Oil  
Updated 12/15/2005
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Will new oil help Iraq rebuild?....

1.  What role does oil play in US policy vs. Iraq?

First discovered in Iraq in 1927, the issue of oil was barely mentioned in the U.S. press until September, but polls show most U.S. allies (and Iraq) neighbors feel that oil is our primary motivation. For example, one of the February 15, 2003  protestors in New York asked, "How Many Lives Per Gallon?"

The Washington Post in mid-September reported Pentagon favorite and INC leader Ahmed Chalabi, ("Oil is Key Issue"): "American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil.   further reminded readers that "Bush and [Cheney] have worked in the oil business and have long-standing ties to the industry." A few weeks later the Chicago Tribune's foreign correspondent Tom Hundley quoted a British Labor Party member:  "'[Hussein's] real crime is his threat to renegotiate oil contacts with Russia and France and not with America'" (9/30/02). 

Robert Redford writes in the LA Times that "wasteful consumption ...creates political liabilities overseas...American rooftops can be the Persian Gulf of solar energy...Prolonging our dependence on fossil fuels would guarantee homeland insecurity."  Redford concluded, "Weaning our nation from fossil fuels should be understood as the most patriotic policy to which we can commit ourselves." Sierra Club leaders urge "common sense" on oil conservation in "Oppose War, Make Sense" (Philadelphia Inquirer, 1/6/03). 

In February 2003 a bill was before Congress to increase fuel efficiency "would save this county...more than a third of what we now import from the Persian Gulf" (NYTimes editorial, 2/9/03, "SUV's Under Fire").  After the war, Congress would not approve major changes in standards for gas mileage. 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (lawyer for the National Resources Defense Council) suggested that mandatory higher gas mileage could save us "more than we imported from Saudi Arabia last year and three times our Iraqi imports."  He concludes "A Bad Element" thusly, "We have an oil security problem and we have an air pollution problem.  We also have the technology to fix these problems--if only we would have the will to use it" (NYTimes, 2/16). 

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The U.S. is pressuring France and Russia to join an invasion or lose their oil contracts to U.S. companies. Tony Blair told Iraq in mid-November, "We don't want your oil.", but an Iraqi bus driver responded, "Mr. Blair is promising us a better life while...he is...planning ...to take part in a destructive US war on Iraq.  This is ironic."  Commented an Iraqi  high school teacher, "It is hard for me to believe that Mr. Blair is after Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, because if so,  he should have also dealt with...Israel and North Korea...I think Britain and the US are after oil."

Will oil shortages result from a war? A recent Post editorial examines prices and control of Iraqi oil. The LA Times suggests that the President wants to redraw that Middle East map as ambitiously as "the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement between the empires of Britain and France, which carved up the region at the fall of the Ottoman Empire." The author of the Times piece, Sandy Tolan, further suggests that the U.S. will benefit from oil prices eventually as low as $10/barrel and the breaking apart of Saudi-led OPEC. Serge Schmemann (NYTimes) thinks "controlling Iraqi oil wouldn't be simple."  and quotes a former Clinton adviser, "...The real issue...is American power--how do countries safeguard their interests in a unipolar world, where Washington's attitude is that what's good for America is good for the world?"  

A scholar at the Middle East Institute agrees that oil is not a driving force toward war:  "Even countries whose rulers are hostile to us are willing to sell us oil because they need the money...An American takeover of Iraq would not, in the long run, give the U.S. guaranteed access to Iraqi oil" ("It's Not a War for Oil", Thomas Lippman, Wash Post, 1/24). 

In "Driving While Female," Maureen Dowd comments on the U.S. reaction to Saudi Arabia harassing women for daring to drive:  "America was silent:  whether they drove was less important than how much it cost us to drive." 

In early April Hussein proclaimed that he was protesting the Israeli invasion of  the West Bank by banning exports for 30 days. Condoleeza Rice responded, "We ought to remind [Iraq] that they're going to have a hard time eating their oil."  However, Hussein's reputation increases as "the one Arab leader who says no to the West and stands up against Israel" (Time, 5/4/02).   Sometimes, under oil-for-food, Iraq has an aid shortfall.  At his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance in December, Jimmy Carter said, "Anyone who claims that the U.S. is trying to get cheap oil--free oil--by invading Iraq is foolish."  Yet, much of world opinion disagrees with the former U.S. President.  

In 1972 The Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) was nationalized.  An Iraqi V.P claims that if regime change happens in 2003, we could see three of the world's largest public oil companies--B.P. Shell and ExxonMobil--fighting for their old IPC possessions. ("Over a barrel", The Guardian, 11/22/02). Another British paper, the Independent featured Robert Fisk's "The Wartime Deceptions." 

Former CIA director James Woolsey is equally blunt about the UN and post-Saddam Hussein Iraqi oil:  "It's pretty straightforward.  France and Russia have oil company interests in Iraq.  They should be told that if they are of assistance in moving Iraq toward a decent government, we'll do the best we can to ensure the new government and American companies work close with them" (The Guardian 11/2202 as quoted in the Washington Post). 

A Council on Foreign Relations Middle East expert concurs that "There is absolutely no question that the continued domination of the U.S. of oil in the Middle East is a very important part of the planning and thinking of the administration" (Youssef Ibrahim in Chicago Tribune, 11/20/02). 

Another Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow, Max Boot, plays down the role of oil and explains why Europeans see oil as a key motivation for war (75% in France, 76% in Russia, compared to 22% in U.S.).  Why?  "Europeans are projecting their own behavior onto us.  They know that their own foreign policies have in the past often been driven by avarice--all the imperialists after East Indian spices or African diamonds...In the case of Iraq, they just can't seem to accept that we might be acing for, say, the general safety and security of the world.  After more than 200 years Europe still hasn't figured out what makes America tick" ("A War for Oil? Not This Time" , NYTimes, 2/13). 

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Thomas Friedman describes oil options in his August NYTimes editorial, his mid-October "Drilling for Freedom"  and again in December on energy options and oil. Washington "thinks conservation is for sissies.  Real men send B-52s" (10/20/02). In "A War for Oil" (1/5/03) Friedman argued that to deny that the war will not be for oil "is laughable."  But oil isn't most important.  We also need energy conservation ("our right to indulge", he calls it) and a real democracy.  "If we occupy Iraq and simply install a more pro-U.S. autocrat to run the Iraqi gas station (as we have in other Arab oil states) then this war partly for oil would also be immoral."  He concludes, "So, I have no problem with a war for oil--provide that it is to fuel the first progressive Arab regime and not just our S.U.V.s..."

Concurs a London professor of public health (Ian Robert), in "The U.S. economy needs oil like a junkie needs heroine" (The Guardian, 11/18). "Car Wars" examines how motor vehicles are responsible for "about 1/3 of global oil use, but for nearly 2/3 of U.S. oil use...The U.S. has paved itself into a corner."  Michael Kinsley in the Washington Post looks at oil motivations and supply and demand issues in "Oil Fueled Confidence" (3/10). http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2864-2003Mar9?language=printer

Also see "Cheney's Oily Rhetoric." the LA Times unique perspective in "Oil Economics Lubricates Push for War", and "Oiling the Wheels of War", 
discussing the role of Cheney and his oil background.

2.  What Middle East country exports the most oil to the U.S.? What country has the second most in oil reserves?
Saudi Arabia exports the most, but Iraq has the second most oil reserves  of 112 billion.  Iraq was the number 5 exporter to the U.S., about 9% of U.S. imports, until the U.S. cut back exports in 2002. By August of 2002, Iraqi exports to the U.S. dropped, a policy of  the Bush administration. Some analysts predict that after a war Iraq "could supply half of the U.S. daily demand of 20 million barrels. Iraq has little control over oil prices. Surprisingly, the greatest percent of U.S. oil exports come from Canada (Chicago Tribune, 4/9/02) and 24% of U.S. imports come from the Middle East.

3.  What country would most benefit from the need to rebuild Iraq's bombed-out oil infrastructure after an invasion?
The U.S. and U.S. oil companies. In early December the State Department held meetings with opposition groups on the future of their oil. The Guardian writes in November of "carving up oil riches" as INC leader Chalabi says, "American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil." Suggest other oil analysts, "When there is regime change in Iraq, you could add three to five million barrels per day of production to world supply...the successful prosecution of the war would be good for the economy." Russia, Britain, and France would also benefit as The Guardian reports that "some ministers and officials [in UK] say privately that oil is more important in the calculation" than WMD (1/7/03, "Straw admits oil is key priority").  

Dick Cheney and others in the administration used to work for major oil companies. One British historian thinks oil is just an "absurd conspiracy theory". If Bush and Cheney were that interested in oil, they would not have divested themselves of their own oil business interest to pursue barely lucrative political careers' (The Guardian, 2/19).

4.  Where is Iraq oil located?

Mostly in the northern Kurdish areas, which Hussein would never give up. The rest of the oil is near the Persian Gulf in Shia areas

5.  Are American SUV's and the death of Iraqi children connected?
"What we are acquiring here is an enormous gas station", says University of Texas Economics Professor James Galbraith. Dennis Halliday (former Assistant Secretary General of the UN) refers to “Operation enduring freedom... to drive our big cars" and Halliday sees sanctions and war as killing Iraqi children.

6.  So, would this war be fought for oil?
Some think so, including, not surprisingly, Saddam Hussein;  
In his own words.  Tony Blair feels that oil resources would be used "for the benefit of the owners, the Iraqi people" (Time, 3/10).