Future of Iraq: The spoils of war

[multi]

How the West will make a killing on Iraqi oil riches

The huge potential prizes for Western firms will give ammunition to critics who say the Iraq war was fought for oil. They point to statements such as one from Vice-President Dick Cheney, who said in 1999, while he was still chief executive of the oil services company Halliburton, that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010. "So where is the oil going to come from?... The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies," he said.

[Mazer]

Time to find an other energy source, methinks.

[theknife]

Originally Posted by Mazer

Time to find an other energy source, methinks.

absolutely - should have been a major push five years ago, a la the Manhattan Project or the space program.

[Mazer]

For most other technologies I would say that the government should just stand aside and let private business and industry lead the way. It's worked for the internet so far, and non-government standardization bodies like the IEEE and ISO have done a pretty good job of making things work. But in this instance the government needs to mandate foreign oil and natural gas independence. Not just by setting a date and saying this is when you'll stop using petroleum, but by working with the industries that use petrochemicals and funding research to develop alternatives. Oil isn't just used for fuel, it is also the feedstock for synthetic plastics, pharmaceuticals, food additives, fertilizers and pesticides, and half a million other things we can't live without. Just switching the transportation industry over to ethanol or battery electric power won't solve this problem (though it would be a big step in the right direction). So alternative synthetic chemical feedstocks need to be developed as well.

This isn't about the environment or about reducing fuel costs, it's about national security. To that end the government must work with the oil companies or else they'll oppose this transition at every turn. It can't be helped if doing so will raise a stink with Greenpeace or whoever; if the oil companies aren't part of the solution then they're part of the problem and they must be invited to participate.

[TankGirl]

Blood and oil: How the West will profit from Iraq's most precious commodity
(Independent)

So was this what the Iraq war was fought for, after all? As the number of US soldiers killed since the invasion rises past the 3,000 mark, and President George Bush gambles on sending in up to 30,000 more troops, The Independent on Sunday has learnt that the Iraqi government is about to push through a law giving Western oil companies the right to exploit the country's massive oil reserves.

...

Now, unnoticed by most amid the furore over civil war in Iraq and the hanging of Saddam Hussein, the new oil law has quietly been going through several drafts, and is now on the point of being presented to the cabinet and then the parliament in Baghdad. Its provisions are a radical departure from the norm for developing countries: under a system known as "production-sharing agreements", or PSAs, oil majors such as BP and Shell in Britain, and Exxon and Chevron in the US, would be able to sign deals of up to 30 years to extract Iraq's oil.

...

Critics fear that given Iraq's weak bargaining position, it could get locked in now to deals on bad terms for decades to come. "Iraq would end up with the worst possible outcome," said Greg Muttitt of Platform, a human rights and environmental group that monitors the oil industry. He said the new legislation was drafted with the assistance of BearingPoint, an American consultancy firm hired by the US government, which had a representative working in the American embassy in Baghdad for several months.

"Three outside groups have had far more opportunity to scrutinise this legislation than most Iraqis," said Mr Muttitt. "The draft went to the US government and major oil companies in July, and to the International Monetary Fund in September. Last month I met a group of 20 Iraqi MPs in Jordan, and I asked them how many had seen the legislation. Only one had."

The US way to export democracy: skip the will of the Iraqi people where it counts, like in the exploitation of country's natural riches.

[miss_silver]

[albed]

Originally Posted by theknife

absolutely - should have been a major push five years ago, a la the Manhattan Project or the space program.

I try to explain to the uneducatable that it's not like those things, with little success. They're just to ignorant or too impaired to comprehend that chemistry, physics and economics dictate what can be used as alternatives to oil, just as those sciences dictated what could be done with nuclear weapons and space travel. But they persist in repeating the brainless squawking that all that is needed is a "government program".

The intelligent and mentally healthy segments of society have already discovered and evaluated all the practical sources of energy and no government "push" will change anything.

Unfortunately there will always be a large segment of the population that are just too stupid to understand this.