No Blood for No Oil

None of the mainstream press coverage of record-high crude oil prices that I saw last week turned $92.22-a-barrel into a teachable moment. The best I came across was a pair of experts on PBS' News Hour explaining, like a Certs ad, that It's Two! Two! Two Crises in One! -- political (Bush's World War III crack, and Cheney's saber-rattling at Iran), and market (trust those futures traders to find the green amid the gloom).

But while the networks used precious airtime to show troubled drivers at gas pumps and rattled New Englanders getting their first delivery of winter heating oil, I didn't see any stories that clicked the minus-button on GoogleMaps enough times to display the big picture that actually explains this miserable moment.

A useful news story would have included Alan Greenspan acknowledging "what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." A helpful account would have cited Gen. John Abizaid, the former CENTCOM Commander, explaining that "of course" the Iraq war is "about oil." Journalism that cares as much about sobering context as it does about B-roll bs would have reminded us that Halliburton's Dick "Secret Energy Task Force" Cheney dissed conservation as a panty-waist "personal virtue" a few months after he was sworn in as Regent. Instead of exhuming archival footage of gas station lines from the '70s, producers might have re-aired the more recent tape of former Harken Energy director George W. Bush strolling hand-in-hand through the Crawford bluebonnets with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, just in case anyone was wondering about the durability of the generations-long House of Bush-House of Saud alliance. And speaking of His Highness, perhaps it also would have been useful to see the There He Goes! Here He Comes! Andrews Air Force Base shots of Cheney's 14-hours-each-way flight to see King Abdullah for eight hours in Riyadh, a no-press-corps/no-press-conference trip just after Thanksgiving last year which surely had nothing to do with oil, ya think? And as long as we're connecting the dots, it wouldn't have hurt if some reporter with a decent magaphone had reviewed the number of times that Republicans in Congress and the White House have fought against windfall profits taxes and for juicy new tax breaks for ExxonMobil.

But I did come across two exceptionally useful acts of journalism online.

One -- thanks to a link from the invaluable Dan Froomkin -- was a piece by Peter K. Ashton on NiemanWatchdog.org, demonstrating that the tightness in oil inventories (which freemarketeers invoke to 'splain the spike in oil prices whenever Cheney growls) isn't some Natural Law we have to just live with, but rather the result of a conscious policy by oil companies to suppress supply, reap unprecedented profits, and miserably fail, by the way, to reinvest those bazillions into increased refining capacity.

The other is by Jack Miles, the Pultizer Prize-winning author of God: A Biography, who wrote a tremendously illuminating and deeply depressing piece on TomDispatch.com called "Endgame for Iraq Oil?" The Great Game that Bush and Cheney have really been playing all along in Iraq -- making war not for WMDs, or for Regime Change, or for Freedom Dominoes, or for Israel, but rather for "access to the world's third-largest proven oil reserves, 200 to 300 million barrels of light crude worth as much as $30 trillion" -- may soon be lost. If the Iraqi government makes good on its intention, by December 31, 2008, as stated by Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, to replace the existing UN Security Council multinational security force mandate with a conventional bilateral security agreement with the US, then "the oil game will be up." With no multinational mandate, Iraq -- or its parts -- will be free to cut oil exploration deals with anyone it wants. Why, for example, wouldn't "a new, Iran-allied, oil-rich, nine-province Shiite Iraq" cut a deal "with ready-and-willing China? Will any combination of American military and diplomatic pressure suffice to stop such an untoward outcome?"

So the ultimate irony in Iraq, on top of the ultimate tragedy in Iraq, may turn out to be, as Jack Miles puts it, this: "Blood for oil may never have been a good deal, but so much blood for no oil at all may seem a far worse one."

Follow Marty Kaplan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/martykaplan

Comments

[buzzjustice]

Ok if we are going to pretend oil price spike is because of oil company's creating false shortage fine. Let us then omit we are using 20,000,000 barrels a day and only produce 5,000,000 bpd. Oh and lest we forget by 2015 only a handfull of countries will be able to increase output enough to cover the 2.5 to 5% decline in existing feilds, maybe. Peak oil is not a theory people it is an observable fact of every oil feild on the planet THEY ALL PEAK AND DECLINE! When we need 25,000,000 bpd and produce 2,500,000 bpd maybe we the sheeple will wake up.

[research]

The 2.5 Trillion USD estimated cost of the IRAQ WAR is enough to install solar and wind to replace all fossil fuels electricity generation in the USA!

[noamjunior]

well mobil is the biggest contributor for the GOP

[1will]

Everything we do in the Middle East is because of oil. Duh.
Do you think we are involved in the Middle East because of a love of sand and the peaceful, enlightened people?

[mbaty]

Oil is unsustainable long term, and individually we are all enmeshed in the dependancy. We will need energy from now on, and the population will probably continue to grow. But until the big corporations begin to change, what can we consumers do? Even the hybrids get pitiful gas mileage--and automobiles from the 80's get comparable gas mileage to the 2000+ cars coming out. We've got to keep talking about this, because it's easy to take short-term money over long-term greater good, and we can't expect these companies to want anything but the bottom line.

[IMPRISONBUSH]

IS IT 4,000 U.S. FALLEN YET IT WAS 157 U.S. TROOPS KILLED WHE BUSH SAID :
............" MISSION ACCOMPLISHED "........

SO WE CAN SAY THAT THE 2,000 PLUS HAVE ALL FALLEN FOR THE PROFITEERS OF OIL.

WHILE AMERICANS COMPLAIN ABOUT OIL VERY FEW COMPLAIN ABOUT THE DEATHS OF U.S. FALLEN

28 PERSENT OF THE GOP AGREE WITH BUSH ( RELIGOUS RIGHT BUT YOU NOTICE THAT NONE HAVE ENLISTED , THEY JUST ENJOY THE DEVADENDS THE RECIVE FROM THE MARKET.
YOU KNOW TAX EXCEMPT .

[kantcould]

I am pleased that Marty cites TomDispatch.com, which is always a thoughtful and informed commentary. So when you hyperlink to read the Jack Miles post, I highly recommend you go to the "sign up" box on the main screen and become a regular (free) subscriber to this blog. If you like Marty, you will like Tom.

[HOORGANVISOR]

Too bad the California governor Gray Davis listened to Bill Clinton and took his advice to emplay ENRON to manage the energy systems of the state since Lay was such a good friend of Bill who sent him on trips to other countries on government planes. At least the Bush administration had the common sense to not have taxpayers bail out Ken Lay and ENRON like what Al Gore and his people wanted the Bush people to do. Bush let ENRON go bankrupt. If Clinton had only had the company investigated for corruption, maybe the collapse wouldn't have been so bad. But then again, Lay was Clinton's good friend and got away with stealing his employees' money.

[indypete]

See... it's all Clinton's fault!

[HOORGANVISOR]

I guess the best way to stay healthy is to starve. We have more oil available in and around the United States than we'll need for the next century until we convert to alternative energy sources long before then. Those who don't want us to drill for our own oil had better explain why paying high energy prices make sense. Conservation is nice. But in order to have economic growth, we need to increase our use of energy. I still think we should tap the geothermal sources out in the West for electricity and use plasma igniters to completely burn coal for energy and use the solid carbon waste as building material and other uses.

[HOORGANVISOR]

If the war in Iraq is for oil, why aren't we getting it for free? Why do we even need to pay the Iraqi government? Also, with about 150 years worth of oil around our coasts, in Alaska, and in oil shale deposits, only morons would have us need to get our oil from the Middle East. Those who vote against us building more refineries and drilling for our own oil have to be anti-American idiots that will force us to someday actually go to war for oil. People who vote for these fools better not complain about high fuel prices because their vote for them means a vote for higher energy costs.

[HOORGANVISOR]

I find that some of the worst politicians when it comes to forcing us to go to war for oil are Democrats. We should have been independent of OPEC years ago. But Democrats keep voting to keep us dependent on OPEC by voting against pumping more of our own oil out of the ground. I know the oil companies would love to build more refineries and not pay OPEC for oil so that we wouldn't have to pay such high prices. But as long as Democrats listen to environmentalist whackos that don't want us to drill for our own oil or use the oil shale deposits out in the West which have twice as much oil as Saudi Arabia has, we will have to keep fighting in the Middle East to keep the oil flowing the the United States. I know Bush wants us to be independent of OPEC and drill for more of our own oil. But Democrats don't want us to do that and if a Democrat is elected as President, he or she will keep us dependent on OPEC and Europe and Japan could force us to go to war for oil to keep it flowing.

[deminmo]

The MSM isn't going to risk being bumped from
A-List events at the White House. Deals for oil
in Iraq were likely being made either right
before Bush went into Iraq, or AS he went in. And
ExxonMobile is one of the many oil companies
who stand to reap huge oil profits. Even more,
if Bush goes into Iran.
Bush and Chaney don't have to hurry getting
troops out of Iraq until the oil is gone. So
somehow, over the next ?? years, the American
people will be strangled with debt. And no one
has publically said how it will be paid for.
Although, only an idiot would doubt the poor
elderly, and sick will pay the price.

[ljsfolly]

The real plan was to keep bush singing the freedom song while cheney manipulated us all down his road for control and power. Oil has been behind so many wars on the planet since we discovered it has value. Value=money=power. Cheney never have been a soldier had little clue other than Rummie saying our soldiers were the best lean fighting machine. That they had no weapons, no armor and not enough of them to do anything post invasion meant little as they thought our name would protect us or something as flowers were what was expected. All this time cheney was building power at home from congress for his use along with haliburtin and it's army for his own use. It was oil and whose blood was spilled was never a concern for cheney and who knows the depth of brain power bush has or the amount of true feelings a sociapath really has.

[bluescat47]

Unless someone comes out up with something more substantial than off the cuff comments by Greenspan and Abazaid about the oil connection, the argument remains untenable (like memos from those who made policy, which wasnt these two individuals).Iraq, like Nam and Korea, was about security issues, misguided no doubt and politicized by conservatives from Wolfowitz to Feith, but nevertheless, that was the motivation. If the U.S. wanted lucrative oil deals, the U.S. could have struck them with Saddam during the post-Gulf War period. In fact, the U.S. maintained no-fly zones in the North and South of Iraq to protect Kurds and Shia respectively, while the French, Russians, et al were lining up oil contracts.The U.S. could have negotiated just about any contracts it wanted at this point in time as Saddam's opportunistic goal was just to stay in power.
Keep in mind also that American troops were supposed to be largely out of Iraq by the Fall of 2003 - hardly a plan to imperialize Iraqi oil. And Iraq is a member of OPEC and will remain a member of OPEC, which sets production limits.
Oil issues are more a consequence than cause of the war.Once the war transpired, then the issue became - what future for Iraqi oil? The goal is to keep Iraqi oil flowing into the marketplace, garner business for American interests wherever possible, and push the privatization of their oil. But Anyone who thinks that the U.S. has the ability to ultimately control Iraqi oil is living in a fantasy world. Seventy percent of all oil production in the world is controlled by national oil companies, thirty percent by oil multinationals. The Maliki government just last week awarded large power contracts to Iran and Russia, not to American firms. And the Kurds are negotiating oil deals with a number of firms, both American and non-American; Iraq is hardly going to do our bidding on their sovereign resources.

[Lelu]

Actually, you're right - they don't need the oil to profit from war, just our tax money.

[Garvagh]

The US bought more Iraqi oil under the UN sanctions, than any other country. If Iraq had not been invaded, oil production would be higher today. Norman Podhoretz thought that Iraq could be an oil-rich ally of Israel, in a confrontation with Iran. Any country generally is free to buy as much oil as it wishes to on the open market. Even if the US could control Iraq's oil, that would not do anything to bring down prices. However, an attack on Iran will put oil above $130 per barrel.

[newsweek1945]

STOP COMPLAINING, COMMENTING, AND WHINING; LET'S GET RID OF , AT LEAST, SOME OF THE BASTARDS!
NO MORE FIXED ELECTIONS...TRUE EDUCATION FOR MOST OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, NOT THE PASS 'EM ALONG POLICY NOW IN PLACE, SO THEY CAN REALLY BECOME LITERATE AND CAN READ AND SORT INFORMATION FOR THEMSELVES INSTEAD REGURGITATING MINDLESS AND POINTLESS CATCH PHRASES, ETC.
CAN'T WE SEE THAT ONE OF THE MAIN REASONS AN IDIOT IS IN POWER IS BECAUSE MOST OF US ARE NOT TOO FAR AHEAD?! ARE ARE WE AFRAID TO ADMIT IT IN OUR FALSE SENSE OF "AMERCAN WISDOM"?