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Week 3 - January 20st - 2003 |
| David
Seaton's Energy Links® Editorial
It is becoming increasingly apparent
that the cold war, the Soviet threat, was the keystone to America's
world presence. Confronting the USSR was the heart of its power
and influence, not McDonalds, high technology, high finance or Mickey Mouse.
The cold war was, in fact, the "Empire". Power is a mysterious thing. It
depends on a multitude of factors: military might, economic strength and
also intangibles: "soft" qualities, such as will power and seductiveness.
In many ways it depends as much on other's consent as on brute strength
itself. Certainly the whole is rarely the sum total of the parts. This
is increasingly evident for the "lonely superpower" as the crises in Iraq,
Korea and Venezuela develop. During the cold war any threat of a leftist
regime in Venezuela, much less its oil being actually cut off would have
called forth a swift US invasion similar to Panama's Noriega hunt. Korea
under the Soviet and Chinese umbrella, would have found that the risks
involved in developing a nuclear weapon capability far outweighed the possible
rewards. Most of all, the world's fear of the Soviet Union's ideological
and military expansion in any of these areas would have guaranteed the
speedy acquiescence and cooperation of American allies in facing such potential
scenarios. Today America is pulling strings, cajoling, bribing and threatening
all and sundry to gain support for its takeover of Iraqi oil and yet its
allies - with the exception of the governments, if not the peoples, of
Britain and Spain - are not streaming on board. It seems to me that Washington
is entirely lucid about how useful the USSR was and is hunting around desperately
to find some, any ideological reason such as the "war on terrorism" - essentially
a police and intelligence operation - to justify its huge world-wide military
presence. Obviously "war for oil" is not good enough. America's road system,
covering the huge distances between suburban homes and urban offices, aggravated
by its glaring lack of viable public transport means that the price of
gasoline is critical to US economic viability. To say that this in turn
requires the deaths of hundreds, perhaps many thousands of Iraqi civilians
is not an attractive selling proposition even for Americans themselves.
The Internet is a factor too as hostile world opinion is quickly being
formed and organized outside the corporate and state media in ways that
discomfit allied governments. Growing numbers of ordinary citizens are
beginning to ask awkward question and find increasingly disquieting answers.
More and more unexpected obstacles to the White House's strategies appear
and frustration at the world's obstinacy is growing. Perhaps instead of
the end of the cold war followed by globalization being the dawn of the
American Empire it is, in fact, the beginning of the "sun setting" on it.
David Seaton
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Post-Saddam
energy visions (International Herald Tribune)
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| Venezuela
Crisis Complicates Iraq Situation, Experts Say (New York Times)
The crisis in Venezuela is creating major new complications for the Bush administration's campaign to oust President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, causing oil shortages that would probably make a Persian Gulf war more costly to the economy than once anticipated, American officials and industry experts said. The 40-day strike has virtually shut down Venezuela's oil industry, the fifth-largest in the world, and proven more difficult to resolve than the administration expected, the officials said. Efforts to end the stalemate between President Hugo Chávez and his opponents have been hamstrung not only by the intransigence of both sides in Venezuela, but also mistrust toward American diplomats, the officials added. Venezuela has for decades been one of the most dependable sources of petroleum for the United States, where industry analysts say the strike has already hurt some refineries and driven up the retail price of gasoline by at least a dime a gallon. Those shortages will only worsen, and prices continue to rise, if the United States attacks Iraq, they predicted. That means that war in the Persian Gulf could prove more costly to the American economy than had been projected if the Venezuelan standoff is not ended soon. For that reason the Bush administration has been debating plans to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which contains nearly 600 million gallons of crude. For now, though, the White House has decided to defer those plans, mainly to keep oil available in case of war in Iraq, administration officials said. "A few months ago everybody thought that if we went to war in Iraq oil wouldn't be a major problem, because there was enough spare capacity to make up for lost Iraqi oil," said Larry Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation Inc., a research organization. "But no one then was contemplating lost Venezuelan oil." "Now," he said, "we won't have enough spare capacity to take care of both those events." Click here to read more Contents |
| U.S.
Quest for Oil in Africa Worries Analysts, Activists (Los Angeles Times)
The Bush administration's search for more secure sources of oil is leading it to the doorsteps of some of the world's most troubled and repressive regimes: the petroleum-rich countries of West Africa. Government and energy industry officials say the strategy is a sensible way to reduce U.S. dependence on Middle East oil, particularly if it's accompanied by aggressive efforts to promote economic development and governmental reform. But some oil analysts and activists fear the administration may be repeating mistakes of the past, when the U.S. tolerated questionable practices by allied governments to advance its Cold War and energy security interests. Potential trouble spots include Equatorial Guinea, where officials confiscate oil payments and violate human rights "with impunity," according to the State Department; Angola, where oil financed three decades of civil war and which has billions of petrodollars deposited in offshore accounts; and Nigeria, where poverty deepened dramatically while officials squandered $30 billion in oil revenue. Other African producers with documented records of governmental corruption, electoral fraud, financial mismanagement or human rights abuses include Chad, Cameroon and the Republic of Congo. Although some of the countries have taken tentative steps toward reform, U.S. officials say conditions remain generally poor in the region. "We're dealing with many governments that have never really experienced democracy or the rule of law, so it's problematic," said House Africa Subcommittee Chairman Edward R. Royce (R-Fullerton). "We need to bring some pressure to bear." "You could paint a very disturbing picture," Walter Kansteiner, assistant secretary of State for African affairs, acknowledged in recent remarks to oil executives in Houston. "These are dire times in Africa. And yet, on the other side of the coin, there is a continent that is truly the last emerging market." Interest in African oil has been heightened by preparations for a possible U.S.-led war against Iraq, by a strike by Venezuelan oil workers and by political instability in Saudi Arabia, all of which underscore America's vulnerability as its appetite for oil grows. West Africa already supplies about 12% of U.S. crude oil imports, and the National Intelligence Council predicts its share will rise to 25% by 2015. Click here to read more Contents |
| Caspian
oil: Fields of dreams (Economist)
(...)The discovery of the Kashagan field seems to be at the root of the government’s efforts to nudge contracts more in its favour. Kashagan is one of the largest discoveries of oil anywhere in the past 30 years. Since the field was found, the Kazakhstani government of President Nursultan Nazabaev has passed a new foreign-investment law. This limits the rights of foreign companies to appeal against government decisions affecting their contracts. This time round, the government wants to concede less than it did over Tengiz and two other big oil fields in western Kazakhstan being developed by Tengizchevroil. For their part, foreign companies have been willing to revisit their original contracts, but most now feel that the Kazakhstani government is demanding too much. In May, Mr Nazabaev took an important step by finalising a bilateral agreement with Russia on how to divide up the two countries’ respective sectors of the Caspian Sea. Azerbaijan also seems to have reached understandings with Russia and Kazakhstan. But there is still no agreement with the other states in the area, Iran and Turkmenistan. Iran, in particular, is holding out for a bigger share. The presidents of the five Caspian countries gathered for the first time in April to discuss the issue at a summit in Ashgabat, the Turkmen capital. But the meeting failed to produce anything concrete. Viktor Kalyuzhny, Russian’s deputy foreign minister, said in December that a second summit could be held in Tehran, the Iranian capital, this year. Even if Kazakhstan does manage to get the oil from the Kashagan field out of the ground, it needs to keep its neighbours sweet in order to transport the stuff to market. At the moment Kazakhstan has two pipelines, both of which run through Russia: the Caspian Pipeline Consortium pipeline, in which ChevronTexaco has a big stake; and the smaller Atyrau-Samara pipeline. These will cope with the volume of oil expected over the next three years. But once the oil starts to flow from Kashagan, which is scheduled to start producing in 2005, the Kazakhstanis will have to find a third route. One possibility is to use the pipeline that will run from Baku in Azerbaijan to Turkey via Tbilisi in Georgia. Although long considered uneconomic, the pipeline finally found a sponsor in BP and is expected to be completed by 2005. That will please the American government, which is anxious to find an alternative to the existing routes through Russia. The governments of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are already talking about a possible deal. However, even if one is agreed, Kazakhstani oil would still have to be shipped by tankers across the Caspian to Baku. That is because there are still no firm plans to build a pipeline under the sea. And for as long as the Caspian states fail to agree on how to carve up the territory between them, there are unlikely to be any plans. Click here to read more Contents |
| The
Dawn of the Hydrogen Economy (Rifkin - The Globalist)
(...)In recent months, U.S. government concerns over the availability of oil in the Middle East has intensified because of the prospect of war with Iraq, the escalating violence between Israel and the Palestinians and the likelihood of more terrorist attacks by the al Qaeda network. Now, an even deeper worry is beginning to surface, whose consequences could be enormous and far-reaching for everyone on Earth. Experts had been saying that we had another 40 or so years of cheap available crude oil left. Now, however, some of the world's leading petroleum geologists are suggesting that global oil production could peak and begin a steep decline much sooner, as early as 2020. That would send oil prices through the roof. Worse, non-OPEC oil producing countries are already nearing their peak production, leaving most of the remaining reserves in the politically unstable Middle East. Increasing tensions between Islam and the West are likely to further threaten our access to affordable oil. In addition, rising oil prices will assuredly plunge developing countries even further into debt locking much of the third world in the throes of poverty for years to come. In desperation, the United States and other nations could turn to dirtier fossil-fuels: coal, tar sand and heavy oil. But that would only worsen global warming and imperil the earth's already beleaguered ecosystems. Looming oil shortages make industrial life vulnerable to massive disruptions and possibly even collapse. Click here to read more Contents |
| Sunken
Tanker's Oil Continues To Defile Spanish, French Coasts (Washington Post)
Two months after the tanker Prestige ruptured its hull in a storm and sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, the vessel continues to leak heavy, black fuel oil that is devastating parts of the Spanish coast and has all but ruined the once thriving oyster industry of France's Aquitaine region. The crew of a high-tech French submarine, the Nautile, managed to plug or patch eight of the cracks or holes in the 26-year-old Prestige, which is lying about two miles below the ocean's surface. But there are still a dozen other holes in the single-hulled ship that are leaking an estimated 21,000 gallons of fuel oil each day, about a third of what was leaking before the patching, according to rescue officials and environmentalists. After contaminating Spain's Galician coastline, the sludge made its way to French shores last week. French officials, local business leaders and environmental groups are calling the spill a catastrophe. The government has spent the equivalent of about $50 million and has raced hundreds of firefighters and soldiers to the region to try to recover the oil. A region better known for a slow pace of life and good food and wine has become the center of a massive emergency effort. Local officials are criticizing the government of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin for not doing enough. In Bordeaux, capital of the Aquitaine region, Alain Rousset, the president of the regional council, has requested an additional 2,000 soldiers to help clear about 120 miles of affected beaches. Local tourism officials are asking for government help in sponsoring a major promotional campaign to try to salvage the coming summer tourist season. The oyster industry has already been hard hit. Harvesting was temporarily suspended in the famed Basin of Arcachon and could be stopped again if the winds blow in more oil. Harvesters facing severe financial losses are threatening legal action against whoever is responsible for the Prestige disaster. Click here to read more Contents |
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