Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Not only does the Iraqi government hand over their crude oil to US corporations, they now ban Iraqi farmers from saving their seeds. Transnational biotech corporations are given control over Iraqi seed banks.
Increasingly, sharing natural resources will require close international cooperation, peace, and security. This is not the 21st century path we are choosing.
Ruppert masterfully presents the genesis of September 11th and moves the reader through the early years regarding high expectations for massive oil sources, exposing what’s known as “peak oil” production and into the future.
The U.S. administration will take up strategy for United Nations sanctions against Iran at a meeting tomorrow of senior officials from eight nations.
If we want to know the logically simple but socially very difficult solution, it is conservation. Conservation is not conservative, but something that can only be accomplished through a revolutionary change in society. Whether we can accomplish the social transformation necessary is one issue, but the fact is that an energy soft-landing will require us to dramatically conserve dwindling fossil fuel stocks, by as much as 75%, and begin to think seriously about how to de-link from the growth economy… forever.
China will formally launch its strategic petroleum reserve program next year, as learned from related departments. An oil reserve base in Zhenhai, Zhejiang Province is now under construction, which will be able to hold more than 5 million cubic meters oil when its first-stage project is completed next year.
While there is no doubt that global oil output will attain peak levels, the current rise in prices reflects a more worrisome phenomenon: America’s growing dependence on imported petroleum from unstable and unfriendly countries.
Venezuela has announced that it is increasing the royalties paid by foreign oil companies from 1% to 16.6%.
Henry Kissinger’s famous declaration that, “Oil is too important to be left to the Arabs” best expresses the experience of the Middle East over the last century.
This, then, is the future of U.S. military involvement abroad. While anti-terrorism and traditional national security rhetoric will be employed to explain risky deployments abroad, a growing number of American soldiers and sailors will be committed to the protection of overseas oil fields, pipeline, refineries, and tanker routes.
Despite official administration dreams of drastically raising Iraq’s oil output and then using it to float our occupation, we’ve essentially “lost” Iraqi oil — as has the rest of the planet.
West African oil holds great promise for companies in search of diverse sources. But it’s giving U.S. national security planners a new Gulf to worry about: the Gulf of Guinea.
