Peak Oil News - NEOCON and BIG OIL SUPER CONSPIRACY

Carlhole writes "The 'New World Order' Plot To Control Oil, Money, and Power

Insiders told BBC Newsnight that planning began "within weeks"
of Bush's first taking office in 2001, long before the
September 11th attack on the US.

Watch the complete BBC Newsnight Program (available for 24-hours after London broadcast)

MIDDLEEAST.ORG - MER - Washington - 17 March: With a barrel of oil now selling for more than ever before in history the refusal in practice (rather than word) of the OPEC cartel, itself largely made up of regimes the Americans have nurtured and worked with for decades, to take big steps to lower the price has surprised many.

But the reasons for this are probably at least two-fold. First there are many associated with the Bush/Cheney regime, the big oil giants, and the U.S. supported 'client regimes', who are all swallowing and hoarding the billions of petrodollars as never before. At the same time the OPEC cartel has become aware of the ongoing Neocon plan -- and as with all Neocon plans the Israelis are involved -- to create a 'New World Order' which could in time bust up the OPEC cartel and pump up Western economies on a sea of energy resources more under American domination than ever.

It's been one big lie and one major disaster after another from the strange Jewish/Zionist Neocon and Christian Fundamentalist coalition that took power in the United States as a result of the Supreme Court's 5 to 4 decision that put George Bush and Dick Cheney in power in January 2001. But the true consequences of what they have done are only now seeping out from secret meetings; and the huge price to be paid in blood and treasure will continue on for years and decades to come.

Ironically most Americans -- even the small percentage among them who try to be informed and aware -- remain oblivious to what has been done, by who, and for whom, as nearly all the major exposees during the election campaign and since have been broadcast abroad in the U.K., Canada, and Europe, but not in the United States.

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Secret US plans for Iraq's oil

By Greg Palast
Reporting for Newsnight on BBC on 17 March

The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq's oil before the 9/11 attacks, sparking a policy battle between neo-cons and Big Oil, BBC's Newsnight has revealed.

Iraqi-born Falah Aljibury says US Neo-Conservatives planned to force a coup d'etat in Iraq Two years ago today - when President George Bush announced US, British and Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad - protesters claimed the US had a secret plan for Iraq's oil once Saddam had been conquered.

In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of "Big Oil" executives and US State Department "pragmatists".

"Big Oil" appears to have won. The latest plan, obtained by Newsnight from the US State Department was, we learned, drafted with the help of American oil industry consultants.

Insiders told Newsnight that planning began "within weeks" of Bush's first taking office in 2001, long before the September 11th attack on the US.

We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities and pipelines [in Iraq] built on the premise that privatisation is coming

Mr Falah Aljibury
An Iraqi-born oil industry consultant, Falah Aljibury, says he took part in the secret meetings in California, Washington and the Middle East. He described a State Department plan for a forced coup d'etat.

Mr Aljibury himself told Newsnight that he interviewed potential successors to Saddam Hussein on behalf of the Bush administration.

Secret sell-off plan

The industry-favoured plan was pushed aside by a secret plan, drafted just before the invasion in 2003, which called for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oil fields. The new plan was crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel through massive increases in production above Opec quotas.

Former Shell Oil USA chief stalled plans to privatise Iraq's oil industry
The sell-off was given the green light in a secret meeting in London headed by Ahmed Chalabi shortly after the US entered Baghdad, according to Robert Ebel.

Mr Ebel, a former Energy and CIA oil analyst, now a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told Newsnight he flew to the London meeting at the request of the State Department.

Mr Aljibury, once Ronald Reagan's "back-channel" to Saddam, claims that plans to sell off Iraq's oil, pushed by the US-installed Governing Council in 2003, helped instigate the insurgency and attacks on US and British occupying forces.

"Insurgents used this, saying, 'Look, you're losing your country, you're losing your resources to a bunch of wealthy billionaires who want to take you over and make your life miserable,'" said Mr Aljibury from his home near San Francisco.

"We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities, pipelines, built on the premise that privatisation is coming."

Privatisation blocked by industry

Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA who took control of Iraq's oil production for the US Government a month after the invasion, stalled the sell-off scheme.

Mr Carroll told us he made it clear to Paul Bremer, the US occupation chief who arrived in Iraq in May 2003, that: "There was to be no privatisation of Iraqi oil resources or facilities while I was involved."

Amy Jaffee says oil companies fear a privatisation would exclude foreign firms
Ariel Cohen, of the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation, told Newsnight that an opportunity had been missed to privatise Iraq's oil fields.

He advocated the plan as a means to help the US defeat Opec, and said America should have gone ahead with what he called a "no-brainer" decision.

Mr Carroll hit back, telling Newsnight, "I would agree with that statement. To privatize would be a no-brainer. It would only be thought about by someone with no brain."

New plans, obtained from the State Department by Newsnight and Harper's Magazine under the US Freedom of Information Act, called for creation of a state-owned oil company favoured by the US oil industry. It was completed in January 2004 under the guidance of Amy Jaffe of the James Baker Institute in Texas.

Formerly US Secretary of State, Baker is now an attorney representing Exxon-Mobil and the Saudi Arabian government.

Questioned by Newsnight, Ms Jaffe said the oil industry prefers state control of Iraq's oil over a sell-off because it fears a repeat of Russia's energy privatisation. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, US oil companies were barred from bidding for the reserves.

Ms Jaffe says US oil companies are not warm to any plan that would undermine Opec and the current high oil price: "I'm not sure that if I'm the chair of an American company, and you put me on a lie detector test, I would say high oil prices are bad for me or my company."

The former Shell oil boss agrees. In Houston, he told Newsnight: "Many neo conservatives are people who have certain ideological beliefs about markets, about democracy, about this, that and the other. International oil companies, without exception, are very pragmatic commercial organizations. They don't have a theology."

A State Department spokesman told Newsnight they intended "to provide all possibilities to the Oil Ministry of Iraq and advocate none".

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Greg Palast's film - the result of a joint investigation by BBC Newsnight and Harper's Magazine - will broadcast on Thursday, 17 March, 2005. Plans are to make the program available online for 24 hours after 7pm London time -- Click to watch
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/default.stm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsa/n5ctrl/tvseq/newsnight/newsnight.ram

WHY IRAQ STILL SELLS ITS OIL A LA CARTEL
From the April Issue of Harper's Magazine
On Newstands Tuesday, March 22

Harper's discloses a secret 323-page State Department plan written by Big Oil. The winner: OPEC. The losers: consumers, Iraqis ... and neo-cons.

Two years and $154 billion into the war in Iraq, the United States has
at least one significant new asset to show for it: effective membership, through our control of Iraq's energy policy, in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the Arab-dominated oil cartel.

According to insiders and to the documents obtained from the State Department, the neo-cons, once in command, are now in full retreat. With pipelines exploding daily, the fantasy of remaking Iraq's oil industry also went up in flames.

Privatization was taken off the agenda with the arrival of the Oil Men (and woman) of Texas.

The new blueprint, now being followed in Iraq. was ordered up by Robert McKee of ConocoPhillips. Supervised and drafted by Amy Jaffe of the James Baker Institute behind closed doors with other Industry experts and consultants, this plan is in direct contradiction to the original neo-con preferred agenda of 'sell everything'.

Read how circumstance, political maneuvering and the shifting sands of power have been determining the future of a war-weary country and its
only viable asset: OIL - In the April Issue of Harper's Magazine, investigated by Greg Palast for Harper's Magazine and BBC Newsnight.
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