PS, The Financial Times is an English paper based in London.

Don't be naive.

The US needs middle east and African oil not simply for itself - but for control of the sale of it to others. Who the oil goes to often matters less than who makes money out of it.

we're not interested in that oil? Then why on earth has the west been invading that region, overthrowing governments, imiposng dictators for the last hundred years?

Did you know that the US, Britain, and France overthrew the elected government of Iran because it wanted to control its own oil? That's where the shah came in, and then the current government. The west created that situation.

Most Libyan oil went to Europe.. But the US was given a 25% cut for its role.

The first act of the new Libyan government - even before it formed and before the fightinig ended - was to hand over the oil fields to western companies.

The Financial Times is very, very respectable. But it is not known to be much of a critic of big business.

To echo what graeme said, the financial times is not a good, impartial source for world politics. 

Fracking is for natural gas. Until they can use that to make plastics and other computer components, I think petroleum need not feel threatened.

It's ridiculous to say "please don't tell me I am making outrageous claims about how feasible it is to get all kinds of oil from the tar sands" because that "fact" (oh yes, I do dare scare quote that) is central to your argument. I don't accept your premises, so don't tell me not to argue against them. Getting all of America's oil out of the sands is not going to happen, because the production is sufficient to meet their needs. Not to mention the fact that the extraction process is far too costly and inefficient. As for the low, low price? Hello Canadian oil subsidies!

I am not familiar with graeme's long term position on "the middle east: do they want to conquer it, or whatever?" but if I had to guess, I'd say he might be taking the popular "america is taking a generally imperialistic stance when it comes to the middle east and their oil", but someone (preferably graeme, not EO, who appears hell bent on slamming him) feel free to correct me.

You are correct Graeme about one thing.  At one point, the Western world has a colonial or semi-colonial grip on the oil of the mid-east.  It started with the Brits and Anglo-Persian Oil, a direct colonial outfit.  The Americans played it a bit fairer when they linked with up with the  Saudis, sem-colonial.

And yes, the CIA did intervene to eject Mossadeq from Iran in 1953 (?) and returned the Shah.

But a great deal has changed since the 1950's Graeme.  Sometimes, I think your thought processes have frozen in a time frame approximately 1970's-1980's.

When the contract with the US ran out, the Saudi's promptly nationalized their oil.   They do bring in a few foreigners for help, but they need fewer and fewer.  Similarly, the oil companies have not been in Iran since 1979.  Most of the middle eastern countries have nationalized their oil.

With Libya, yes, they may feel a need to pay NATO something for services rendered.  It remains to be seen if Libya is better off without Ghadaffi, whose was a very bad leader and strange person all around.

Let me keep digging around for other sources.  I have not paid special to the subject, not being terribly interested in it.  It seems to me that if anyone was going to monopolize the middle east, it might be China.  They are already everywhere there is a drop of oil they can get their hands on, including Canada.  

And finally, do you deny the facts I presented about the increase in oil and gas in the Western hemisphere?

Who said anything about supplying ALL their needs?  Did you even read the article?  I believe we have not met.  Nice to meet you.

I am arguing with Graeme, is that allowed?   I pondered answering him under the other thread, but thread was only tangentially related to this topic, so I started a new.

Don't start worrying about me attacking Graeme, he knows how to defend himself.  Graeme and I go back a long way in arguing.   Normally, I would not mention a person's name in a thread heading.  But I do not think anyone else on the site holds this particular belief, plus like I said, he is a pretty tough guy.  (You should see him trying to stake out Last Post.  Never saw such aggression in my life! . )

You under estimate two things EO. One is that greater access/control of oil means cheaper oil.  and 2, as we have seen with the tar sands, and most off shore drilling, the environmental considerations, are more obvious, to affected consumers, and other North Amrican industries (i.e tourism and fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico),  thus they have a greater politucal costs. (when was the last time you geard about the environment of Saudi Arabia, or Iraq, relative to the off shore drilling in the America's, or the effect of extracting the oil from the oil sands, requires more production of Co2 than does Iraqi oil.

BTW Alberta has it made, not only the oil from the sands can be sold at a profit, but the left over sands is cleaned of oil, and it is ready to be used as  tropical beaches which will result in Alberta as the world warms ups, and the oceans rise, bringing nice and warm  sandy ocean shores to Alberta.    Howevr I am not sure the people of Vancouver, or Montreal, or Toronto will aprreciate living in bubbles under the sea.

Ugh, registration wall is nearly as irritating as a pay wall. I have an account, but upon logging in, it says I have not activated. Upon activating, it tells me I have reached my monthly limit...but I just activated?

In any event, I am just going to assume I know everything there is to know in that articla, and charge headlong into the abyss. 

What are these seeckoret's you are keeping as to the other sources of oil? Brazil? As far as I know, they've been drilling off shor for decades. If they are related to something else, then I don't know about them, and unless FT has placed you under a gag order, perhaps you should enlighten me...or we could wait for exactly one month.

And with all the toxic run off, the beaches will be like...Jersey?

At that point in time, I am sure the beaches of Jersey will seem like paradise, relative to the rest of the world.

Of course Alberta might become so hot, that it is more like Hell than Paradise. However they could always than use the oil to run giant air conditioners to cool things down.   

Those lucky Albertans, have it made no matter what.  

P. Gandal, I tried to cut and paste something from FT and when I pasted it, a message was attached, saying "do not cut and paste, journalism requires support,etc.etc."   So I am afraid they will ban me if I do it again.  I have never seen this with any other publication that one has to pay for, and I subscribe to several.

I can easily find another source on Brazil.   That is big news.  Venezuela also has a great deal of oil but the government of Hugo Chavez had badly mismanaged it and production has tanked.  There is no indication that Brazil will go "Chavista".  

From the New York Times

October 14, 2011

SPECIAL REPORT: ENERGY; Offshore Oil Helps Brazil Lead Boom

By SIMON ROMERO

RIO DE JANEIRO -- Of all those who might smile at Brazil's unfolding oil boom, Walter Link could rank near the top. A U.S. oilman here at a time of nationalist fervor, he was the former chief geologist for Standard Oil Company of New Jersey whom Brazil hired to find its oil reserves.

The year was 1954. Petrobras, the newly created national oil company, put the blunt, Indiana-born Link to work creating Brazil's oil exploration sector. Six long years ensued before he issued his polemical ''Link Report,'' describing tepid results. For Brazil to meet its oil needs, he recommended going offshore or abroad.

Petrobras grew at its own impressive pace for decades, mixing progress with setbacks as Brazil struggled with drawn-out dependence on foreign oil. But Petrobras's huge offshore oil discoveries in recent years now enable its leaders to contend that it could surpass Exxon Mobil -- called Standard Oil in Walter Link's day -- as the world's largest publicly-traded oil company.

''Petrobras is engaged in by far the biggest industrial undertaking in Brazil's history,'' said Norman Gall, director of the Fernand Braudel Institute of World Economics in São Paulo.

Mr. Gall said Petrobras's annual spending, estimated at more than $45 billion through 2020, might surpass NASA's budget in the 1960s -- when it was preparing to send a man to the moon.

Brazil, which is maintaining investments to increase oil production even as turmoil hits financial markets in Brazil and around the world, is leading a shift in Latin America's oil industry with the potential to alter the geopolitics of energy.

By the 2020s, if the stars align in Brazil's favor, the country could emerge as the fourth-largest oil producer after Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

Brazil's rise as an oil power is part of a broader expansion of the Western Hemisphere's energy output, especially in the United States and Canada. But it also offers a vivid example of the reordering of Latin America's energy hierarchy in which traditional energy exporters like Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia are seeing their sway eclipsed by nations with big discoveries.

Emerging exploration technologies like those capable of tapping rock formations by combining horizontal drilling with hydraulic fracturing explain some of the focus on the region's potential to produce new oil kings.

In May, for instance, Argentina announced its biggest oil discovery since the 1980s in a sprawling Patagonian shale deposit, luring new interest from foreign companies like Apache Corporation and Exxon Mobil.

Argentina ranked third in the world, after China and the United States, in shale gas reserves with about 22 trillion cubic meters, or 774 trillion cubic feet, according to a report released in April by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Neighboring Paraguay and Uruguay, both marginal energy players, also boast enviable shale reserves, as do swaths of southern Brazil. Mexico, a traditional oil powerhouse where nationalist policies have kept large output increases in check, has huge shale gas reserves ranked fourth in the world.

Beyond the focus on shale, energy strategists say Latin America's profile is set to rise as the global economy relies more on a range of energy sources, like sugarcane ethanol and the lithium found in the vast salt flats high in the Andes. New discoveries in recent months also underscore the potential to open new oil frontiers.

For instance, Tullow Oil, the British oil company that made a huge 2007 discovery off the coast of Ghana, said in September that it had found oil off French Guiana's coast, in a basin that may be geologically similar to West Africa.

Elsewhere in South America, the exodus of Venezuelan petroleum engineers after President Hugo Chávez purged Venezuela's oil industry of dissident employees is lifting the fortunes of neighboring Colombia, where output has roughly doubled in five years to almost one million barrels a day.

If Colombia improves security conditions further, officials see production climbing to 1.7 million barrels by 2020. In Brazil alone, output may increase from just above two million barrels a day to more than five million by 2020, about the equivalent of adding another Kuwait to world oil production.

The region's oil boom is notable not just for rising producers but also because energy-rich countries in Venezuela's ideological sphere of influence, which have asserted greater state control of natural resources, are largely being excluded from the output gains.

''We're coming to the end of the cycle of leftist ideology-driven politics in Latin America, which were a reaction to the free-market ideas fashionable in the '90s,'' said Roger Tissot, an independent energy consultant. ''More centrist positions are starting to prevail.''

Perhaps no country in the region better illustrates its potential -- and its capacity to fall short -- than Venezuela, which surpassed Saudi Arabia this year as the nation with the largest oil reserves, at 1.19 trillion barrels.

Pointing to the influence that Venezuela might possibly wield in global markets, the U.S. Geological Survey said that just one of its hydrocarbon assets, the heavy oil found in an area called the Orinoco Belt, called the Faja in Venezuela, is the largest oil accumulation it ever assessed.

But that geological good fortune arguably has not translated into broader energy clout for Venezuela. The country's regional influence has waned in recent years as its national oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, has struggled to raise output while focusing on other objectives like subsidized food distribution.

Venezuelan energy laws remain more welcoming to foreigners than those in Saudi Arabia or Mexico. But oil executives contend that a range of factors limit the advance of projects, including the difficulty in attaining financing in a country prone to nationalization and ceding control to Petróleos de Venezuela.

''The oil is there, but the conditions, both financial and physical, are so far from ready for prime time that getting foreigners to risk money in the Faja is one tough slog,'' said Francisco Toro, founder of the Venezuelan political blog Caracas Chronicles.

While Venezuela and Brazil maintain warm ties with one another, and have even explored collaborating on a refinery project in northeastern Brazil, one country's loss is effectively another's gain in regional political heft.

Brazil's new naval buildup, for instance, would give its military a heavier presence from its deepwater oil fields into South Atlantic sea lanes.

Other countries in the region, notably Colombia, have taken note of Brazil's experience in the 1990s of exposing Petrobras to market forces by issuing shares that now trade in São Paulo and New York, while still maintaining state control.

Of course, big challenges still await Brazil's energy industry. The devilish complexity of producing oil from its ''pre-salt'' discoveries off the coasts of the states of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, located in water 3,000 meters, or 9,800 feet, deep and beneath about 4,000 meters of salt, sand and rock, have some investors questioning whether Petrobras is overextending itself.

Just one discovery made in 2007, called Tupi at the time and now renamed Lula, may hold as much as eight billion barrels of oil and natural gas, making it a contender for second-largest field discovered in the past two decades, behind Kazakhstan's Kashagan Field.

The logistics of the new offshore fields, located so far into the Atlantic that Petrobras needs entire platforms midway to the coast where workers can sojourn between land and sea, are not the only challenges.

Bitter talks between Brasília and regional officials over royalties could delay development of new fields, and portend protracted revenue disputes. Middle East oil remains cheaper to produce, while cost overruns here could limit the ability to meet output targets.

Energy historians also warn that the bounty off Brazil's coast could become a resource curse when big inflows from oil exports start streaming in.

Brazilian leaders, guiding a highly diversified economy, seem aware of the risks. They have taken the important step of creating a sovereign wealth fund to invest some revenues.

The prophetic Venezuelan oil minister, Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo, who helped create OPEC five decades ago, understood an oil bonanza's hazards. He disparaged his country's triumphalism and spending sprees and what he called ''economic indigestion,'' when officials focused on megaprojects and neglected essentials like education.

''A wave of money,'' Mr. Pérez Alfonzo warned in the 1970s when Venezuela's prospects seemed as promising as Brazil's today, ''can destroy as well as create.''

Tell me, do you believe the US is planning a military invasion of the Middle East merely to get cheaper oil?

Speaking of cheaper oil, did you know about the unheard of price divergence between Canada/US and the rest of the world because of tar sands oil piling up in the storage tanks of Cushing, Oklahoma?  Right now, I believe it is $10 barrel, it has been as high as $25. 

I just checked.  On the NY Mercantile Exchange, price of a barrel of (US/Canada, called WTI) for delivery in Jan '12 is $97.14.   On the ICE (International Commodities Exchange)  it is  $107.02.   

Now this difference in price would evaporate if tar sands oil could get to the Gulf Coast, where there are huge oil tanker terminals.   There is no pipeline in Canada to carry any significant amount of oil to any coast.

There is proposal to build such a pipeline (from Cushing to the Gulf coast), which is now under review by the various US state and federal govts and agencies.  They would hardly want that if they wanted cheap oil!   And yet, in the US, the environmentalists are agitating for the the US to stop using tar sands oil.  No one, repeat, no one, is suggesting this pipeline not be built so the US can get cheaper oil.  All the opposition is from the left, from environmentalists.

However, as I saw in another article in the Financial Times this morning, I will type the relevant paragraphs:

The US oil price rose above $100 [that would be the spot price, not the price I quote above for delivery in the future] for the first time in four months this week as a key infrastructure bottleneck that had depressed West Texas Intermediate [WTI] seemed to be resolved....

The decision to reverse the Seaway Pipeline came as Enbridge, a Canadian company, said it would pay ConocoPhillips $1.15 billion to buy a 50% stake in the crude oil pipleline.  Together with co-owner Enterprise Products Partners, Enbridge will change the flow of oil to run south from landlocked Cushing, Oklahoma to the Gulf of Mexico.

If the US wanted cheap oil, they could try to prevent this.  Perhaps they could invade Canada!

No I do not beleiev they are planning one, but I can not read minds. . Howevr you might have noticed in the news a few years back, that they have already done so.   Of course the official reason were "weapons of mass destruction: But we all know they never found any. 

Is the US planning a military invasion of the middle east? what do you think has been going on for the last ten years? And you never heard of  the wars on Libya and Yemen and Somalia? And you never heard of Afghanistan or the attacks on Pakistan?

get real.

Follow the contenders for the republican leadership. Every one of them has called for world military domination. Every one. In fact, that was the policy of Bush and is the poicy of Obama. Have you never even read The Project for the New American Century?

And the world has not changed. The US policy has been expansion by conquest ever since the US was born. The whole centre and west of the United States was taken by conquest of native peoples and of Mexico. So was much of Latin America. Iran was taken by conquest but got away. Iraq was taken by conquest but is getting away. Libya was taken by conquest. Hawaii by conquest. they tried to take Canada by conquest.

The purpose of American foreign policy has always been expansion and conquest. Now that the European powers have lost their empires, the US is trying to win them.

Do you ever wonder why we're suddenly having all t hese wars. Do you seriously think we are helping people by bombing them?

The US wants the middle east to 1.profit from oil 2. have strategic bases - thus the interest in Syria. 3. Cut off the spread of Chinese competition.

Please read my previous post and explain why all opposition to the Canadian tar sands oil pipeline is coming from left wing environmentalists!

​As to this new development, I don't the carrying capacity, but the proposal for the other pipeline is still in the works.  There is a lot of oil in the tar sands.  Please also take the time to read about the finds in Brazil and explain why the US is not attempting to invade Brazil.

All right, Graeme, I will give some credit here.  At the time of the Iraq invasion, oil was a factor.  The Brazil discoveries had not been made, the tar sands were not up and rolling as they are now and the brand new technologies of the last few years did not exist.

This caused some exciteable types, notably William Kristol of the Weekly Standard (which I don't bother reading) and of the Project for the New American Century to get a little carried away.  They went to Iraq.  It cost them over $1 trillion for very little return.   The US population is totally turned off foreign adventures and Obama has said, everyone will be out of Iraq soon. 

There is no oil in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Yemen.  This is terrorist fever, which should have abated long before now, and the population of the NATO countries are all getting pretty tired of Afghanistan.  Even on the right!  I follow Canadian right wing sources, and many people feel we are wasting our time there.  So do many Americans.

Enlighten me. EO.  Can you name any right wing environmentalists?  Or any environmentalists that support the tar sands development.?

No, Alex.  You miss my point.

My point is that if right wing Americans wanted cheaper oil, they would join with the environmentalists is attempting to block that pipeline.   They are not.  Thus, among right wing circles in the US, trying to get cheaper oil by blocking that pipeline has entered no one's head.   Blocking the pipeline would be far easier than invading a foreign country and yet no one wants to do it on the right.

It is not about oil if you mean "is it about getting below $3,00 a gallon at US pumps?"

It is about oil when it comes to a stability of supply. It is about global supply and stable supply. If the US keeps everyone safe and sound with a supply of heating oil and gas they can afford at the pumps.... (because who owns it is not allowed to use US capitalism (supply and demand prices) ....then the US is still the world's saviour by being the heavy you make friends with so you have no enemies.

It is about the government and the oil corporations co-determining the mandate. It is about the oil industry and its influence in governments (including the US's, but not only the US's).

BTW A little place called Vietnam is the third largest oil producer is SE Asia.

It is not rocket science.

I want what you have. You want what I have. I want you to buy what I have but I want what you have for free. (Capitalism is about making PROFITS not fair trading) So, I sell you guns and bombs then I demonize you. I declare war and I set up bases or I stay to "supervise" Simple as pie.

SG, Did you read what I wrote?  The oil of the world is becoming more and more not it in the Middle East!   

If they want cheaper oil, why don't they block the pipeline?  I am asking a simple question.  

the oil sands were in full production BEFORE the Iraq invasion.

You are the only person I have ever heard, left or right, who believes that oil supply is not a problem, and will go on forever.

If you define environmentalists as left wing, then of course all environmentalists are right wing.

Do you actually know what you mean by right wing? I doubt it very much.

And don't write off Kristol as a minor player. VP Cheney u nder Bush was a signatory to the project for the new american century. So was Bush's brother, Jeb. That gang ran the white house under Bush. They still do.

Nor is the spending of a trillion dollars on war a small error to be disregarded - not to mention the killing of at least hundreds of thousands of people.

You may be confident about the supply of oil. the oil industry is not. Why on earth do you think they are going for increasingly expensive, environmentally dangerous, and dangerous to human health forms of oil extraction? Read sources, by all means. But use some common sense.

I did not say

- that tar sands oil was an environmentally good option

- that oil is going to go on forever.

Really, Graeme, I cannot believe how you simply make sweeping assumptions whilst ignoring all the details.  It seems to me that you want to ignore details because they often do no support your sweeping assumptions.

My point about left/right wing was to emphasize the lack of anyone of that mindset attempting to block that pipeline.  

Whether or not I know what right or left wing means scarcely seems relevant to the topic.  If you think I am misusing, say so, cut the innuendo.

Oil is obviously not going to go on forever, but it is going to go on for somewhat longer than we had first thought.   And when runs out, it will be gone everywhere, won't it? What does that have to do with the topic?

I believe the neo-conservative movement (which is what is officially called), is pretty much dead.  It was an idea to spread democracy around the world.  Not all the people who bought into this were by any means motivated by oil, either.  Some of them were genuine if misguided humanitarians.  (Cheney was not a real neo-conservative, just a classic jerk and all-round bad guy, my opinion of him is probably very similar to yours)

However, the Iraq experience has seared into the minds of at least two generations of people the folly of foreign adventures.  

I really don't why these drone attacks continue in places like Yemen.  There is no oil there, they have got Osama, I would expect them to wind down.    

I mean to start a thread explaining one very knowledgeable man's theory of why we should not be in Afghanistan.  However, his viewpoint is not standard and it might just start a firestorm, as apparently any mention of the words "oil" and "US" in the same sentence do.

However, I just started this thread, let us see if anyone else weighs in.  Meanwhile, I am going to do some research on who using oil in Iraq, I believe the biggest player is China at the moment.  I could be wrong.

I don't think the US wants all of the oil, so a pipeline is not necessarily in conflict with right wing interests. The thing is, the US doesn't need all of the oil, right this second; they just want to maintain an orderly supply to themselves and their allies. 

It's not likely that Canada is going to sell to Iran and North Korea, so the only thing a pipeline can do is bring the tar sands more money, and help them expand and increase the efficiency of their refinement (not to mention that quite a few american oil companies have stakes in the oil sands, and stand to profit).

As for right-wing opposition to the pipeline, one does not have to be an environmentalist to bend to the will of one's constituents. The pipeline (which will distribute to several locations in the US, not just the Gulf Coast) will have to run over wetlands, and aquifers. Citizens--even the ones with gun racks in their trucks--don't want pollution in their drinking water. They don't have to be environmentalists, because their concern is out of self interest. Any right wing politician who goes against the wishes of her constituents, risks political backlash. 

As for huge price differentials, I can't really see that being the case (maybe you could point to one of your sources). The oil is already exported to China, so why would they sell at a discount, when they could get full price? Oil is oil and the stuff from the tar sands is refined. Commodity prices are set by the global market, and if Canada sells internationally, why would they undercut (is it even possible to do so?) market price? This would only serve to lower the price. And seeing as projected costs for production for new oil developments in the sands are roughly $30-35 per barrel, why slash profits any further (source)

the oil sands project is not sustainable. That is the story in today's Gazette (Montreal).

The stuff is too dirty to be economic or acceptable to many buyers. A pipeline to the Pacific coast to export it to Asia would be expensive, take a long time to build, and run into considerable opposition. Nobody is keen to soak up hte pollution that has already done so much damage in Alberta. It could be run to the east coast. Same problems, only bigger.

To drill for such a dirty and expensive form of oil was an act of desperation in the first place. You don't do that if the world has endless supplies of oil.

Don't always assume that the latest source you read is the right one.

EasternOrthodox,

Since WWI oil, and the access to it, has been a key domestic and foreign policy issue. The US has reserves. How? Why? (Note, from an environmental angle, it would not support the stockpiling by another other country)  Business is how and why. It is cheaper to use foreign oil than your own and you get to keep your own... So, how do you maintain access and make sure the cost satys low...?

The US is the one who championed foreign governments not owning the oil... it allowed US oil companies to move in. The British and the US struggled for dominance in "controlling" oil in the Middle East. Look into the Red Line Agreements.  

Mexico's nationalization pissed the US off and they worked to make sure it would not happen in Venezuala and other places with paperwork... Would they with military? They did not have to, they stood by while the elected leader in Venezuala was ousted (1948) and supported the cruel dictatorship that took over for decades. Why? Oil.

Look into who nationalized... Really look...

Just one name...Iran. Oh, then a coup removed Mossadeq and the new leader reached an agreement with western interests. Hmmm

So, why don't they support ____(pipeline)? Well, because it is not just ONE oil company, one family, one corporation....

So, one just looks in history and sees that when it was was Roosevelt and ARAMCO and a pipline from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean.... the companies that stood to make $ supported it. Those who compete against those companies and domestic suppliers did not and said it is unfair competition or it was bad for --- (these reasons).....

What goes through does so because of benefits to the major US players.

SG

Are you suggesting that only Iran has nationalized their oil?   If so you are totally wrong.  I may have misread you so I will await your reply. 

I can definitely find you sources that show a $10-$25 a barrel difference in the price of oil on the New York Mercantile Exchange the International Commodities Exchange (it varies over time of course).  The price of oil is set by supply and demand, it is not a case of discounts.   

I apologize for the problems with the Financial Times.  No other publication is so fussy!   But I am afraid they will but me off if I cut and paste from there again.  Still, this price difference was all over the financial news for months so I am sure I can dig something up tonight.  I am work now.

You're prefectly right, EO. Oil has nothing to do with it. It's just a coincidence that Libya and Iraq and Iran have it. The US amred forces (and us) have been spending vast sums of money and torturing and killing civilians on a huge scale  just to bring them democracy. God Bless America.

Incidentally, ALL republican contenders have now publicly agreed that it is US destiny to dominate the world. Isn't that sweet and thoughtful of them?

Oil certainly influences politics, but it is not the only factor.  You seem to see things as either 0 or 1.    "The US in 100% planning to dominate the world."   I find this 100% hard to accept.  Some people want the US to dominate the world, but the figure is far less 100% and in any case, they cannot dominate the world.

We are are in a position now where US power is declining.  Why does that not make you happy?

Also, you keep ignoring Europe.  They have oil companies too, and they are very involved in the Middle East.  Their oil companies are not American owned in any way.  I will try to dig up some statistics, but I do a have a full time job (Monday was  a flex day) and sometime I would like to do other things with my spare time.

I suppose it is because I have been reading the financial media for several years.  I just automatically know how big of player Europe is.  And China is up and coming too.  I will get around to it, or wait till I see a relevant article (and hope it is not in the uncongenial Financial Times with their rules and cutting and pasting).

But I always read The New York Times too, and you could not call them right wing.  

In today's Financial Times  (I have to type this by hand)

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/967a332a-146d-11e1-8367-00144feabdc0.html

Saudi Arabia halts $100 billion oil expansion

[...]
 

Khalid al-Falih, chief executive of state-owned Saudi Aramco, said on Monday that pressure on Riyadh to raise its output capacity had "substantially reduced", the clearest indication yet that the world's top oil producer is not pushing ahead with as assumed expansion plan to 15 million b/day by the end of 2020.

[...]

Oil prices reached a two-year high of more than $125 a barrel [ICE] this year after the civil war broke out in Libya since then the cost of Brent [ICE], the global benchmark, has fallen back to $105 a barrel due to the impact of the financial crisis....Riyadh boosted its oil output to 10 million b/d earlier this year, the highest in 30 years, to compensate for the loss of production in Libya.

[....]

...Amrita Sen, an oil analyst at Barclays Capital in London, noted, however, that the decision not to expand further comes at a time of pressing budgetary needs.  "The current focus of Saudi is on domestic social spending on the back on Arab Spring," she said.

Here is confirmation of the $125 a barrel price of oil of global market at the recent peak (ICE = International Commodities Exchange), the oil is called "Brent."  

Also, Saudi Arabia has made this decision based on lack of demand, and made the decision all on its own, without the US holding a gun to its head.  Saudi runs its own country and oil fields these days, lest there be any doubt at all.  (And they are Saudi owned, as the article states).

EO,

I was saying that Iran, among many other nations as far back as Mexico, have nationalized (or threatened to do so). I am saying it always makes the US shit bricks and drop bombs sometimes.

EO - I am fascinated to read the US does not wish a hundred percent to dominate the world. I have no idea what that means. But I'm happy to hear it.

Let's see. It maintains aggressive action in South America, supporting dictators, encouraging civil wars, and threatening countries like Venezuela. It has troops all over Africa. It has co-opted NATO as its personal UN. It has established bases in Austrialia in whay Obama has made clear is a confrontation with China. It has threatened Pakistan - not just terrorists, but the Pakistan government. It is at war in Afghanistan.

It is pushing for oil exploration in the north, and has consistently ignored Canada's claim to it. It is threatening Iran and Syria.

It maintains far the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. It operates hundreds of bases all over the world. It fires drones at whomever it pleases.

It has special ops assassination teams all over the world, exercising the God-given right to kill citizens of any country. It claims the right to change governments in any country it chooses.

Every republican contender has declared in favour of world domination.

But you're quite right. There is, so far as I know, no plan to invade the Antarctic. So it's not a hundred percent.

Please learn to use the QUOTE button so you can discuss my arguments one at a time.  You did not answer some of my arguments, like the role of Europe.

Another nag coming on:  please try to make your posts readable, using double spaces between paragraphs.  I find it hard to read extremely long blocks of text.

I am just sayin'.  If the situation is that bad, you need make some effort.   Get that computer fixed!  We can go through cut and paste again.

I can walk you through the QUOTE button too.

Except for Mossadeq in 1953 in Iran, where else did the US physically intervene to stop nationalization?    They certainly did not drop bombs on Saudi Arabia when they nationalized.

(You know why they did it in Iran?  A favor to Britain, who was flat broke after WW II and needed cheap oil.  That does not justify it, of course, but we seem to have forgotten there are other actors in the world besides the US).

The daily Commodities note from the editor, Financial Times.  I can cut and paste because it is an e-mail!

Note from the editor

Exxon’s Kurd deal contradicts conventional wisdom

By Javier Blas

Conventional wisdom says that the interests of US ‘Big Oil’ and Washington go hand-in-hand. Thus, many see ExxonMobil, the largest US oil company, as an extension of the US State Department. The recent events in Iraq appear to discredit that theory.

Exxon last month signed a landmark deal with the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq to explore for oil. 

The deal triggered an immediate protest from the federal government in Baghdad, which runs a de facto ban on oil companies operating both in the oil-rich south of Iraq and, at the same time, investing in projects under the Kurdistan Regional Government. Baghdad had already warned Exxon it risked losing a contract to develop the giant West Qurna field in the south of the country.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Washington appears to have been left in the dark about the deal, which many executives believe could have profound ramifications for the global oil market. The International Energy Agency forecast that Iraq would be the single most important source of new oil production between now and 2035, making the development of the country’s energy industry critical for international oil markets.

The US State Department has now made it clear that it knew nothing about the deal and that it does not like it.

An edited version of the transcript of the department’s Tuesday briefing, below, provides a rare insight into the relations between ‘Big Oil’ companies and governments.

Reporter: What does the US government think about the fact that Exxon went ahead and cut this deal [with the Kurdistan Regional Government]?

State Department: Well, first to say that the United States has advised all of our companies, including ExxonMobil, that want to invest in the Iraqi [energy] sector that they run significant political and legal risks if they sign contracts with any parties in Iraq before there has been a national agreement to work out the complex issues having to do with oil revenue distribution within Iraq. [ ...]

Reporter: So you’ve told them for ages that they should not – that they run significant risk if they go ahead and do this absent the revenue-sharing agreement, which has not been there despite the fact that they’ve been trying to work this out for seven or eight years, right? So did you specifically advise Exxon against this specific deal?

SD: I can’t speak to whether anybody at Exxon spoke to anybody in US [government] about its intention to go ahead and sign this. But we have had conversations with Exxon for some time, as we have with all of our firms, advising them to wait for national legislation. 

Reporter: The Iraqi government is saying that they may sanction Exxon. Normally it’s the US government that is slapping sanctions on other people. In this instance, does it strike you as warranted on the part of the Iraqi government to consider sanctioning Exxon for doing something that you yourselves have advised them was not a good idea? 

SD: Well, I’m not going to get into the business of advising the Iraqi government one way or the other how to respond to this. Simply to say that our message to Iraq and to all the parties involved in the crafting of national legislation is that this is overdue. That it is in Iraq’s interest to get this done so that companies like Exxon can invest in a way that is legally viable and sustainable. That said, you know, when Exxon has sought our advice about this, we asked them to wait for national legislation. We told them we thought that was the best course of action.

So much for conventional wisdom.

Just in,

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/2d1d203e-163b-11e1-b4b1-00144feabdc0.html...

Brazil suspends Chevron over oil spill'

The Financial Times

Brazil has temporarily banned Chevron from drilling in the country after it caused an oil spill off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, raising doubts about the company's role in one the industry's biggest investment programs.

ANP, Brazil's oil and gas regular, accused the US company of negligence late on Wednesday morning, announcing it would suspend all of the Chevron's drilling until clarified the reasons for a spill that released almost 3,000 barrels of oil into the sea earlier this month....

Does anyone expect the US govt to do anything about this, let alone get physically agressive?   Also, take note how the importance of this new oil project, which is not in the middle east.

Do we understand that negotiated contracts had expiry dates? Those deals where companies came in and got it up and running and the nation made concesssions for that?

Iran

Iraq

Nigeria- sanctions, no sanctions... depending on leader and what you will say to what we ask....

Saudi Arabia - puppets, why else would 911 folks come from here and SA face no ramifications when the US was warring with everyone in the area with or without ties....

Libya

Does the US intervene at nationalization of foreign oil? Yes. How and how heavily depends. It is bullets and bombs one time and place and denial of aid another time and place... it depends. It depends on what the country needs, what will motivate them....

Te US has an interventionist foreign policy, period. . They are a nation that went from isolationist to intervenionist policies during and after WWII.

Only America could save the world for democracy.

The New Deal aided big business and the wealthy by propping up capitalism. The nation moved from democratic to capitalistic.

My opinion is that it also tied workers down , brought about monopolies, key players....the guise of wartime restrictions kept the poor further down... then fear omngering and McCarthyism meant there would only be allowed token opposition.

The US intervenes where it feels it needs to and where it wants to. If people could not get coffee beans tomorrow, something would happen.

BTW the US is not alone. There are power players. They are at the UN. They are at G8's and G20's...

Gee, never heard of US threats to  Chavez in Venezuela for nationalizing oil?

The US intervened in Iran to help Britain? Get real.

1. The US got a major cut of contol of Iranian oil out of its intervention.

2. One reason Britain was broke after the war was because the US made it broke. There was NO Marshall Plan aid for Britain, for example. The US ordered Britain NOT to liberate its profit producing colony of Hong Kong. They also ordered France NOT to retake Vietnam (Indo-China). When the French send a ship in to Hanoi harbour, US carrier aircraft bombed it.

Britain, too, ignored the order - but it's fleet was too big for a bombing.

In any case, the US proposed to help Britain by overthrowing a democratically elected government in Iran and stealing its oil? Does that really make sense to you?

 trying to get charts, having problems, at work, will try from home tonight.  Cheers everyone!

ICE Brent Crude Oil Front Month summary

NYMEX Crude Oil Front Month Summary

Holy moly.  I used Snagit at work to clip those out the Financial Times.  But at work my browser won't permit me to drag and drop.   Also, you cannot load photos directly here, you must load them else, and drag and drop them (i.e., the site is only storing the pointer to where you picture is, not the picture itself).

So I uploaded them to Facebook, which took ages because it was my first time trying to create an album.  Now I have a charming album with those two charts in it.

Anyway....if you towards the right hand side of the July square, you see the NYMEX (the North American price) start to drop, while Brent ICE (world price), does not decline nearly as much.  Now NYMEX is rebounding, as worries about Libya are over and I as mentioned above, a Canadian company is buying a 50% share in an existing pipeline that currently flows from the Gulf to Cushing.  They will reverse the flow, thus finally getting the Canadian oil to a coast with lots of oil tankers.

Just wanted to prove that the difference in price was as high as $25 a barrel.  And no one was trying to block Canada from trying the get the oil to the Gulf coast (at least, no business people were, thus indicating that the US is not sitting around day and night thinking only of ways to get cheap oil, by fair means or foul).

The article I reprinted from the Financial Times about Exxon in Iraq also shows the State Dept's attention seems to be wandering.  They knew nothing about Exxon's plans, and did not approve of the plans when they found out.  They want to play by Iraq's rules.

I am too tired now to address further points.  I will come back on the weekend.

Yes, the world's oil will last forever, even as China and India triple (At least)  the demand for it. That's why, for several decades now, we've been looking for more expensive and polluting ways to find it. It's the joy of the challenge.

I am ignoring ranting.

The US is slipping in Sudan.   China is moving in, getting cozy with the North (oil is in the South).. 

"The U.S. special envoy, Princeton Lyman, declares that we have no cards to play. "

The New Republic (a liberal opinion magazine):

http://www.tnr.com/article/world/97921/south-sudan-khartoum-obama?utm_source=The+New+Republic&utm_campaign=af48728194-TNR_Daily_113011&utm_medium=email

How War Reignited In Sudan While No One Was Looking

• Eric Reeves

• November 30, 2011 | 12:00 am

Violence has escalated in recent weeks in many places in both (north) Sudan and the newly independent Republic of South Sudan. This is especially true in Blue Nile and South Kordofan—border states that ended up in the North, but are home to large populations that fought with the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and identify with southerners—militarily, politically, and culturally. Many Sudan observers are being asked if renewed war can be avoided in this tortured country. Responses vary, but the simplest answer is that it can’t, because it has already begun.

The bellicose rhetoric from the North’s leaders in Khartoum is more intense now than at any time since the separation of the North and the South on July 9. And it’s not just rhetoric. On November 3, Northern forces seized the city of Kurmuk in Blue Nile, which had been the bastion of those forces of the SPLA in the North that refused to disarm—the SPLA North (or SPLA-N), as they are known. (The SPLA-N’s reluctance to disarm within territories in the North is understandable: Given the ruthlessly vengeful and militarily unconstrained government in Khartoum unilateral disarming would be tantamount to suicide for people living in the North but identifying with the South.) Just after the seizure, Sudanese President and Field Marshal Omar Al Bashir declared that the northern regime was ready for war with the South and that it had lost all patience with “provocation” from Juba—the southern capital.

Withdrawal by SPLA-N from Kurmuk prevented a civilian massacre, but the attack on the city sent tens of thousands of civilians fleeing into Ethiopia—adding to the hundreds of thousands of refugees displaced by military activities that began this summer, when the northern regime began an assault on the disputed border region of Abyei. Furthermore, the strategic military consequences of the North’s entry into Kurmuk are ominous. The Satellite Sentinel Project (SSP) has recently reported that the North’s forces immediately began to expand the airfield outside Kurmuk, which is only about 40 miles from the border with Upper Nile State in the South.

Assaults by the North on southern territories soon accelerated. On November 8, in the remote Mabaan region of Upper Nile State, the North’s bombers killed and wounded more than a dozen people, according to humanitarian sources on the ground. On November 10, the North bombed Yida refugee camp in the southern Unity State, home to some 23,000 civilians. One bomb, which did not detonate, landed next to a school where 200 children were present. The attack was confirmed by journalists from Reuters and the BBC, a humanitarian organization on the ground in Yida, and UN investigators, but the chief army spokesman for the North and, incredibly, Khartoum’s ambassador to the UN, denied that it took place.

In addition to these direct attacks, Khartoum’s proxy war is accelerating in the South. In the past few months, renegade rebel forces—almost certainly funded and organized by the North—have been destabilizing the South by repeatedly attacking civilian targets, especially in Unity State and Jonglei. Analysis of evidence by the Small Arms Survey (produced in Geneva) makes clear that these rebel forces have been heavily armed with weapons of Chinese manufacture, which could only have come from Khartoum. (A November 16 statement issued by Chinese and Sudanese officials asserted an increasing and deepening military cooperation between Khartoum and Beijing.) These so-called “rebel groups” are nothing more than brutal mercenaries, deployed to create leverage if negotiations ever begin—or tie up southern military forces if war expands.

The consequences of the renewed violence of the past month have been myriad—compounding problems that began to worsen this summer. Several international aid organizations—including Oxfam—have been forced to withdraw from the border-state region, particularly Blue Nile and South Kordofan, where Khartoum has imposed a total embargo on humanitarian assistance. Since May, perhaps as many as a half-million people have been displaced, and the number of refugees has only increased with the recent violence. These people are on the move as the critical November harvest should be underway. Instead of consuming cultivated crops, people are relying on reserve food stocks. (Although, there isn’t much to harvest; the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization expects the harvests to “fail.”)

Productive negotiations between the North and the South seem increasingly unlikely: Just before a key meeting was to begin in Addis Ababa last week under African Union auspices, the North balked and proposed deliberately preposterous and unacceptable terms for oil revenue sharing. (The South possesses most of the region’s oil reserves.) This is consistent with past behavior. A June 28 agreement to resolve the armed hostilities that took place over the summer in South Kordofan and Blue Nile was renounced by President Bashir three days later. A month later, the North invaded Blue Nile.

And the world’s response to such behavior? There seems a perverse inability (or cynical unwillingness) to connect these conspicuous dots. The U.S. special envoy, Princeton Lyman, declares that we have no cards to play. All we can do is “promote negotiations,” Lyman declared in an interview with Darfur’s Radio Dabanga. For its part, the UN indulges in a predictable moral equivalence, urging both sides to exercise restraint. This facile exhortation does not acknowledge the restraint the South has already shown in the face of a year’s worth of cross-border bombing attacks. 

The U.S. is not, however, without leverage. It should respond in the following five ways:

1. Shut down all talk of debt relief for Khartoum. Given the highly distressed state of the northern economy, Khartoum is desperate for debt relief. Germany and France have both made gestures toward this. The U.S. should make it clear it will use all its political power to prevent debt relief for the North until it makes a just peace with the parties in Sudan and grants full humanitarian access to all populations affected by conflict.

2. Keep Sudan on the State Department list of terrorism-sponsoring nations. The U.S. should keep Sudan on this list until all aerial bombardments in Blue Nile, South Kordofan, and Darfur stop. (Removal from the list requires the State Department to certify that no acts of terrorism have been committed or supported by a regime on the list for the six prior months).

3. Make U.S. satellite reconnaissance showing Khartoum’s military actions against civilians public. Using its massive satellite resources, the U.S. should publicize the scale and nature of Khartoum’s military actions. Unlike the SSP, the U.S. intelligence community has no limit on the resolution (pixels per square centimeter) of its images or weather constraints on its surveillance capabilities. So far, however, the Obama administration has been inert in responding to or augmenting the critical findings of SSP.

4. Accelerate defensive arms deliveries to South Sudan, particularly anti-aircraft weaponry, as well as surveillance and communications equipment.

5. Use military force to deter the bombing of civilians. The U.S. should declare that for every military air attack on civilians or humanitarians, it will destroy (by cruise missile) an aircraft at the major northern air base in el-Obeid.

What can’t be doubted is that if the U.S. and its allies do not quickly change the calculus guiding decisions being made in Khartoum—right now—expansion of war is inevitable.

Eric Reeves is a professor at Smith College and author of A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide. 

Brilliant. The US will carry out humanitarian bombings. Great. And who will bomb the US for humanitarians reasons - such as  stopping its slaughter of a half million in Cambodia, several million in Vietnam, a million in Iraq, hundreds of perhaps thousands of civilians killed by drones in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen - and undisclosed numbers in Afghanistat. Wonderful t hing, humanitarian bombing.

It is just the writer's suggestions.  And he is saying bomb a plane on the ground.  

And furthermore, why do keep changing the subject?    Is that how you teach your students how to debate?  Start talking about Cambodia in the 1970's when the subject is the Sudan now, in which the US is currently doing nothing?

I am trying to demonstrate that the US is not trying to control the Middle East militarily for oil.  That is the thread topic. This would be an example.

I know. In fact,  you were so convinced of your point it said the dissenting view was garbage. That's pretty strong. I didn't see any evidence except yet another of your "sources".

Yes, I'm sure they would have bombed Libya even if it didn't have oil. They would kill people for humanitarian reasons. The oil companies make no secret of what they want. Why don't you quote them as a source?

There's also something called strategic position. Read up on that, and note the current interest in Syria.

(I mentioned the bombing of Cambodia because, after China, the US has been the number two deliberate killer of civilians since 1950 or so. So don't give me this stuff about humanitarian concerns.)

Sorry you don't like my "sources."   Life goes on.  Perhaps I should have titled thread, "Untrue" instead of "Garbage".   Too late now, and it would not make any difference to your reaction anyway.

This thread is not about whether or not the US is humanitarian.  It is about the topic in the title.   I have given 2 examples where the US seems not terribly concerned about two Middle Eastern countries (Iraq and Sudan) where oil is at stake.   You don't trust my "sources" (the Financial Times and for the second one, someone who has written a book about Sudan).   Two examples, of course, does not prove my statment.  But I will keep posting them as I see them. 

Syria does not have much oil.  It is nearly depleted, what it does have. 

From the Wall Street Journal:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020447950457663873160019138...

For what  Syria has, look at a map. It has position. That's what Afghanistan has, too.

You've heard of Gibraltar? Same idea.

Any of your sources tell you that Turkey is actively supplying, training and supporting rebel forces in Syria? Gee - Turkey must be a Christian country acting for humanitarian reasons. Saudi Arabia, led by its humanitarian dictator, fundamantilist moslem king, is also acting for humanitarian reasons.

The heading for this threat should have been "source questions idea that US goes to war for oil."

Instead - you solemnly pronounce that any contrary view is garbage.  And all because you've found a source.

You have to understand that a source, all by itself, proves nothing.  I can find sources that tell us Obama is a secret moslem, and that he was not born in the US. I can find you sources that say Elvis is alive.

Sources are evidence. But evidence is not proof. There is evidence that at the age of 14, I set fire to the railway freight yards in Montreal. The evidence is that I was nearby at the time. It was evidence. But it wasn't proof.

You sound like a global-warming denier.  You will never believe anything I post, no matter where it is from.

You know perfectly well I post from reputable sources.   To suggest this is in the same category as saying Elvis is alive, is just ridiculous.

Just ignore my posts, you don't have to read them.  Or do you just enjoy insulting me?  I am coming to that conclusion...

One does not have to go to "reputable sources". One can go to the horse's mouth.

Declassified British documents from the 1940's and 50's openly speak of setting up sheikdoms to maintain a cheap and steady supply of oil. The US in 1958 openly communicated a modernization of those sheikdoms. They also let it be known they would protect or take down regimes based on hydrocarbons.

Dana Rohrabacher (R-Ca) former White House Special Assitant to Ronald Reagan testified before the Senate Foreign Reltaions Subcommittee on S Asia about empowering the Taliban (yes empowering the Taliban) to stabilize the area to build a pipeline from Central Asia through Afghanistan to Pakistan.

There is a 2001 study commissioned by Dick Cheney, remember him, that said there would be a global oil crunch and there would be a need to "militarily intervene" for stability related to the supply of, you guessed it, hydrocarbons.

Do we need more? Do we not trust the US via declassified and leaked documents to be telling the truth about their own motives and intentions? What else is there but standing on the roof top screaming "blood for oil"?

My point is that oil is being discovered in other parts of the world outside the Middle East, and new technology is resulting in oil being extracted in the US itself again.   

I do not deny what you say SG, but times change.  In particular, references to the colonial period, now sixty years ago, are seriously out of date.