Undeclared Third World War on Oil

THE world is currently engaged in the undeclared Third World War, and it is a critical battle for civilization as we know it. It is centred around oil of course, and for the purpose of this article I will use the term “oil” for both crude oil and natural gas seeing as how “petroleum products” is too hard to spell. Although the war is over oil, it is not about oil in the ground. If you accept the premise that oil in the ground has no immediate value, but only gains value when it is delivered to someone who is willing to pay for it, money, barter with goods, political recognition, etc. then you start to understand that the war is over the method of delivery to the willing buyer, be it by tanker or by pipeline. I will address the issue of oil pipelines as it is by far the most important method of delivery in terms of volume and vulnerability. Try to visualize the world covered with a spider web, with here and there bugs stuck in it, some bugs are bigger, and on some places there are more bugs than there are on other areas of the web.

The bugs represent oil fields and refinery complexes, and the web itself represents the oil pipelines that girdle the globe.
The most probable start of this war would be in Iraq early this century when British oil interests created the artificial nation of Iraq from the three Ottoman empire provinces of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basrah, then eliminated the nation state of Kurdistan to totally disrupt the region and ensure their control of the oil fields of Tirkut and Basrah.

Truth be known part of this wasn't just European colonialism at its finest, but to counter the French efforts along the same lines in Iran. So the oil companies prospered building pipelines through Iraq to Syria's Mediterranean port of Bania's and into Jordan and yes even to the Israeli port of Haifa to gain access to the Red Sea. Course after the Mandate of 1948 and the creation of the state of Israel this pipeline has been closed (but still is in existence). Also the pipeline to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan was put into production, why the generous Brits even promised the Turks part of the profits from oil production from the fields at Tikrut, didn't deliver of course, but they did promise. I will expand the extent of pipeline construction in a bit, but let's just look at this area for a short while. When the US said that Saddam was exporting terror, there are many ways of exporting terror, one is by paying other people to leave you alone, another is by indirectly financing terrorists. Remember the '91 Gulf war, only one nation stood by Iraq, that was Jordan, Jordan being totally dependent upon Iraqi oil to prop up their economy. And later Syria, after destroying their own oil fields by over production became even more dependent upon Iraqi oil to sustain their economy. During the days of the totally corrupt, cynical, “Oil for Food Programme” that I wrote about a couple of years ago, (and was proven right) by recent developments, Saddam exported oil to Syria, Jordan and Turkey. And the Security Council (including the US) knew about it. In his report (Kofi Annan) to the Security Council dated 15 April 1998, the oil exports hired by the UN stated that the only measuring equipment that functioned was at the Turkish port of Ceyhan and at Basrah. So no one will ever know how much oil was diverted to Turkey to ensure that they kept them pesky Kurds in their place.

ANOTHER case in point, when I worked in Saudi Arabia in the mid 80*sthere was a block on my paycheck labelled “PLO” that way you could contribute to Yasser, and of course the PLO kept out of the kingdom. Whoever controls the pipelines passing through Iraq controls peace in the Middle East. Cut the oil to Syria and Jordan and their economies collapse, hold out the carrot to Israel, get along with the Palestinians, make peace with Syria and Jordon so that the oil can flow to Haifa and not only can you make some shekels on transport fees (just like Turkey) but by most estimates, cut your energy costs by at least 25%. To expand from this area for a wider perspective, Russia has huge oil reserves in its Caspian sea region, but back to the original premise, it is without value while it is underground, which is why they have completed the pipeline from the Caspian to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, it will be coming on line this June and is expected to carry a million barrels of oil a day to Turkey. Starting to get the picture, if they can pump this oil to Haifa through the existing pipeline, then they break the Saudi strangle hold on the Far East, the Saudis routinely place a one dollar a barrel surcharge on oil to the Far East. In addition Russia has long wanted to build a pipeline through Afghanistan to Pakistan and perhaps India. Think that there was no connection between this pipeline and their invasion of Afghanistan in the 80s.

In addition Russia wants to build other pipelines to China. Once you understand the political, economic significance of the pipelines, the arteries of civilization then all the rest of global events fall into place. From Afghanistan to Venezuela, with Mexico, Alaska, Nigeria, etc. making sense. It may not be a pretty picture, but it is reality.

Perhaps the common folk can't be trusted with this kind of information, after all it's their children that are being killed on far off battlefields, their children who are starving while under the rule of religious zealots and despots of every persuasion throughout the world.

A website that is well worth visiting is: http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/ The author makes some telling points concerning the pipelines and their vulnerability to what he refers to as “Global Guerrillas, a shadow OPEC” . As he writes “with the world consuming oil at close to capacity any disruption causes wide fluctuations in the price of oil”. If you know when a pipeline is going to be sabotaged then you know which way the price of oil on the market will go and can profit accordingly. Because of the fact that it is impossible to protect the total length of a pipeline and they are soft targets, the world economy is held hostage to a miniscule number of people. Two men (or women) and 10 pounds of plastic explosive and you can deprive the market of a million barrels of oil a day with relative impunity. In conclusion the world has to work together to remove the root causes of terrorism, don't forget that one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter, be it Northern Ireland, North Korea, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe or wherever. It is a daunting task for mankind, but Pope John Paul II worked hard at it.

Dan Hamilton, Valldemossa.