad, and suggested that it had already begun operating. “We have personnel on the ground in Irbil, where our second joint operations center has achieved initial operating capability,” he said then.
  • “It’s no secret that the American special forces and CIA have a close relationship with the peshmerga,” said the Kurdish official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because he was discussing covert military operations. He added that the facility had operated even “after the Americans were forced out of Iraq by Maliki,” a reference to the 2011 U.S. troop withdrawal after the Obama administration and the Iraqi government couldn’t agree on a framework for U.S. forces remaining in the country. The official refused to directly identify the location of the facility but when he was shown the blurred-out location on an online satellite-mapping service he joked, “The peshmerga do not have the influence to make Google blur an area on these maps. I will leave the rest to your conclusions.”
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Jul 14
     
    Two CIA drone bases in Iraq; what could be wrong with that? Remember that CIA staff and contractors, being civilians, aren't included in the head count of American boots on the ground. And the CIA is rather notorious these days for operating drones that kill, not the observation drones that the Pentagon said it would be flying over Iraq.  Smells like Obama has decided to run a hot war in Iraq, at least of the covert variety. 
Paul Merrell

Asia Times Online :: The Caliph fit to join OPEC - 0 views

www.atimes.com/...MID-01-311014.html

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy ISIL Turkey Saudis Qatar Syria Iraq pipelinestan

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Islamic State leader Caliph Ibrahim - aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi - never ceases to amaze us - and most of all his powerful petrodollar-stuffed backers. The Caliph is for all practical purposes now an oil major worth of membership of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). His takfiri/mercenary goons - in theory - have for some time been extracting, refining, shipping and/or smuggling and clinching juicy deals involving vast quantities of oil, reaping profits of roughly US$2 million a day. The Caliph's oil prices are to die (be beheaded?) for; after all, he's implementing the same low-price strategy concocted by the people he wants to dethrone in Mecca, the House of Saud. The <a href='http://asianmedia.com/GAAN/www/delivery/ck.php?n=a9473bc7&cb=%n' target='_blank'><img src='http://asianmedia.com/GAAN/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=36&cb=%n&n=a9473bc7&ct0=%c' border='0' alt='' ></a> caliphate's GDP across "Syraq" has only one way to go: up. And oh, the irony Top customers for The Caliph's cheap oil happen to be "Sultan" Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Earthly paradise, aka Turkey - a North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally - and that King "Playstation" Abdullah II ibn al-Hussein's domain impersonating a country, aka Jordan.
  • Meanwhile, the awesome, immensely sophisticated military apparatus/intel agency acronym fest deployed by "free" US/NATO somehow is simply unable to register/intercept this racket. Not surprising, when they somehow had not previously registered/intercepted The Caliph's goons taking over large swaths of "Syraq" this summer with their cross-desert version of rolling thunder - that gleaming white Toyota promo ad. As for the Empire of Chaos "solution" to intercept The Caliph's oil profits, the only decision so far has been to bomb oil pipelines that belong to the Syrian Arab Republic, that is, ultimately, the Syrian people. Never underestimate the capacity of US President Barack Obama's "Don't Do Stupid Stuff" foreign policy doctrine to soar towards unreachable stupidity heights.
  • Yo sheikh, talk to the hand Then there's that fateful Secretary of State John Kerry/House of Saud capo hand-kissing fest that took place in Riyadh last month. In this masterful piece, William Engdahl goes no-holds-barred on the supposed Saudi-US cheap oil/bomb Bashar al-Assad/undermine Russia deal. Yet there may not have been a direct deal; more like Washington and Riyadh working in tandem towards common objectives: regime change in Syria in the long term, and undermining both Iran and Russia in the short term. As for that crucial Pipelineistan gambit central to the Syrian riddle - a gas pipeline running from Qatar to regime-changed Syria, instead of Iran-Iraq-Syria - that's not exactly a Saudi, but a rival Qatari priority.
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  • What Kerry did give was the Master's Voice seal of approval to the Saudi strategy of low oil prices, thinking short-term about US oil consumers at the pump, and medium-term on putting pressure on the revenues of both Iran and Russia. Yet he obviously played down the blow to the US shale gas industry. The Saudis, for their part, have other key considerations, not least how to recover their market share across Asia - where their biggest customers are located. They are losing market share because of discounted crude sold by both Iran and Iraq. Thus, both must be "punished", on top of the House of Saud's pathological aversion to all things Shi'ite. As for the big picture in Syria, Obama's capo for dealing with The Caliph, General John Allen, laid down the law to Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awasat. He said, "[T]here is not going to be a military solution here [in Syria]". And he also said, "The intent is not to create a field force to liberate Damascus."
  • Short translation: those old goons of the previously "winning against Assad" Free Syrian Army (FSA) are now six feet under. And the new FSA goons to be trained in - of all places - Saudi Arabia are not exactly being regarded as holy saviors. For all practical purposes, the medium-term scenario spells out more US bombing (of infrastructure belonging to the Syrian nation); no regime change in Damascus; and The Caliph steadily consolidating his wins. And finally, the Hollywood factor Imagine if shabby "historical" al-Qaeda had these ultra-slick PR skills. Bearded has-beens with old Kalashnikovs in Afghan caves is so passe. The Caliph not only smuggles tens of thousands of barrels of oil a day undetected, but he also deploys a British hostage turned foreign correspondent (and who may have converted to the Salafi version of Islam) reporting from a hollowed out Kobani about to be totally captured by a bunch of takfiris and mercenaries (they certainly are not mujahideen).
  • Meanwhile, on the ground, only now has Ankara allowed roughly 200 peshmergas from Iraqi Kurdistan - whose slippery leaders do business with Turkey - to cross the border to, in theory, help Kobani. No soldiers, weapons or supplies are allowed for the Kurdish PKK/PYD forces which have been actually defending Kobani all along. Sultan Erdogan's endless procrastination will be judged by any independent investigation as the key element in allowing the possible fall of Kobani. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu once again has laid down the "conditions" for his country to help with the - so far spectacularly innocuous - US campaign against The Caliph; the possible liberators of Kobani must only be Iraqi peshmergas, and remaining FSA goons, not "terrorists" (as in PKK/PYD). In the end, Kobani - precisely on the border between southeast Anatolia and northern Syria - is highly strategic. The situation on the ground is dire. There may be a little over 1,000 residents left, barricaded in their houses. Protecting them, a little over 2,000 Syrian Kurd fighters, including the female Ishtar brigade. Only 200 peshmergas coming from Iraqi Kurdistan are not going to make a huge difference against a few thousand heavily weaponized caliph goons deploying as many as 20 tanks. It does not look good, even though, unlike in the Caliph-approved Brit hostage report, the fake "mujahideen" are not in total control.
  • The Caliph, anyway, is bound to remain on a roll. Absolutely none of the above would be remotely possible without US/Western overt/covert complicity, proving once and for all that The Caliph is the ultimate gift that keeps on giving in the eternal GWOT (Global War On Terra). How come the Dick Cheney regime never thought about that?
Paul Merrell

U.S. Embassy in Ankara Headquarter for ISIS War on Iraq - Hariri Insider | nsnbc intern... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...sis-war-on-iraq-hariri-insider

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy ISIL Syria ISIL-Iraq-invasion

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • The green light for the use of ISIS brigades to carve up Iraq, widen the Syria conflict into a greater Middle East war and to throw Iran off-balance was given behind closed doors at the Atlantic Council meeting in Turkey, in November 2013, told a source close to Saudi – Lebanese billionaire Saad Hariri, adding that the U.S. Embassy in Ankara is the operation’s headquarter.
  • A “trusted source” close to the Saudi – Lebanese multi-billionaire and former Lebanese P.M. Saad Hariri told on condition of anonymity, that the final green light for the war on Iraq with ISIS or ISIL brigades was given behind closed doors, at the sidelines of the Atlantic Council’s Energy Summit in Istanbul, Turkey, on November 22 – 23, 2013. The Atlantic Council is one of the most influential U.S. think tanks with regard to U.S. and NATO foreign policy and geopolitics.
  • “Had Baghdad been more cooperative about the Syrian oil fields at Deir-Ez-Zor in early 2013 and about autonomy for the North [Iraq’s northern, predominantly Kurdish region] they would possibly not have turned against al-Maliki; Or he would have been given more time”, said the Hariri insider during the almost two-hour-long conversation.
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  • In March 2013, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry demanded that Iraq “stops the arms flow to Syria”, while U.S. weapons were flowing to ISIS via Saudi Arabia into Iraq and Jordan. On Monday, April 22, 2013, 27 of the 28 E.U. foreign ministers agreed to lift the ban on the import of Syrian oil from opposition-held territories to allow the “opposition” to finance part of its campaign. “ISIS that was supposed to control [the region around] Deir Ez-Zor. [Turkish Energy Minister Taner] Yildiz and [Kurdish] Energy Minister Ashti] Hawrami were to make sure the oil could flow via the Kirkuk – Ceyhan [pipeline];… Ankara put al-Maliki under a lot of pressure about the Kurdish autonomy and oil, too much pressure, too early, if you’d ask me”, the source said. He added that the pressure backfired.
  • Previous reports confirmed that Baghdad started intercepting weapons and insurgents along the Saudi – Iraqi border, cutting off important supply lines for ISIS brigades around Deir Ez-Zor, and that Al-Maliki began complaining about a Saudi – Qatari-backed attempt to subvert the Iraqi State since late 2012. Noting my remark he replied: “That is right, but the heavy increase in attacks came in May – June 2013, after al-Maliki ordered the military to al-Anbar “. A previous article in nsnbc explains how Baghdad’s blockade caused problems in Jordan, because many of the transports of weapons, fighters and munitions had to be rerouted via Jordan. The Hariri insider added that the oil fields should have been under ISIS control by August 2013, but that the plan failed for two reasons. The UK withdrew its support for the bombing of Syria. That in turn enabled the Syrian army to dislodge both ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusrah from Deir Ez-Zor in August.
  • “The situation was a disaster because in June Hariri, Yidiz, Hawrami, Scowcroft, and everybody was ready to talk about how to share the oil between the U.S., Turkey and E.U.. The Summit in November should have dealt with a fait accompli”, the Hariri source stressed, adding that Washington put a gun to al-Maliki’s head when he was invited to the White House.
  • “Certain circles in Washington put a hell of a lot of pressure on Obama to put a gun to al-Maliki’s head”, said the Hariri source, adding that “time was running out and Obama was hesitant”. Asked what he meant with “time was running out” and if he could specify who it was that pushed Obama, he said: “Barzani was losing his grip in the North (Kurdish Iraq); the election [in September] was a setback. All plans for distributing Iraqi oil via Turkey and for sidelining Baghdad were set between Kirkuk and Ankara in early November… “Who exactly pressured Obama? I don’t know who delivered the message to Obama. I suspect Kerry had a word. It’s more important from where the message came, Kissinger, Scowcroft, Nuland and the Keagan clan, Stavridis, Petreaus, Riccardione, and the neo-con crowd at the [Atlantic] Council. … As far as I know ´someone` told Obama that he’d better pressure al-Maliki to go along with Kurdish autonomy by November or else. Who exactly ´advised` Obama is not as important as the fact that those people let him know that they would go ahead, with, or without him”.
  • Asked whether he knew details, how the final green light for the ISIS campaign was given, he said: ” Behind closed doors, in the presence of both Scowcroft, Hariri, and a couple of other people”. To my question “if he could be more specific” he replied “I could; I want to stay alive you know; Riccardione was tasked with the operation that day”. Noting that a prominent member of Saudi Arabia’s royal family, Prince Abdul Rachman al-Faisal has been named as the one being “in command” of the ISIS brigades, and if he could either confirm or deny, he nodded, adding that “the Prince” is responsible for financing the operation and for part of the command structure, but that the operations headquarter is the U.S. Embassy in Ankara Turkey. “As far as I know, nothing moves without Ambassador Riccardione”, he added.
  • The green light for the use of ISIS brigades to carve up Iraq, widen the Syria conflict into a greater Middle East war and to throw Iran off-balance was given behind closed doors at the Atlantic Council meeting in Turkey, in November 2013, told a source close to Saudi – Lebanese billionaire Saad Hariri, adding that the U.S. Embassy in Ankara is the operation’s headquarter.
  • Paul Merrell on 23 Feb 15
     
    From June 2014, an important one I forgot to bookmark before. 
Paul Merrell

M of A - Erdogan Moves To Annexes Mosul - 0 views

www.moonofalabama.org/...an-moves-to-annexes-mosul.html

war & peace Turkey Iraq invasion Mosul

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • The wannabe Sultan Erdogan did not get his will in Syria where he had planned to capture and annex Aleppo. The Russians prevented that. He now goes for his secondary target, Mosul in Iraq, which many Turks see as historic part of their country
  • Mosul, Iraq's second biggest city with about a million inhabitants, is currently occupied by the Islamic State. On Friday a column of some 1,200 Turkish soldiers with some 20 tanks and heavy artillery moved into a camp near Mosul. The camp was one of four small training areas where Turkey was training Kurds and some Sunni-Arab Iraqis to fight the Islamic State. The small camps in the northern Kurdish area have been there since the 1990s. They were first established to fight the PKK. Later their Turkish presence was justified as ceasefire monitors after an agreement ended the inner Kurdish war between the KDP forces loyal to the Barzani clan and the PUK forces of the Talabani clan. The bases were actually used to monitor movement of the PKK forces which fight for Kurdish independence in Turkey. The base near Mosul is new and it was claimed to be just a small weapons training base. But tanks and artillery have a very different quality than some basic AK-47 training. Turkey says it will increase the numbers in these camps to over 2000 soldiers.
  • Should Mosul be cleared of the Islamic State the Turkish heavy weapons will make it possible for Turkey to claim the city unless the Iraqi government will use all its power to fight that claim. Should the city stay in the hands of the Islamic State Turkey will make a deal with it and act as its protector. It will benefit from the oil around Mosul which will be transferred through north Iraq to Turkey and from there sold on the world markets. In short: This is an effort to seize Iraq's northern oil fields. That is the plan but it is a risky one. Turkey did not ask for permission to invade Iraq and did not inform the Iraqi government. The Turks claim that they were invited by the Kurds: Turkey will have a permanent military base in the Bashiqa region of Mosul as the Turkish forces in the region training the Peshmerga forces have been reinforced, Hürriyet reported. The deal regarding the base was signed between Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani and Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioğlu, during the latter’s visit to northern Iraq on Nov. 4.
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  • There are two problems with this. First: Massoud Barzani is no longer president of the KRG. His mandate ran out and the parliament refused to prolong it. Second: Mosul and its Bashiqa area are not part of the KRG. Barzani making a deal about it is like him making a deal about Paris. The Iraqi government and all major Iraqi parties see the Turkish invasion as a hostile act against their country. Abadi demanded the immediate withdrawal of the Turkish forces but it is unlikely that Turkey will act on that. Some Iraqi politicians have called for the immediate dispatch of the Iraqi air force to bomb the Turks near Mosul. That would probably the best solution right now but the U.S. installed Premier Abadi is too timid to go for such strikes. The thinking in Baghdad is that Turkey can be kicked out after the Islamic State is defeated. But this thinking gives Turkey only more reason to keep the Islamic State alive and use it for its own purpose. The cancer should be routed now as it is still small. Barzani's Kurdistan is so broke that is has even confiscated foreign bank accounts to pay some bills. That may be the reason why Barzani agreed to the deal now. But the roots run deeper. Barzani is illegally selling oil that belongs to the Iraqi government to Turkey. The Barzani family occupies  not only the presidential office in the KRG but also the prime minister position and the local secret services. It is running the oil business and gets a big share of everything else. On the Turkish side the oil deal is handled within the family of President Erdogan. His son in law, now energy minister, had the exclusive right to transport the Kurdish oil through Turkey. Erdogan's son controls the shipping company that transports the oil over sea to the customer, most often Israel. The oil under the control of the Islamic State in Iraq passes the exactly same route. These are businesses that generate hundreds of millions per year.
  • It is unlikely that U.S., if it is not behinds Turkey new escapade, will do anything about it. The best Iraq could do now is to ask the Russians for their active military support. The Turks insisted on their sovereignty when they ambushed a Russian jet that brushed its border but had no intend of harming Turkey. Iraq should likewise insist on its sovereignty, ask Russia for help and immediately kick the Turks out. The longer it waits the bigger the risk that Turkey will eventually own Mosul.
Paul Merrell

Russia may accept Chinese control of oil and gas fields | Economy | Worldbulletin News - 0 views

www.worldbulletin.net/...-control-of-oil-and-gas-fields

economy Russia China oil-field-investments

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • ussia may consider allowing Chinese investors more than 50 percent stakes in its strategic oil and gas fields, an official said on Friday, an about-face by Moscow that underlines its need for foreign help to develop energy reserves. While closely guarding control of the oil and gas fields that supply the lifeblood of its economy, Russia has forged alliances with some Western companies to obtain the know-how it needs to tap hard-to-reach deposits. But now that Western sanctions over Moscow's role in Ukraine have all but halted that cooperation, Russia has overcome a "psychological barrier" and is ready to deepen its economic ties with China, Deputy Prime MinisterArkady Dvorkovich said. "We have a strategic partnership with China and now decisions are made much faster than before. In particular, we have a gas contract, a second one will be signed soon. Now we know China better: their motives and intentions are understood," he told a conference in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk. "There used to be a psychological barrier. Now it doesn't exist any more. We are interested in maximum investments in new industries. China is an obvious investor for us."
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