Back off or suffer oil shock: Tehran
OIL-rich Iran has raised the stakes in the standoff over its nuclear program, warning that any attempt to impose sanctions on its activities would lead to an energy crisis in the US and Europe.
Geopolitics & Military
Onward to Iran
There are good reasons to assume that a US campaign against Iran will commence within months and that this will serve to open the next and much expanded phase of what is actually the Global Oil War of the 21st century.
Indonesia tests oil dispute waters
INDONESIA’S President plans to visit an island near the Malaysian border after he sent warships there, following Malaysia’s move to award oil exploration rights there, a government official said yesterday.
It sounds crazy, but …
Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern revives the neocon’s old nickname, the ‘crazies,’ to describe their approach to oil depletion, the possibility of an overt war with Iran and the problems of the Israeli-US military nexus for peace in the Middle East.
The oil factor in Bush’s ‘war on tyranny’
General Norman Schwarzkopf, who led the 1991 attack on Iraq, told the US Congress in 1990: “Middle East oil is the West’s lifeblood. It fuels us today, and being 77% of the free world’s proven oil reserves, is going to fuel us when the rest of the world runs dry.”
The Mitigation of the Peaking of World Oil Production
Startling press release regarding a recently completed study of oil peak responses. Full report not yet received, but apparently claims all alternatives are incapable of meeting demand in the short term and argues that efficiency measures and drastic scaling up of production of substitute fuels is required.
The next big race: after nuclear arms, is energy next?
…the nuclear arms race was a lot more straightforward than its emerging post-Cold War successor: the energy race. It’s a similarly brutal zero-sum game, but one characterized by an ever-shifting web of opportunistic, cross-cutting allegiances that make the nuclear world order appear pleasantly tidy and predictable by comparison.
Power = Power
…the global oil peak implies that all the nations of the world will have less total energy to divvy up. I just don’t see where the United States is in a particularly favorable position on this. Have you heard of any plans to reduce our extreme dependence on cars? …Are we going to subcontract the Jolly Green Giant to go around America moving things closer together so we don’t have to burn so much gasoline?
Ukraine, Georgia agrees to reverse oil flow
The prime ministers of Ukraine and Georgia said Monday that the flow of oil in a key Ukrainian pipeline would be reversed, a decision certain to complicate the two former Soviet republics’ already tense relations with Russia.
Washington’s Interest in Ukraine: Democracy or Energy Geopolitics?
The results of the third round of elections in Ukraine in which Viktor Yushchenko has just been proclaimed the final winner, far from being grounds for jubilation in Ukraine and beyond, ought to give concern for the future of Ukraine to many. The story has major implications for the dollar, oil and gold.
Imperial Entropy: Collapse of the American Empire
It is quite ironic: only a decade or so after the idea of the United States as an imperial power came to be accepted by both right and left, and people were actually able to talk openly about an American empire, it is showing multiple signs of its inability to continue.
Running into a ‘BRIC wall’ with Eurasia?
In response to the bold moves by the Bush Administration to move its NATO and direct US military presence into the vital energy choke points of Eurasia, the major Eurasian powers are taking definite steps aimed at self-survival in energy, even military defense. (Considers Peak Oil.)
