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Entropy and Empire
Stoneleigh, The Oil Drum (Canada)
In his recent book The Upside of Down, a review of which can be found here, Thomas Homer-Dixon interpreted the development of the Roman Empire in terms of thermodynamics.
The success of the empire depended on its ability to extract energy surpluses, in the form of food, from the imperial territories and concentrate them at the centre, where they enabled the development of a tremendous degree of organizational complexity. Without a large, and growing, hinterland to collect surpluses from, complexity on such as scale would not have been possible to establish and maintain. ..
For enough relative wealth to accumulate in a political centre for a complex civilization to develop, there must be a much larger periphery available to be relatively impoverished in providing the necessary energy subsidy. An equal distribution would, in accordance thermodynamics, only be possible at a low level for all. ..
The interesting question for the future would be whether the developing competitors – initially fed by exported Western capital but now reaching critical mass as new centres in their own right – would be able to achieve self-sustaining development as capital exports from the old centre cease. ..
(20 Mar 2007)
Stoneleigh combines energy analysis with theories of Empire (North/South, Center/Periphery, imperialism, etc.). I think this is a promising direction. One can even include global warming — the benefits of industrialization have accrued to the North (e.g. Northern Europe, North America and Japan)), while the side effects (global warming) will hit the South the hardest. -BA
The rape of Iraq’s oil
Michael Meacher, Guardian
The Baghdad government has caved in to a damaging plan that will enrich western companies.
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The recent cabinet agreement in Baghdad on the new draft oil law was hailed as a landmark deal bringing together the warring factions in the allocation of the country’s oil wealth. What was concealed was that this is being forced through by relentless pressure from the US and will sow the seeds of intense future conflict, with serious knock-on impacts on the world economy.
The draft law, now before the Iraqi parliament, sets up “production sharing partnerships” to allow the US and British oil majors to extract Iraqi oil for up to 30 years. While Iraq would retain legal ownership of its oil, companies like Exxon, Chevron, Shell and BP that invest in the infrastructure and refineries would get a large share of the profits.
No other Middle Eastern oil producer has ever offered such a hugely lucrative concession to the big oil companies, since Opec has always run its oil business through tightly-controlled state companies. Only Iraq in its present dire condition, dependent on US troops for the survival of the government, lacks the bargaining capacity to resist.
…While most other Middle East countries are fully exploiting their reserves, large parts of Iraq are still virgin.
This prize is cast in even greater relief by recent assessments of the looming imminence of global peak oil production. The International Energy Agency now estimates that world production outside Opec has already peaked and that world production overall will peak between 2010 and 2020.
…on every count the latest US plan to get control of Iraqi oil at almost any cost is profoundly misconceived. Even from the point of view of America’s own self-interest, its security is imperilled more by the failure to develop alternative energy options than by the lack of capabilities of its weapons systems. Yet the US government continues to spend about 20 times more R&D money on the latter problem than on the former. It is still the case that funding the import of oil represents about 40% of the current US trade deficit, yet no vigorous programme in renewable technologies is being supported.
As Senator Richard Lugar and James Woolsey, former director of the CIA, said prophetically in 1999 about growing US dependence on increasingly scarce Middle Eastern oil, “our losses may come suddenly through war, steadily through price increases, agonisingly through developing nation poverty, relentlessly through climate change – or through all of them”.
Michael Meacher is the Labour MP for Oldham West and Royton, and was environment minister from 1997-2003.
(22 March 2007)
Iran Conflict Would Push Oil Above $100, Yamani Says
Stephen Voss, Bloomberg
Crude oil would soar above $100 a barrel in the event of a U.S. or Israeli attack against Iran, former Saudi oil minister Sheikh Ahmad Zaki Yamani said today.
“If America or Israel attack Iran, and I assume Iran reacts, the price of oil will go to three digits, and you know what this means for the world economy,” Yamani told reporters at a conference in London today. “It’s a very horrible thought.”
Yamani, who was minister between 1962 and 1986 and now chairman of the London-based Centre for Global Energy Studies, gave no indication as to whether he thought a conflict with Iran was likely.
“If you think logically, this should not happen. But sometimes things happen against logic, like the invasion of Iraq, and see what is happening now,” he said.
He said Saudi Arabia doesn’t want to see oil slip below $40 a barrel and that OPEC favors crude closer to $60.
(21 March 2007)
