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Baker Creating J Street Challenge for Jeb - Commentary Magazine Commentary Magazine - 0 views

www.commentarymagazine.com/...enge-for-jeb-bush-israel-obama war & peace Auction 2016 Jeb-Bush neocons Baker
shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The announcement that former Secretary of State James Baker was one of the advisors to Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign created a minor stir a few weeks ago. As our Michael Rubin noted at the time, Baker’s long record of hostility to Israel and consistent backing for engagement with rogue regimes ought to make him radioactive for a candidate seeking to brand himself as a supporter of the Jewish state and a critic of the Obama administration’s foreign policy. But Baker’s status as a faithful family retainer for the Bush family might have given Jeb a pass, especially since, as Michael wrote, another far wiser former secretary of state — George P. Schultz — is considered to be Jeb’s top foreign policy advisor. But the news that Baker will serve as a keynote speaker at the upcoming annual conference of the left-wing J Street lobby ought to change the conversation about this topic. Coming as it does hard on the heels of the president’s open threats to isolate Israel, having someone so closely associated with his campaign serve in that role at an event dedicated to support for Obama’s hostile attitude toward Israel obligates Jeb to not let this happen without saying or doing something to disassociate himself from Baker.
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Mar 15
     
    The neocons are howling about former Reagan Secretary of State James Baker being one of Jeb Bush's advisors. Baker has never been forgiven by the neocons since he barred the Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister -- Benjamin Netanyahu -- from being allowed into the State Dept. building because of his outrageous public statements. Now Baker is doubly hated because he is scheduled to be a keynote.  speaker at a conference of the liberal pro-Israel J Street lobbying group. J Street is "left-leaning" in neocon eyes because it actully supports a 2-state solution in Palestine, rather than using the 2-state solution as a political fig leaf while Israel completes its colonization of Palestine and then annexes it. But while screaming that only AIPAC represents Israel's real interests and acknowledging that Baker is closely tied to the Bush family, they're not addressing the political reality that Baker is the global oil industry's top lobbyist nor the fact that it was Baker who put the kibosh on the neocons' goal of privatizing all the oil in Iraq and flooding the market with cheap oil to break the OPEC Cartel. The western oil companies are profoundly against privately owned oil in the Mideast and even less enthused about breaking the OPEC Cartel, which normally keep crude oil prices high, enabling higher oil company profits. Apparently the oil industry also wants the 2-state solution to actually happen in order to obtain a more stable Middle East. And that is anathema to Netanyahu, AIPAC, and the neocons..   
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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.  
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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.
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Oil surges 8 percent as U.S. rig count plunges, shorts scramble - Yahoo Finance - 0 views

finance.yahoo.com/...-output-remains-022950324.html economic-warfare oil-bubble
shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • EW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices roared back from six-year lows on Friday, rocketing more than 8 percent as a record weekly decline in U.S. Oil drilling fueled a frenzy of short-covering. In a rally that may spur speculation that a seven-month price collapse has ended, global benchmark Brent crude shot up to more than $53 per barrel, its highest in more than three weeks in its biggest one-day gain since 2009. The late-session surge was primed by Baker Hughes data showing the number of rigs drilling for Oil in the United States fell by 94 - or 7 percent - this week. Earlier gains were fueled by reports of Islamic State militants striking at Kurdish forces southwest of the Oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
  • Poised for a bounce many thought was overdue, short traders raced to cover their positions on fears that the rout, sparked by massive U.S. shale crude supplies, was nearing its end. "The rig count drop was a lot more than people expected and it really got the market going," said Phil Flynn, analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago. According to Baker Hughes, the decline in oil drilling rigs was the most since it began keeping records in 1987. With drillers having idled about 24 percent of their oil drilling rigs since the summer, some traders may be betting that an anticipated slowdown in U.S. oil production is nearer than expected.
  • Some are not convinced that the sell-off in oil is over. The rout began in June when Brent peaked at over $115 a barrel and accelerated in November after OPEC refused to cut its production. "There was a lot of short-covering before the month end from people wanting to take profit from the $40-odd lows, so it's not surprising that we rallied," said Tariq Zahir, managing member at Tyche Capital Advisors in Laurel Hollow in New York. But it will take a while for production to respond to lower drilling. "This doesn't change the fundamental outlook in oil. We are still about 2 million barrels oversupplied." Production from OPEC, or the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, rose in January to 30.37 million barrels per day (bpd), a Reuters poll showed, a sign that key members of the group were resolute about defending their market share. A Reuters poll shows oil prices may post only a mild recovery in the second half of the year, with prices still averaging less in 2015 than during the global financial crisis. (oilPOLL) Joseph Posillico, senior vice president of energy futures at Jefferies in New York, also warned of a short-term, short-covering rally that could be quickly reversed. "This is just the market being the market and we could give these all back in the next few sessions."
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Feb 15
     
    More indication that the economic oil bubble is bursting. 
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Iraq joins Iran in opposing U.S.-led military strike in Syria - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...3-8685-5021e0c41964_story.html war & peace Syria Iraq Iran WMD
shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Iran won Iraqi support for its efforts to oppose a U.S.-led military strike on Syria during a visit to Baghdad on Sunday by the new Iranian foreign minister, highlighting how close the two countries have grown since U.S. forces withdrew in 2011. Speaking during his first visit abroad since he was appointed last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javed Zarif warned that U.S. intervention in Syria risks igniting a regionwide war.
  • “Those who are short-sighted and are beating the drums of war are starting a fire that will burn everyone,” Zarif said during a news conference.Standing alongside him, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said all of Syria’s neighbors, including Iraq, would be harmed by American involvement in Syria’s two-year-old conflict. “What I can say conclusively is that Iraq will not be a base for any attack, nor will it facilitate any such attack on Syria,” Zebari told reporters after holding talks with Zarif.
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Sep 13
     
    This would be funny if the consequences of war were not so horrible. Viewing the situation through a very big telescope from Mars, we begin with the Neocons and Zionist Israelis hijacking the U.S. military to invade and conquer Iraq, and thereby break the OPEC oil monopoly by pumping more oil from Iraq and selling  oil cheap on the market. But Big oil, recognizing the threat to its profits if oil supply is increased and the prices depressed, hires James Baker, chief of White House staff under Reagan and Bush I. Baker has a short meeting with Bush Jr. and the Neocon/Zionist Israeli dream of breaking OPEC and restoring cheap oil is abruptly terminated. The Iraq War is no longer about changes in the oil supply and prices. But  the Neocons in the Bush II administration are stuck with the war they started. They waffle and delay, with the theater of Saddam Hussein's capature and execution, until Barack Obama comes into office, push for a "surge" to save the war effort, then when that fails reluctantly collaborate in U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Their efforts to maintain a covert military presence hiding under the cover of the world's largest U.S. Embassy comes to a screeching halt when the new Iraqi government they had installed refuses to immunize U.S. soldiers and citizens from criminal prosecution. The U.S. exits Iraq. Now the Iraq government that the Neocon/Israeli Zionists installed aligns itself with Iraq and Syria against the U.S. military strikes on Syria that Israel wants. Iraq and Syria had been the two major remaining obstacles to Israeli hegemony and empire in the Mideast.   Then the Neocons/Israeli Zionists changed Iraq from a secular state to a Shia Muslim state with a for-all-pracitical-purposes-independent Kurdish state in the north. Now suddenly, those two major obstacles become three, as Iraq moves farther from the U.S. and closer toward Shia Iran and secular Syria, because of a sequence of events the Neocon/Israeli Zionists had set in motion ag
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OPEC Unlikely to Cut Oil Production, Venezuela's PDVSA Predicts "Difficult Times Ahead"... - 0 views

venezuelanalysis.com/11043 war & peace oil OPEC Russia Venezuela
shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • negotiations with Mexico, Russia and Saudi Arabia have failed to reach a joint pledge for OPEC nations to cut oil production. Ramirez, who was replaced as president of state-owned oil company PDVSA in September but continues to be Venezuela’s OPEC representative, met his counterparts on Tuesday in Vienna to kickstart the discussion on the plummeting price of oil before Thursday’s hugely significant OPEC summit. Between the United States shale boom and slower economic growth in Europe and China, the price of Venezuelan heavy crude dove from $99 per barrel in June to about $69 last week, prompting Ramirez’s diplomatic tour.
  • OPEC members Venezuela, Iraq, Ecuador, and Nigeria have all advocated for a cut in production as the quickest way to drive market prices back up. Statistics uphold this argument, considering OPEC estimations that global supply will exceed demand by more than 1 million barrels per day (bpd) in the first half of next year. But after Tuesday’s Vienna meeting Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi told reporters that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, had reached a “consensus” not to do so. Al-Naimi believes the twelve-nation OPEC group, of which Saudi Arabia is the largest producer, will follow suit. "We are very confident that OPEC will have a unified position,” he said, in reference to tomorrow’s summit. Meanwhile, Russia’s most influential Oil official, state-firm Rosneft’s president Igor Sechin, surprised some and quelled rumors by announcing the largest producing non-OPEC nation had no intention of reducing their output, either. Not even, Sechin said, if Oil “falls under $60 a barrel.”
  • The Russian company recently signed a contract with PDVSA for the purchase of 1.6 million tons of petroleum and 9 million tons of derivatives of crude over the next five years. While it makes sense that the GCC prioritize market share over barrel price, to a certain extent, Russian government coffers have already been hard hit by dropping prices, causing Sechin’s comment to raise some eyebrows. Indeed, many analysts claim the oil glut of the early 1980’s (which almost bankrupt Venezuela) contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
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  • However, oil makes up 97 percent of Venezuela’s export earnings, and the market shift has already caused the country a 30 percent loss in foreign income, Maduro said last week. According to Reuters, PDVSA has put the possible sale of U.S. refinery Citgo Petroleum Corp back on the table. People close to the matter have reported that Lazard Ltd, the investment bank hired by PDVSA to explore the sale, has set a late-December deadline for new offers, despite Venezuelan finance minister ruling it out last month. Citgo runs three refineries in the United States, totaling an estimated value of up to $10 billion.
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Nov 14
     
    The headscratcher for me in this article is Russia's position that it will maintain production even if crude oil prices drop below $60 per barrel. The dropping price has delivered a huge hit on the Russian economy already. These factors cause me to wonder if China has pledged funds to help Russia ride out the U.S./GCC assault on oil prices.  
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Dirty Business: Swiss Oil Traders Caught Exporting Daesh-Extracted Oil - 0 views

sputniknews.com/...-oil-traders-deash-import.html war & peace ISIL Turkey oil-smuggling Switzerland
shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Swiss oil traders might have gotten themselves into some trouble after it was revealed that they regularly imported oil from terminals in Turkey, where Daesh, also known as ISIL/ISIS, sold their illegal oil supply, the Swiss newspaper Le Matin reported.The newspaper obtained documents showing that several major Swiss petroleum trading companies exported oil from the Turkish city of Ceyhan, one of the places in the country where Daesh-extracted oil was sold. "The risk [of Swiss companies importing Daesh-oil] is very high," said Jean-Charles Brisard, a French expert on terrorism financing, according to Le Matin. As Daesh sold oil for a cheaper price than its official market price, many customers didn't mind buying it, although there was an official ban to purchase oil from Daesh-controlled territories.
  • An investigation carried out by Le Matin shows that several Swiss companies recently purchased oil from the port of Ceyhan. Previously, it was reported that Daesh transports oil and petroleum products to Turkey using a complex system that involves a wide network of middlemen. Turkey has long been the main destination for petroleum products, stolen by Daesh from numerous oilfields in Iraq and Syria. In early December, the Russian Ministry of Defense released satellite images showing columns of trucks on their way from the territories controlled by the militants to Turkey.
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The Alamo II: Texans Up in Arms over TransCanada Land Grab - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32798.htm keystone pipeline land grab Texas
shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Texans are having nightmares of a Niger Delta nature, and while they have always been the friends of Big Oil, TransCanada is changing the rules of the game in a legally-aided land grab that will test just how tough Texans are.
  • The lawsuits against TransCanada are piling up to the dismay of the Keystone XL pipeline project, which has been beleaguered by political, socio-economic, environmental and legal woes at every step from its US origins in Montana to its final destination point in south Texas. No one thought Texas would be part of the problem: Texans love their pipelines. Why the change of heart, then? The simplest answer is that Texans love their pipelines because Big Oil has been paying big bucks for the privilege of running them through Texas farmland, but TransCanada is bullying them out of their fair share. This is how it works: TransCanada makes an unacceptably low offer for the land it needs; the landowner rejects the offer; TransCanada gets the land condemned in court; then it legally acquires the land for a fraction of its original offer. Condemning land is not a new tactic by Big Oil, but while US Oil companies have traditionally kept this to a minimum, TransCanada has taken far too much advantage of this legal loophole to get what it wants. According to CNBC.com, the Canadian company has so far condemned over 100 tracts of land out of the 800 tracts it has acquired for the pipeline in Texas.
  • Since Texans are being forced to give up their land for peanuts for the bigger picture “common good”, let’s look at why they aren’t buying it and why they don’t feel any less patriotic for their opinion. (Common good in this case meaning “national interest”)
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • First of all, Texans point out that TransCanada is a foreign company that does not feel obliged necessarily to use American steel for its pipeline construction. According to media reports, a large percentage of the steel used for construction is imported. They also balk at the idea that much of the tar sands oil refined it Texas will be exported via the Gulf of Mexico. If the US is going to export its crude oil that should mean that it is producing more than it needs. In other words, the US must achieve oil independence before it starts exporting oil; otherwise it’s moving away from rather than toward independence. Every good Texan knows this. The US is producing about 6.2 million bpd this year, and consuming twice that. To the Texan mind, foreign-company plus exports does not add up to a reduction of US independence on foreign oil. It only adds up to revenues for TransCanada and Big oil.
  • What is most interesting is that Texans will end up making Keystone XL a bipartisan issue. Previously, anyone who balked at Keystone XL environmental and socio-economic risks was a tree-hugging hippie. Anyone supporting Keystone XL was a Big Oil “yes man” with no respect for the environment. With Texans now up in arms over Keystone XL thanks to TransCanada, the debate will metamorphose into something more rational. The Texans, in their own unique way, will bring legitimacy to this debate. After all, no one could accuse them of being tree-hugging liberals. Texans want Keystone, they want pipelines, but they won’t stand for being cut out of the “common good” equation. To this end, some landowners are opening the gates to activists to stage protests, and this has so far ended in a handful of arrests.
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Oct 12
     
    Keep your eye on this battle. It sounds like the same conditions that led to the farmer uprising over the Minnesota Powerline Project in the late 70s. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CU_project_controversy#Organizations_formed_to_fight_the_power_line >.   In that fiasco, farmers occupied tower construction sites, tore down towers, shot out over 10K power line insulators, and sprayed hog manure on the state police using manure spreaders, on and on. And the establishment couldn't get a single criminal conviction because juries simply refused to find accused protesters guilty. A good time was had by all. 'Twas a marvelous rebellion, going well beyond passive resistance to include rampant sabotage. Will Texas farmers and ranchers follow that lead? It sounds like they may be.    
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Israel: Gas, Oil and Trouble in the Levant | Global Research - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5362955 war &amp; 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 &nbsp;“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.
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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.&nbsp; &nbsp; 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.&nbsp; &nbsp; "We had a great meeting and agreed on investment of over $14 billion,” declared Maduro in a television address from Miraflores palace.&nbsp; &nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
  • 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".&nbsp; &nbsp; "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.) 
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Energy companies planning more layoffs - Business Insider - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/s-planning-more-layoffs-2015-7 economy oil-prices crash jobs
shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • The oil crash is not over. For a few weeks, oil prices climbed and stabilized, and it looked as if the worst of the oil crash were finally ebbing away. After reaching the lows of the year in mid-March, West Texas Intermediate crude oil gained about 50%, steadily climbing, first back to $60 a barrel. But by the first week of July, oil had started to slide again until it finally crashed into a bear market, defined as 20% decline from recent highs. And now energy companies are saying the same things we heard months ago.
  • In a story on Sunday, The Wall Street Journal's Lynn Cook reported that with oil prices hitting new lows, US energy companies were planning to cut more jobs and sell more assets — the same tactics they employed to cope with the first wave of the crash.
  • Morgan Stanley thinks this could be the worst oil crash in 45 years
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  • According to The Journal, the drilling giants Halliburton and Baker Hughes have now cut more than twice the number of jobs they disclosed in February — about 27,000 in total. And as we noted last week, Baker Hughes warned in its earnings release that it expected tough market conditions to continue "across all segments" for the rest of 2015. The company also did not forecast a rebound in oil prices.
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WHO EXCLUSIVE: Gen. Wesley Clark on Oil, War and Activism - WhoWhatWhy - 0 views

whowhatwhy.com/...-clark-on-oil-war-and-activism war & peace Big-Energy big oil oil-wars pipelinestan-war
shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Transcript: So energy is about generating electricity. There you can move pretty quickly into solar and wind. Not only are the costs coming down through better engineering and better scientific development, but also battery technology is improving so you can store it and feed it into the power grid at the time you need it, not just when it’s generated. But on the other hand, there is transportation fuel. And that’s mostly oil. And that’s mostly imported. And that’s what people fight wars about, mostly they don’t fight war about coal, they fight about oil. In the summer of 1973 in Washington, I wrote three reports about the energy crisis for the Pentagon, one of which looked at the impact of being an oil-importing nation on the United Sates. And it was pretty clear even then that this would distort America’s foreign policy, spread lots of money abroad, and might ultimately require us to use U.S. troops to secure access to these energy supplies abroad. Of course that’s exactly what happened.
  • Q: What would you estimate we’re spending annually on keeping the oil pipeline open? Wesley Clark: Well, it’s 300 billion dollars of US foreign exchange to buy the oil, another 600 billion dollars for the defense budget. Not all of that is directed toward energy but you could say that 150 billion dollars a year we‘re spending on the wars is certainly about oil, directly or indirectly. And you could probably say half of the rest of the defense budget is one way or another connected to stationing troops abroad, trying to protect access to oil, exercises, procurement of equipment. And then you could look at the bill for the Veterans Administration. So this comes out to be half a trillion dollars or more a year, is going to this. It’s been a tragic failure of policy and a failure of US leadership.
  • Forces of big oil are the most powerful economic forces in the world. If you look at the entire wealth of mankind, the value of oil reserves in the ground is like 170 trillion dollars. It’s the most valuable commodity as currently priced in the world.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Dec 14
     
    Wesley Clark interview recorded in 2011.
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OPEC v oil prices: how the world's biggest oil cartel lost its power - 0 views

theconversation.com/il-cartel-lost-its-power-34923 energy oil-prices OPEC competition
shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • With oil prices on the slide, members of the once-dominant Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) decided last week not to attempt to rally them by cutting production, leaving the Brent Crude price hovering at about US$70 (A$83) per barrel. A curious decision, perhaps, by a 12-nation bloc that has previously kept an iron grip on the world’s oil trade. But not so curious when you consider that OPEC is no longer an all-powerful cartel – now it has plenty of competition. For the first time since its formation in 1960, two of the top three oil-producing countries (the United States and Russia) are outside OPEC. While OPEC controls low-cost oil, it has lost supply control at higher prices and cannot push prices up like it could in the 1970s – or at least, not without stimulating a lot more supply from elsewhere. According to the US Energy Information Agency, the United States now produces 11.1 million barrels of oil per day – about the same as Saudi Arabia (11.7 million barrels) and Russia (10.4 million barrels).
  • This new situation is a free-for-all between the three major players: OPEC (led by Saudi Arabia), US-based private oil companies, and Russian state-controlled oil firms. All three groups have the same reason for wanting to produce more – they need or want more money in the short-medium term to satisfy their current spending, shareholder and salary expectations. Amid this competition, cutting production on purpose isn’t such an attractive move.
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Saudi Arabia is on the Brink of Regime Change - nsnbc international | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...-on-the-brink-of-regime-change saudis succession
shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • It seems that Saudi Arabia has started to undergo the transformation various experts predicted. Those became obvious when the sitting king Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud replaced his deceased elder brother Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in January 2015, and made a number of quite unusual arrangements within the ruling elite, appointing the head of the Ministry of Interior&nbsp;Muhammad bin Nayef&nbsp;from Abdullah’s&nbsp;clan the Crown Prince, while his 33-year-old son&nbsp;Mohammad bin Salman Al Saudfrom the&nbsp;Sudairy clan received the appointment of Deputy Crown Prince.
  • Now it seems that the wheels of the political machine are moving again. Last week reports from Riyadh indicated that his disease is taking a toll on the king and he wants to renounce his reign in favor of the Crown Prince. But then neighboring states, especially Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, started hinting that the members of the Saudi royal family along with the sheikhs of the strongest tribes, which are the foundation of Al Saud’s rule, are extremely dissatisfied with the sharp deterioration of the economic and social situation in the country, leading to a major drop in their personal incomes. It is no secret that Riyadh increased the volume of oil production to weaken the positions of its main competitors – Russia, Iran and Venezuela. But the kingdom had to take a punch as well,&nbsp;it was forced to unseal its&nbsp;reserve fund and cut the funding of numerous social programs.
  • Now the highly respected Institute for Gulf Affairs is stating that the king of Saudi Arabia Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud is preparing to renounce the throne in favor of his son&nbsp;Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud, and has since brought his country to the brink of a disaster. It means that the 80-year-old Salman is trying desperately hard to persuade his brothers on the succession board to allow him to change the principle of succession of the Saudi throne, since he’s ready to leave, but not so ready for his nephew&nbsp;Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud&nbsp;to rule the country. What the king has been doing is allegedly done “only for the sake of the stability of the kingdom.” Although the reality of the situation is clear – should Salman retain his position, the disintegration of the kingdom is imminent, with certain Shia areas breaking away, while the regions on the border with Yemen which are mostly populated by Yemeni tribes, more than happy to return home. Moreover, the Minister of Interior used to be a habitual cocaine user, so he was only able to “produce” two daughters, and now he’s somewhat incapable of producing more children. Should the king manage to carry out the above described scheme, he will become the first Saudi monarch to leave the throne to his son.
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  • And the fact that there’s a growing crisis in Saudi Arabia was evident from the cuts in subsidies and bonuses that king Salman started at the beginning of this year to reduce the country’s total dependence on oil. After decades of extensive use of oil revenues to subsidize companies’ payment of generous salaries and providing enormous social benefits, falling oil prices struck Saudi Arabia at its heart. It’s enough to say that revenues from oil exports in 2015 alone dropped by half. Ultimately it’s hard to say which country suffers the most from these oil wars – Russia or Saudi Arabia, since the latter has virtually no other sectors to support the economy. Saudi economist Turki Fadaak believes that Saudi Arabia is exiting the policy of “universal welfare”, so there’s an ongoing psychological shift in the minds of the ruling elite of the state. Fadaak is convinced that the ultimate aim of king Salman’s measures is to eliminate the Saudi dependency on oil. But is it really? According to leading international experts – the answer is a resounding “no”, with all the arguments to the contrary nothing more than fantasy.
  • Although initially it seemed that Salman, who came to power after the death of his brother, King Abdullah, will continue his course, after assuming the throne Salman generously spent over 30 billion dollars from the&nbsp;budget on bonuses for civil servants, military personnel, and students.&nbsp;Additionally, prices&nbsp;for basic goods and services, including fuel, electricity and water prices were kept at extremely low levels due to government subsidies from oil revenues. However, due to falling oil prices, under the pressure of such costs the budget started to rupture. The most important thing now for the kingdom is to execute the transition from the&nbsp;extremely&nbsp;lavish social security system to a productive economy, but then the subjects of the king will be forced to cut their costs, and it looks that they do not agree with this notion. And accusations in the imminent economic collapse will go Salman’s way, so it is better for him to leave now, before protests even start.
  • It is curious that Saudi Arabia has been rather realistic about its budget for the year 2016, since it was based on the average price of oil keeping at the level 29 dollars per barrel. Last year, the Saudi budget deficit amounted to almost 98 billion dollars and the costs were considerably higher than it was originally planed due to bonuses for civil servants, military personnel and retirees. In 2016 the authorities decided to put up to 49 billion dollars into a special fund to provide funding for the most important projects in case oil prices drop even further. But it was Saudi Arabia back in 2014 that proposed new tactics for OPEC, that implied that there would be no cuts in the level of production, the tactics that drove oil prices to today’s levels. So we are to learn pretty soon should Riyadh choose the path of the utter and complete collapse of the kingdom, or the path of giving power to the young and pragmatic technocrats who are going to pursue a comprehensive oil policy. Either way, Saudi Arabia will be forced to put an end to the costly military adventures in Syria and Yemen as well as its confrontations with Russia and Iran.
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Are The Middle East Wars Really About Forcing the World Into Dollars and Private Centra... - 0 views

www.washingtonsblog.com/...d-private-central-banking.html banksters dollar reserve currrencies Libya Iran Africa Gadafhi
shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Why is the U.S. targeting Iran’s central bank? Well, multi-billionaire Hugo Salinas Price told King World News: What happened to Mr. Gaddafi, many speculate the real reason he was ousted was that he was planning an all-African currency for conducting trade. The same thing happened to him that happened to Saddam because the US doesn’t want any solid competing currency out there vs the dollar. You know Gaddafi was talking about a gold dinar. And as I noted in August: Ellen Brown argues in the Asia Times that there were even deeper reasons for the war than gold, oil or middle eastern regime change. Brown argues that Libya – like Iraq under Hussein – challenged the supremacy of the dollar and the Western banks: Later, the same general said they planned to take out seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. What do these seven countries have in common? In the context of banking, one that sticks out is that none of them is listed among the 56 member banks of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). That evidently puts them outside the long regulatory arm of the central bankers’ central bank in Switzerland.
  • The most renegade of the lot could be Libya and Iraq, the two that have actually been attacked. Kenneth Schortgen Jr, writing on Examiner.com, noted that “[s]ix months before the US moved into Iraq to take down Saddam Hussein, the oil nation had made the move to accept euros instead of dollars for oil, and this became a threat to the global dominance of the dollar as the reserve currency, and its dominion as the petrodollar.” According to a Russian article titled “Bombing of Libya – Punishment for Ghaddafi for His Attempt to Refuse US Dollar”, Gaddafi made a similarly bold move: he initiated a movement to refuse the dollar and the euro, and called on Arab and African nations to use a new currency instead, the gold dinar. Gaddafi suggested establishing a united African continent, with its 200 million people using this single currency. *** And that brings us back to the puzzle of the Libyan central bank. In an article posted on the Market Oracle, Eric Encina observed:
  • One seldom mentioned fact by western politicians and media pundits: the Central Bank of Libya is 100% State Owned … Currently, the Libyan government creates its own money, the Libyan Dinar, through the facilities of its own central bank. Few can argue that Libya is a sovereign nation with its own great resources, able to sustain its own economic destiny. One major problem for globalist banking cartels is that in order to do business with Libya, they must go through the Libyan Central Bank and its national currency, a place where they have absolutely zero dominion or power-broking ability. Hence, taking down the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) may not appear in the speeches of Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy but this is certainly at the top of the globalist agenda for absorbing Libya into its hive of compliant nations.
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  • Adding credence to the theory about why Gadhafi had to be overthrown, as The New American reported in March, was the rebels’ odd decision to create a central bank to replace Gadhafi’s state-owned monetary authority. The decision was broadcast to the world in the early weeks of the conflict. In a statement describing a March 19 meeting, the rebel council announced, among other things, the creation of a new oil company. And more importantly: “Designation of the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and appointment of a Governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi.” The creation of a new central bank, even more so than the new national oil regime, left analysts scratching their heads. “I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising,” noted Robert Wenzel in an analysis for the Economic Policy Journal. “This suggests we have a bit more than a rag tag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences,” he added. Wenzel also noted that the uprising looked like a “major oil and money play, with the true disaffected rebels being used as puppets and cover” while the transfer of control over money and oil supplies takes place.
  • Similar scenarios involving the global monetary system — based on the U.S. dollar as a global reserve currency, backed by the fact that oil is traded in American money — have also been associated with other targets of the U.S. government. Some analysts even say a pattern is developing. Iran, for example, is one of the few nations left in the world with a state-owned central bank. And Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein, once armed by the U.S. government to make war on Iran, was threatening to start selling oil in currencies other than the dollar just prior to the Bush administration’s “regime change” mission. While most of the establishment press in America has been silent on the issue of Gadhafi’s gold dinar scheme, in Russia, China, and the global alternative media, the theory has exploded in popularity.
  • Posted on January 13, 2012 by WashingtonsBlog The Reason for the Wars in the Middle East and North Africa:&nbsp; Dollars The Middle Eastern and North African wars – planned 20 years ago – don’t necessarily have much to do with fighting terrorism. See this,&nbsp; this and this. They are, in reality, about oil. And protecting Israel (and read the section entitled “Securing the Realm” here). But as AFP reports today, there is another major motivation for the expanding wars: The latest round of American sanctions are aimed at shutting down Iran’s central bank, a senior US official said Thursday, spelling out that intention directly for the first time. “We do need to close down the Central Bank of Iran (CBI),” the official told reporters on condition of anonymity, while adding that the United States is moving quickly to implement the sanctions, signed into law last month. *** Foreign central banks that deal with the Iranian central bank on oil transactions could also face similar restrictions under the new law, which has sparked fears of damage to US ties with nations like Russia and China. “If a correspondent bank of a US bank wants to do business with us and they’re doing business with CBI or other designated Iranian banks… then they’re going to get in trouble with us,” the US official said.
  • Paul Merrell on 23 Jun 14
     
    I only highlighted snippets. Lots more and lots of links. 
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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&nbsp;smuggling of ISIL oil in&nbsp;Turkey has been confirmed by&nbsp;other sources now. "For instance, Danish newspaper Klassenkampen has published report on&nbsp;Turkish participation in&nbsp;oil smuggling, which has been prepared by&nbsp;consulting company Rystad Energy," she said. The Spokesperson stressed that Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan had stated earlier that he would step down&nbsp;if ISIL oil smuggling would be confirmed, but Russia has presented evidence on&nbsp;Turkish partnership in&nbsp;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&nbsp;countering oil smuggling by&nbsp;the ISIL and hopes that other countries will join in&nbsp;cooperating with&nbsp;Moscow," Zakharova said. "As you know, and we’ve said this constantly, Russia is implementing measures in&nbsp;order to&nbsp;stop and close the paths of&nbsp;oil deliveries by&nbsp;terrorists. We hope for&nbsp;active actual cooperation with&nbsp;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&nbsp;oil trucks moving from ISIL-held territory to&nbsp;Turkey to&nbsp;reach their destination at&nbsp;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/
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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.
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Oil-price scenarios: Good, bad and ugly - Business - CBC News - 0 views

www.cbc.ca/...os-good-bad-and-ugly-1.2997386 pipelinestan-wars oil-forecast Iran-negotiations
shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • As the price of oil&nbsp;trades at a six-year low, there’s no consensus on what the rest of the year will bring for crude. But there are many different forecasts.&nbsp;Here are three scenarios being considered by commodity strategists.
  • Paul Merrell on 18 Mar 15
     
    After a short interregnum of stability when the price of oil settled around $50 per barrel, the market has once again gone wonky with oil hitting a six-year low of $42 per barrel. The possibility of a deal with Iran and the easing of sanctions has many worried that the floor could drop below $30. Here are three likely scenarios: The Good: OPEC cuts in June and the glut is curtailed. The Bad: No OPEC cut, but storage levels aren't exceeded, which means the glut isn't clogging the system and drowning producers in oil. The Ugly: Storage tanks do fill up, producers have no place to send their excess crude and sanctions on Iran are eased. That would drown the market. So there' are oil industry interests that gets gored if Iran sanctions are removed too soon. That goes a long way toward explaining thedepth of resistance to the Iran negotiations. I.e., apparently it's more than the Israel Lobby. 
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Controversies - Insurance Industry Adjusts to Earthquake Risk Caused by Fracking - AllG... - 0 views

www.allgov.com/...risk-caused-by-fracking-150127 environment insurance fracking earthquakes
shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • In another sign that fracking is increasingly being acknowledged as a cause of earthquakes, the insurance industry has announced that it is now linking the controversial drilling procedure with seismic activity in establishing its rates. Before insurance companies set their rates for an upcoming year, they turn to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) for information on quake activity. Specifically, insurers look at the USGS’s National Seismic Hazard Map, which “predicts where future earthquakes will occur, how often they will occur and how strongly they will shake the ground,” according to the Dallas Morning News. But this map will now take into account earthquakes that occur within the vicinity of fracking wells, the USGS has decided. That means insurance rates may go up in some areas considered more at risk of seismic events because of fracking operations. Between the years 2010 and 2013, central and eastern United States had an average of five times as many quakes per year as between 1970 and 2000. Human activity, including fracking, has been cited by scientists as the cause, according to Dallas Morning News.
  • Last year, USGS connected a 5.7-magnitude quake in Oklahoma to that state’s robust fracking industry. “The observation that a human-induced earthquake can trigger a cascade of earthquakes, including a larger one, has important implications for reducing the seismic risk from wastewater injection,” USGS seismologist and coauthor of the study Elizabeth Cochran said at the time. More than 120 quakes have hit the Dallas area in the past six years, and scientists have cited the work performed at nearby fracking sites as the reason, according to Homeland Security News Wire. Even the Texas Oil &amp; Gas Association agreed that some research into the nexus of fracking and quakes is called for. “The Oil and natural gas industry agrees that recent seismic activity warrants robust investigation to determine the precise location, impact and cause or causes of seismic events,” Todd Staples, the association’s president, said in a statement. A study published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America says fracking near Ohio’s Poland Township triggered a previously undiscovered fault. The result was more than 70 earthquakes ranging in magnitude of 2.1 to 3.0, the latter of which was described as “rare” by the experts.
  • Paul Merrell on 29 Jan 15
     
    Yet another factor to contribute to the piercing of the shale oil bubble in the U.S. economy.The shale oil and gas industry in the U.S. is collapsing because its production costs can not result in profits when the price of oil is so low. Banksters have ended the flow of new well development funding. Shale oil development companies are going bankrupt by the dozens  and tens of thousands of shale oil workers have been laid off.  
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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: &nbsp;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.” &nbsp;Infrastructure is targeted and destroyed as part of Washington’s strategy in all wars – systematically turning nations to rubble, harming noncombatant civilians most. &nbsp;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. &nbsp;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. &nbsp;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. 
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