Mac Guy says:

…And yet, it was a Russian oil company that bought one of the largest oil fields the other day at auction. No US company attempted to bid on the fields.

Give me a fucking break, Uncle Dave.

Dr Dodd says:

The world revolves around oil as a major energy source and will for some time. If the environmentalist and capitulating politicians would allow the drilling for our own oil then it would not be necessary to go to war for oil in the Middle East.

If you want someone to blame for war then turn your attention to liberal environmentalism.

Dallas says:

So when is the cost of the Iraq war going to be added at the gas pump?

Why not apply those free taxpayer energy subsidies to green energy right here in America?

Freakish analogies says:

Try living one day without oil you stupid blame big oil FREAKS. That means no computer, no bank, no car, no bicycle, no electricity, no heating oil, no grocery stores, no hospitals, no Twitter. Try it for a week then, and another week, you will all be dead from starvation FOOLS. The world needs oil to promote human life. It’s time you fools worship big oil, after all, YOU DO IT EVERY DAY ANYWAY.

jescott418 says:

Right, and I got some lakeside property in the desert to sell too. Its all about Money or natural resources. Nobody really cares about those people. That’s just a second thought.

chris says:

I think Iraq was about oil, but not in the way commonly thought. Rather than too little oil there is too much. If you look at the price of oil historically it will gap up, but eventually crash.

When prices crash oil producing regimes start to get unstable. Oil production tends to crowd out other industries in a country because it causes domestic price inflation of goods. This is referred to as the “Dutch Disease.” Keeping oil prices high also benefits major oil companies. A win-win situation: producer nation stability and good dividends.

With these assumptions Iraq wars 1 and 2 were about keeping Iraqi oil off the market to prevent a price collapse.

Also, if you look geographically, Iraq presents an interesting opportunity. Routing oil through northern Iraq into Turkey would allow pipeline delivery right to the Mediterranean and bypass the Gulf entirely.

Tensions between the Kurds and the Turks has recently been much decreased. Possibly they are warming to the possibility of getting a monthly check just for letting oil transit their territories.

An overland route to Europe that bypasses the Gulf creates one enormous loser: Iran. If their threat to close the Straight of Hormuz would be seriously defanged.

But that, as they say, is a fight for another day.

gear says:

The country of Iraq was created so that oil (BP) executives could strike a deal with one (friendly) government official. 90 years later a new government was put in place for the same reason.

RBG says:

How did it work out for the American oil companies that developed Saudi Arabia’s oil industry from zero? Can you say 100% Saudi-owned Saudi Aramco?

RBG

bill says:

Hmmmmm, I thinking it was about thwarting IRAN’s move into IRAQ and then into SYRIA and then into everywhere else in the Middle East?

Someone will always be willing to sell oil and we will be able to buy it.

The Persian empire is over.

CrankyGeeksFan says:

#2 – China uses its oil companies as a large jobs program – sometimes as penal work for convicts. The other private companies mentioned in the article have always complained about state oil companies such as Saudi Aramco. I think the reason for this is that the oil companies want as much control over the entire production line as possible, from drilling to refining. In other words they don’t want to buy from a middle man, and want to control as much drilling supply as can be. Think Columbus trying to find an all water route from Spain to Cathay, (China).

#3 – The chant shouldn’t have been “drill, baby, drill” but “pipeline, baby, pipeline”. Many refiners can’t get access to light sweet West Texas crude and have to import other more expensive crudes that are more expensive to refine.

#11 – The price of oil is effected by security risks. From possible military threats from Iran to fighting in Nigeria – case in point: the first time a barrel of oil went over $100. A Nigerian rebel leader broke off negotiations in Nigeria. He telephoned a reporter in London to tell him this. Then the price went over $100/bbl for the first time. If the large U.S. Navy’s presence in the United Arab Emirates were to be significantly reduced, the price of oil might go up higher then the cost of maintaining the presence. I don’t know if the U.A.E. or other Persian gulf countries pay for the U.S. military presence though. If they did they would pay the U.S. federal government. People still would be paying companies, traders and government.

#12 – In the early 2000s, oil demand. The price in 2002 was $20/bbl. I think a Chinese company – maybe the same one mentioned in the Uncle Dave posting – was going to place thousands of workers in Iraq’s southern fields. It’s not technically an occupation but inconvenient if there was an invasion. This spurred a significant Chinese push into African oil.
The drop in oil’s price is causing discord in many countries such as Venezuela, Iran and probably Russia.
There has been a pipeline from the Kirkuk area in Iraqi Kurdistan through Turkey to the Mediterranean Sea since the 1980s. Maybe that pipeline is inoperable. Much talk about energy pipelines through the Balkan peninsula.

#13 – This field in western Iraq may be in the al-Anbar province. Also, A Norwegian company perhaps Statoil was the first oil company to make an oil agreement with the semi-autonomous Kurdish government thus bypassing the Iraqi Oil ministry. I believe this was no later than 2005 and in Northern Iraq near Kirkuk.

#14 – I believe Kuwait also. British Petroleum was once called Anglo-Iranian.

#17 – Seven times more oil is traded than delivered so there is tremendous market manipulation. Morgan Stanley is a huge holder of oil for the northeastern U.S. A 60 Minutes report on this topic interviewed the head of a gasoline station merchant’s group and called Morgan Stanley the largest oil company in the Northeast.

#18 and #20 – Don’t forget Weapons of Mass Destruction. Personally, I think one reason for the invasion was to position a large military presence in Iraq. Former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neil wrote that President Bush was discussing invading Iraq before 9/11. Maybe a combination of the soon-to-be thousands of Chinese workers in southern Iraq and the growing demand and price for oil.

#22 The King of Jordan said that Iran was trying to create a “Shiite Crescent” through the countries that you mention and into Lebanon. Iran is trying to get a pipeline through southern Pakistan to India. China is trying to get natural gas pipelines from Kazakhstan to China and probably later from Iran (the second largest natural gas reserve in the world).

Finally: China is developing its western areas like Xianjing as the location of major refineries and pipeline transit areas to its rapidly developing Pacific coast cities. Oil may go from a pipeline on the Pakistani coast of the Arabian Sea through Pakistan to the Pakistani-Chinese border. A Chinese company is developing one of the largest copper deposits in the world in Afghanistan in a former Taliban area. Copper is very important element and very prone to price fluctuations. Pipelines from Afghanistan to India, etc. The list goes on and on.

deowll says:

If the leaders of Iraq had been half way sane they would not have been invaded.

It isn’t all that likely they would have been invaded short of attacking us if there had been no oil because they wouldn’t have been much of a threat to others.

The problem is the worlds transportation network runs on oil. I’ve seen absolutely no evidence to suggest that is going to change in the next 20 years or so.

Much of the US insists on using (imported) oil for heating and electricity. It is less polluting even if it costs more than our abundant coal reserves. The greenies insist on our being dependent on imported fuel.

Well actually some of them are openly saying they want to reduce the human population so they are on my watch for trying to start a plague or something. Some of the them seem ready to dump birth control into the drinking water, used forced sterilization, etc. on those people they deem to be undesirable.

chris says:

#24 CrankyGeeksFan- Long on facts, respect.

I did not know the state of the Northern Iraq to Turkey to Med pipeline. Turns out it has just recently been reactivated, as noted here.

I thinking more about expanding the capacity to create an alternate route to sending it via tankers in the Persian Gulf. Doing this would set Iraq up as a player in the energy transport business. This would put them in competition with Iran. Bush II wasn’t smart enough to think this up beforehand, but it might provide Iraqis enough reason to resist Iranian domination. Iraq seems to be headed toward being a new, bigger, Lebanon. If so strengthening the Kurds ought to be high on the US agenda.

You obviously know a bit about the oil business, so let me ask you two questions: What do you think of peak oil? How much of the price of oil is determined by market manipulation?

Winston says:

I recall an image I saw on TV of ex-CIA head and then Prez George Bush Sr. walking up to his old pals at CIA HQ with everyone laughing, smiling broadly, shaking hands, etc. I thought, “Why is everyone so happy? Iraq has just invaded Kuwait.”

“On July 25, 1990, the U.S. Ambassador in Iraq, April Glaspie, asked the Iraqi high command to explain the military preparations in progress, including the massing of Iraqi troops near the border. The American ambassador declared to her Iraqi interlocutor that Washington, “inspired by the friendship and not by confrontation, does not have an opinion” on the disagreement which opposes Kuwait to Iraq, stating “we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts”. She also let Saddam Hussein know that the U.S. did not intend “to start an economic war against Iraq”. These statements may have caused Saddam to believe he had received a diplomatic green light from the United States to invade Kuwait.” — The New York Times, September 23, 1990

Unforutunately for US geopolitical goals, this setup to topple Saddam via Gulf War I didn’t work. Thus, the embargo began. Years later and a few years prior to the Polandesque unprovoked invasion of Iraq in Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL), I mean Operation Iraqi Freedom, there were strong international calls for the lifting of the embargo for humanitarian reason (something about 500k children dying as a result of the embargo). Of course, it was more due the desire for oil contracts that led non-“coalition” countries to call for an end to the embargo. And guess which two countries would have not gotten a SINGLE oil development contract had the embargo been lifted. The US and the UK, the “no fly zone” people. Guess which two countries shouldered the majority of the combat load during and after the invasion. The US and the UK. So both the embargo and the oil contracts problem were “solved” by the invasion.

It’s ALWAYS about OIL and the powers that be ALWAYS lie about it.