I will believe the Saudis don't see any upcoming problems with Ghawar when they cancel one of their projects due to low oil prices. If they continue to be full steam ahead with increasing their capacity then I think they are aware that Ghawar may not be as robust in 5 years time as they would like us to believe.
Brigadier-General James Ellery CBE, the Foreign Office's Senior Adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad since 2003, confirmed the critical role of Iraqi oil reserves in potentially alleviating a "world shortage" of conventional oil. The Iraq War has helped to head off what Brigadier Ellery described as "the tide of Easternisation" – a shift in global political and economic power toward China and India, to whom goes "two thirds of the Middle East's oil."
After the 2004 transfer of authority to an interim Iraqi civilian administration, Brigadier Ellery set up and ran the 700-strong security framework operation in support of the US-funded Reconstruction of Iraq. His remarks were made as part of a presentation at the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), University of London, sponsored by the Iraqi Youth Foundation, on 22nd April.
World Oil Shortage
"The reason that oil reached $117 a barrel last week", he said, "was less to do with security of supply... than World shortage." He went on to emphasise the strategic significance of Iraqi petroleum fields in relation to the danger of production peaks being breached in major oil reserves around the world. "Russia's production has peaked at 10 million barrels per day; Africa has proved slow to yield affordable extra supplies – from Sudan and Angola for example. Thus the only near-term potential increase will be from Iraq," he said. Whether Iraq began "favouring East or West" could therefore be "de-stabilizing" not only "within the region but to nations far beyond which have an interest."
Last month geological surveys and seismic data compiled by several international oil companies exploring Iraqi oil reserves showed that Iraq has the world's largest proven oil reserves, with as much as 350 billion barrels, significantly exceeding Saudi Arabia's 264 billion barrels, according to a report in the London Times. Former Bush administration energy adviser Matthew Simmons, author of the book Twilight in the Desert, says that Saudi oil production has probably already peaked, with production rates declining consecutively each year. This month the UK Treasury Department warned of the danger of an oil supply crunch by 2015, due to rocketing demand from China and India.
The Threat of Easternisation
Brigadier Ellery's career in the British Army has involved stints in the Middle East, Africa, Bosnia, Germany and Northern Ireland. "Iraq holds the key to stability in the region," he said, "unless that is you believe the tide of 'Easternisation' is such that the USA and the West are in such decline, relative to the emerging China and India, that it is the East – not the West – which is more likely to guarantee stability. Incidentally, I do not." Iraq's pivotal importance in the Middle East, he explained, is because of its "relatively large, consuming population" at 24 million, its being home to "the second largest reserve of oil – under exploited", and finally its geostrategic location "on the routes between Asia, Europe, Arabia and North Africa - hence the Silk Road."
Oil production peaks when a given petroleum reserve is depleted by half, after which oil is geophysically increasingly difficult to extract, causing production to plateau, and then steadily decline. US oil production peaked by 1970, while British production in the North Sea peaked by 2000, converting both countries from exporters into net importers of oil and gas.
Oil industry experts and petroleum geologists increasingly believe that world oil production is precariously close to peaking. According to an October 2007 report by the German-based Energy Watch Group, run by an international network of European politicians and scientists, world oil production peaked in 2006. According to BP's annual statistical review of world energy supply and demand for 2008, released on 11th June, world oil production fell last year for the first time since 2002, by 130,000 barrels per day last year to 81.53 million. Yet world consumption continued to rise by 1.1 per cent to 85.22 million barrels per day, outweighing production by nearly 5 per cent.
Iraqi Reconstruction Corruption Whitewash
Brigadier-General James Ellery is currently Director of Operations at AEGIS Defence Services Ltd., a private British security firm and US defence contractor since June 2004. In April this year, the same month as Ellery's SOAS lecture, AEGIS won the renewal of its US defence department (DoD) contract for two more years, which at $475 million is the single largest security contract brokered by the DoD. The contract is to provide security services for reconstruction projects in Iraq conducted by mostly American companies.
A US government audit by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, released exactly two years before Brigadier Ellery's SOAS presentation, concluded that AEGIS could not prove it had properly trained or vetted several armed Iraqi employees. For a random sample of 20 armed guards, no training documentation was found for 14 of them. For 125 other employees, AEGIS reportedly failed to document background checks. The auditors concluded that "there is no assurance that Aegis is providing the best possible safety and security for government and reconstruction contractor personnel and facilities."
During his April presentation at SOAS, AEGIS director Ellery declared, "Iraq promises a degree of prosperity in the region as it embarks on massive Iraqi-funded reconstruction, a part of which will raise Iraqi's oil production from 2.5 million bpd today to 3 million by next year and maybe ultimately 6 million barrels per day." He added, "With a budget of $187 billion over 4 years, Iraq is poised to have a considerable impact on the economies of countries whose technologies can fill the skills gap left by the latter years of Saddam Hussein's regime." During the UN sanctions regime imposed primarily by the US and Britain, Iraq was banned from importing thousands of household goods, including food, medicines, clothes and books, from 1991 to 2003, purportedly to prevent Saddam from developing weapons of mass destruction. It is now widely recognized that the sanctions led to massive socio-economic deprivation, the break-down of civilian infrastructure, large-scale unemployment, and de-industrialisation, resulting in the deaths of up to 1.8 million Iraqis, half of whom were children. The humanitarian crisis led United Nations officials such as Dennis Halliday, former UN Assistant Secretary-General, and Hans von Sponeck, former Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, to resign in protest.
Joined: Aug 11, 2005 Posts: 815 Location: Eastern NC
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 2:01 pm Post subject: Re: British General Says PO was premise for Iraq war
Damn I love Bush, ahead of the curve on resource wars. Now thats what I'm looking for in a president. Change, heck who needs change if we don't have the resources. Isn't that a precipitous decline? And for the leftist whiners, try eating cornmeal mush for months, did that in Kenya, it sucks.
Joined: Oct 22, 2005 Posts: 709 Location: European Capital of Kulcha 2008
Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 5:48 am Post subject: Re: British General Says PO was premise for Iraq war
Had Bush'n'Blair gone to their respective countrymen, and said: we need to secure this valuable resource as an interim cushion against severe fuel shortages - which threaten to undermine your entire quality of life - but which are currently under the control of a megalomaniac dictator' they'd have got a popular mandate to do it and would have been cheered to the rafters.
The reason why - Blair in particular - moved through every semantic contortion available, to avoid uttering the 'oil' word - is because people would have woken up, for the first time, to the enormity of a global situation for which ameliorative strategies should have been put in place decades before.
All they managed to do was put the eventual panic on 'hold'.
Now that people are learning to live with oil prices going through the roof, and are actually thinking the unthinkable - a post-oil world - the actual reasons for the Iraq invasion (not a 'war' - an invasion) will gradually supplant all that WMD/Democracy garbage.
Joined: Mar 04, 2005 Posts: 2729 Location: New Zealand
Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 8:28 pm Post subject: Ex-UK Army Chief Confirms Peak Oil Motive for War
Ex-UK Army Chief Confirms Peak Oil Motive for War
Quote:
Brigadier-General James Ellery CBE, the Foreign Office’s Senior Adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad since 2003, confirmed the critical role of Iraqi oil reserves in potentially alleviating a “world shortage” of conventional oil. The Iraq War has helped to head off what Brigadier Ellery described as “the tide of Easternisation” – a shift in global political and economic power toward China and India, to whom goes “two thirds of the Middle East’s oil.”
Thus the only near-term potential increase will be from Iraq,” he said. Whether Iraq began “favouring East or West” could therefore be “de-stabilizing” not only “within the region but to nations far beyond which have an interest.”
Last month geological surveys and seismic data compiled by several international oil companies exploring Iraqi oil reserves showed that Iraq has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, with as much as 350 billion barrels, significantly exceeding Saudi Arabia’s 264 billion barrels, according to a report in the London Times.
ukwatch _________________ Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. H. G. Wells.
Fatih Birol's motto: leave oil before it leaves us.
Joined: May 24, 2008 Posts: 126 Location: Park County, Wyoming
Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 8:30 pm Post subject: Re: Ex-UK Army Chief Confirms Peak Oil Motive for War
BAGHDAD: Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.
Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq's Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq's largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.
The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations. _________________ Be yourself... Everyone else is already taken.
Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 9:15 pm Post subject: Re: Ex-UK Army Chief Confirms Peak Oil Motive for War
Well, I hope nobody dies as a result of this, but it's hard to imagine that angry Iraqis are just going to roll over and let this happen.
Lord help us all.
Greed - it's a bigger bitch than Karma. _________________ Massive Human Dieoff must occur as a result of Peak Oil. Many more than half will die. It will occur everywhere, including where you live. If you fail to recognize this, then your odds of living move toward the "going to die" group.
Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 9:58 pm Post subject: Re: Ex-UK Army Chief Confirms Peak Oil Motive for War
Graeme wrote:
Ex-UK Army Chief Confirms Peak Oil Motive for War
Quote:
Brigadier-General James Ellery CBE, the Foreign Office’s Senior Adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad since 2003, confirmed the critical role of Iraqi oil reserves in potentially alleviating a “world shortage” of conventional oil. The Iraq War has helped to head off what Brigadier Ellery described as “the tide of Easternisation” – a shift in global political and economic power toward China and India, to whom goes “two thirds of the Middle East’s oil.”
Ahmed is of Bangladeshi extraction, born and raised in London. He's obviously a very bright guy if you've read any of his books. His stuff is very well researched. His writing is clear; his arguments convincing.
Nafeez Ahmed wrote:
Political analyst on security, conflict and global crisis. Director of Institute for Policy Research & Development, London. Author of "The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry" (Duckworth, 2006) and "The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism" (Arris, Olive Branch, 2005). Teaching International Relations at University of Sussex; and postgraduate courses in globalisation and empire at Brunel University's Politics and History unit. Terrorism research was officially used by the 9/11 Commission (Washington); gave expert testimony in US Congress in 2005. Current PhD research is on European empires, violence, and genocide since the 15th century.
Nafeez Ahmed is one of the primary research sources that David Ray Griffin and others have used in their own books about the 911 attacks and the motives behind them. Nafeez Ahmed is also featured in the documentary "Oil, Smoke and Mirrors" linked in my signature below. _________________ Documentary: "Oil, Smoke & Mirrors" Engineers Question 911
Joined: May 20, 2008 Posts: 942 Location: I have a whole ward
Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 10:08 pm Post subject: Re: Ex-UK Army Chief Confirms Peak Oil Motive for War
I posted this in another thread today....worth posting again. I read this article years ago.
After Oil
By David Fleming
(C) Prospect Magazine, November 2000
"Only one country has the potential for a serious increase in output, on a scale which could make a difference. The bad news is: that country is Iraq. Iraq's oil geology is not fully explored, but there are some well-informed guesses. One estimate is that there are 110 billion barrels there--equal to more than three British North Seas, or more than one third of the total resource once possessed by Saudi Arabia. This oil could not be made immediately available, but it is on a scale to keep world oil production rising for a few more years. It lies, however, in a country which is armed to the teeth, consumed by loathing of the west, and just waiting for a US armed intervention to make its day. Iraq was prevented from selling off its oil during the 1990s, when prices were lower than they will ever be again; it will soon be well placed to apply its own sanctions to the rest of the world by fine-tuning its output and naming its price."
China was making overtures to Sadam to secure rights to the oil. So did Bush/Blair do what they had to do in the short run to prevent collaspe of western economies? Can you tell the sheepeople the truth?? Or do you have to mask your actions in the cloth of a so called "just war" ???
Maybe Bush is peak oil believer just like us and did what had to be done...."in the short run." Now our armies sit on top of the last large supply of oil in the world.
What would Rome do ?
The spice must flow! _________________ Viddy well, little brother. Viddy well.
Joined: Mar 04, 2005 Posts: 2729 Location: New Zealand
Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2008 12:26 am Post subject: Re: Ex-UK Army Chief Confirms Peak Oil Motive for War
Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back
Quote:
Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.
Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.
The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.
The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production.
yahoo _________________ Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. H. G. Wells.
Fatih Birol's motto: leave oil before it leaves us.
Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2008 2:48 am Post subject: Re: Ex-UK Army Chief Confirms Peak Oil Motive for War
'Proven reserves' do you not need a test well to prove a reserve.
When were these 350 billion barrels 'proven'?
And while we are at it, the Iraq oil law has not yet been passed and is unlikely to pass the Iraqi parliment. The oil rich regions around Kirkuik are claimed by the Kurds and they claim that all new oil fields in there region belong to the regional government. There writ runs stronger than al Malaki's in the area, while in the South competing militias and gangs kidnap and fight each other for the oil areas.
Wake me up when Iraq is pumping 15 million barrels a day.
Joined: Mar 04, 2005 Posts: 2729 Location: New Zealand
Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2008 3:13 am Post subject: Re: Ex-UK Army Chief Confirms Peak Oil Motive for War
Is Iran next?
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei says he will step down if major powers launch a military strike against Iran over its nuclear program.
Quote:
According to Al Ahram, in an interview with Al Arabiya television, the International Atomic Energy Agency Director General, said, "A military invasion against Iran would pose great danger to the Middle East and the world."
Earlier this month, in his latest IAEA report over Iran's nuclear program, ElBaradei certified the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in the country's nuclear activities.
"Iran has provided the Agency with access to declared nuclear material and has provided the required nuclear material accountancy reports in connection with declared nuclear material and activities," the report read.
The report of ElBaradei's resignation comes amid widespread speculation that US President George W. Bush is drawing up secret plans with the help of Israel to launch a military strike on Iran before the end of his term in office.
With their blatant disregard for international reports conceding the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear activities, world powers have ramped up their rhetoric against the Islamic Republic, accusing the country of running a covert nuclear weapons program.
campaigniran _________________ Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. H. G. Wells.
Fatih Birol's motto: leave oil before it leaves us.
Joined: Jun 03, 2004 Posts: 127 Location: Great Britain
Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2008 4:49 am Post subject: Re: Ex-UK Army Chief Confirms Peak Oil Motive for War
I've read the article and I don't anywhere where he "confirms peak oil motive for Iraq war". I'd like to see his full speech rather than the potentially out of context snippets the author quotes.
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