The economic and military invasion of nations for energy and power

Territorial conflicts has for millennium been the basis of war and mass killing of others. Throughout the ages wars have been fought over land, and other Earth natural resources. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, cheap oil & gas has been the primary cause of conflicts and wars. Cheap oil & gas is no more and the global projection of military and economic power it made possible is no longer viable. In a time when the old world order is shattering, a global movement is emerging to challenge the use of war as a tool of statecraft. Cheap oil & gas provided an energy subsidy that defined the wars, economies, settlements, values, and lifestyles of the 20th century. The result was a century of wasteful extravagance and inefficiency that encouraged us to squander virtually all Earth's resources -- including water, land, forests, fisheries, soils, minerals, and natural waste recycling capacity. We are now waking up to the morning-after consequences of a brief but wild party. These include depleted natural systems, unsustainable economies, an obsolete physical infrastructure, and a six-fold increase in the human population dependent on the diminished resources of a finite planet. Cheap oil & gas also fueled a global competition for access to resources -- particularly cheap oil & gas -- and for the military superiority required to secure that access.

We have seen oil conflicts in the Persian Gulf, and the Caspian Sea Basin. We have seen water conflicts in the Nile Basin, the Jordan, and Indus River Basins. We have seen wars being fought over minerals and timber in Brazil, Angola, Cambodia, Columbia, Congo, Liberia, the Philippines, and Indonesia. The view from space shows us a global landscape in which competition over resources is the governing principle behind the use of economic and military power. Truly, resources have become the new political boundaries. Geopolitical boundaries between nations are gradually disappearing to make place to georesources boundaries. Democracy is an excuse to gain control over those resources by mega corporations. 'Blood oil and gas' is certainly a proof of this statement.

In Washington, the use of military force will continue to protect the flow of imported petroleum. The current debacle in Iraq and Afghanistan will not change the ultimate goal of the White House. In fact, the opposite appears to be the case: possibly fearful that the chaos in Iraq will spread to other countries in the Gulf region, senior figures in both parties are calling for a reinvigorated US military role in the protection of foreign energy deliveries. The US military presence in key producing areas and in the sea lanes that carry foreign oil to American shores will always be a priority by whoever is at the helm of the White House. The strategic stance adopted by President Bush in justifying his determination to retain a potent US force in Iraq has now been passed on to the Democrates. We should expect an increase in the use of military force to protect the overseas flow of oil, as the threat level rises along with the need for new investment to avert even further reductions in global supplies.

What happens when the energy supply stops growing, but the population continues to grow? More importantly, what happens when the energy supply begins to decline, as population continues to grow?

As soon as oil prices hit new highs again and supplies sink, our way of life will also drastically changes. We are nearing the end of the Petroleum Age. Major investors are not likely to cough up the trillions of dollars needed to substantially boost production in the years ahead, suggesting that the global output of conventional petroleum will not reach the elevated levels needed for the global economy but has begun an irreversible decline.

Peak oil and gas is not simply an issue of learning to conserve or finding ways to do more with less. It isn't simply about the possibility of economic collapse, war, starvation or global pandemic. It isn't just about changing our behaviors or our beliefs. It is about turning ourselves inside-out, and not only surviving the transformation, but also being and living equal and in harmony with all the rest.

Everything in the modern world is dependent on hydrocarbons. From hydrocarbons we get fuel, fertilizer, pesticides, lubricants, plastic, paint, synthetic fabrics, asphalt, pharmaceuticals, and many other things. When oil goes, our entire industrial society will go with it. We must therefore look to "primitive" technology. On a broader scale, one could can say that modern industrial society is based on (1) hydrocarbons, (2) metals, and (3) electricity. The three are intricately connected; each is only accessible if the other two are present. Electricity, for example, has been possible on a global scale only with hydrocarbons. The same is true of metals: most metals are now becoming rare, and the forms that remain can be processed only with modern machinery — which requires hydrocarbons. There is no way of breaking that "triangle." What we are then looking at is a society far more primitive than the one to which we have been accustomed.

Petroleum supplies are declining as demand increases. This unfolding trend will radically change human habitation on the Earth. Among the consequences will be the drastic reduction of food and fresh water available to people, not only in poorer parts of the globe, but throughout the planet. Industrial societies with their industrial agriculture are dependent upon fossil fuels such as petroleum, natural gas, and coal for many things, including transportation, electricity, and making plastics and other modern essentials. Oil is the main ingredient in conventional food. As the supply of petroleum and other fossil fuels decline Peak Water and Peak Food will follow. In recent months we have seen the return of food riots in the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa. Industrial societies run on electricity powered by the cheap energy of fossil fuels. As the supply of those energy sources decline and world-wide competition for them through wars and other means heighten, more electrical grids will fail, and with them access to both food and water. We need even more than food security; we need food sovereignty. Who controls your food? Growing at least part of one's own food, and having something to trade, will be essential to survival.

Oil and natural gas depletion will soon begin to undermine the capacity of urban and metropolitan areas to sustain human life. Modern urban and metropolitan life depends on oil and natural gas for food production and distribution, residential heating, water purification and distribution, sanitation, and the power grid that delivers electricity for the pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, elevators, home heating controls, and automated building systems. As international food transport collapses, most oil rich nations face starvation too, regardless of how much oil they possess. Oil depletion means population decline for all urban areas. The notion that urban and suburban dwellers will relocate to small villages in agricultural regions is unrealistic. In the ensuing Peak Oil generated global economic depression, the value of urban residential properties will plummet. Increasing unemployment will slow new house sales and accelerate mortgage and property tax foreclosures. With more and more urban homes up for sale, their prices will decline sharply. And, as the price of urban property declines in value, rural property will increase in comparative value. At the same time, the cost of building new homes in rural areas will increase with the increasing cost of oil and natural gas. Building materials (asphalt and fiberglass shingles, cement, plastic and aluminum siding, fiberglass insulation, glass, lumber, and bricks) are either made from oil or they are manufactured with the energy of oil, natural gas, and coal. All building materials and construction workers are transported using oil (diesel and gasoline). Electricity that is used in the manufacture and construction of houses will also become more expensive. Coal (which is transported with diesel) and natural gas (which uses oil in exploration, drilling operations, and transport of workers) provide the energy for electric power generation. Thus coal and natural gas costs, as well as the cost of electricity, will increase with the increasing price of oil. Similarly, the construction of residential water (wells and pumps) and sanitation systems (septic systems or outhouses in rural areas) will cost more and more as the price of oil increases.

Global crude oil production has already begun to decline, from 100 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time demand will increase 20%. The price of oil will skyrocket like never before. No one can reverse this trend, nor can we conserve our way out of this catastrophe. Because the demand for oil is so high, it will always exceed the level of production; thus oil depletion will proceed at the same rate until all recoverable oil is extracted. Alternatives energies will not fill the gap. And most alternatives yield electric power, but we need liquid fuels for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ships, and mining equipment. The proponents of the electric economy, the hydrogen economy, or an algal bio-diesel economy ignore the obvious. There is little capital, time, energy, or public will for such trillion dollar infrastructure makeovers. The belief in alternative energies is so strong that most scientists and politicians avoid examining obvious questions – does the development of alternative energies consume more energy than they provide, and do alternative energies consume liquid fuels and give us electric power, which is not what we need? We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel trucks for maintenance of bridges, cleaning culverts to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables, all from far away. With the highways out, there will be no food coming in from "outside," and without the power grid virtually nothing works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated systems. After the last power black out, the people living in rural areas will find that surviving will become increasing difficult without all of the goods from the “outside” (food, canning jars, fencing, roofing, hay, straw, seed, animal feed, plastic tarps, fertilizer, clothes, fabric, medicine, hardware, saws, wood stoves, etc.). The survivors will be the very few who live in areas with good rain and soil and who prepared intelligently for a life without oil.

No nation can become a superpower without being rich because it is only the wealth that builds a mighty army, air force and navy and subsequently leads to the nation becoming an empire. That was the cases with Turkey, Great Britain, Germany, USSR, Spain, Belgium, Italy and Japan in the last century. They all sought gold, silver, copper, iron and precious jewellery to amass a wealth and also robbed weaker nations of their essential resources but like the mighty Romans, they too were defeated only to become a chapter in the history of empires. There is no dispute that the most precious recources today are about oil & gas. It is oil & gas and not gold, silver, copper, iron and precious jewellery that has now become the lifelines of all nations, including China, India and USA. These countries rank first as global consumers of the world’s oil production. Between them, they consume 40 million bbls crude oil per day or 40% of the global production. China was a net exporter of oil until 1993 and now, like the US, it is a net importer. Without oil, their industrial outputs would grind to a screeching halt. It is therefore natural that the source of the next conflict will be oil and the Middle East and the Indian Ocean as the fault lines between the nations of the east and the west. The US, India and China are seeking security of energy supply but they are doing so in different ways. China is also aspiring for energy security but, unlike the US which has the psyche of an empire, it is seeking security of supply through investments and not occupation. The goals for energy security are in reverse modes. The US has been transformed from democracy to a capitalistic oligarchy whereas China is moving from oligarchy to socialist capitalism. The US is an indebted nation whereas China is a lender nation. The Americans are becoming poorer, lavish and lazy because of a lack of incentives and ideology from their leadership. The Chinese, in contrast, are becoming richer, frugal and hard working because of incentives and a cultural ideology. China has been investing heavily in Iran’s energy to the tune of billions of dollars and also in Canada, Africa and Central Asian countries. Whereas China is seeking to protect shipments of oil, the US, in sharp contrast, is seeking plans to deny shipments of oil to China. These two divergent views will have to ultimately clash along the critical maritime flash points from the narrow Strait of Hormuz to the long and very narrow Strait of Malacca as the energy game speeds over the next 5 years.

The new world order is now where energy governs what we eat, where we live, and if and when we travel. This new world order is characterized by fierce international competition for dwindling stocks of oil, natural gas, coal, and uranium, as well as by a tidal shift in power and wealth from energy-deficit states like China, Japan, and the United States to energy-surplus states like Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. In the process, the lives of everyone will be affected in one way or another; with poor and middle-class consumers in the energy-deficit states experiencing the harshest effects. That is most of us and our children.

Following WWII, the US has invaded economicly and militarily the Middle East. The US and its military trojan horse, Israel, have caused the Iran-Iraq war, sold arms to both sides, bomb Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, put in place friendly governments and draw their constitutions to allow this ' legal ' thievery of Middle East natural resources to the US big corporations. The American middle class never got a penny unless they actually, directly or indirectly, worked for the US war industry (an estimated 200 million Americans). The White House expects NATO allies to come and spend tax dollars in a war they have created to gain control over the Middle East oil and gas. As the US economy has reached a proven bankruptcy status during this global financial crisis, the White House wants other nations to bankrupt thenselves in a war that made big American oil & gas corporations rich and the American middle class poor. Big US corporations are controlling the oil and gas of Iraq and making sweet deals with the other Middle East nations.

Nothing of significance takes place in the Middle East and surrounding nations without a scenario with energy as a primary focus and goal. The global energy war, or the Blood Oil & Gas War, has pipelines as its bloodstream and includes the major oil & gas resources of the planet. Global financial crisis or not, oil and natural gas are the long-term keys to an inexorable transfer of economic power from the West to Asia. Even in the worst of economic times, the energy war has shown a relentless competition between the West and Asia, be it in the Middle East, in the Caspian theater, or in African oil-rich states like Angola, Nigeria and Sudan.

As Barack Obama heads into his second hundred days in office, let us take a look at the oil & gas scenario that extends from Iran to the Pacific Ocean where the White House wants to grab as much as of the resources as it can.

Because of the total interdependence of Asia and Persian Gulf geo-ecopolitics, it is crucial for regional powers in Asia to integrate the energy sector via energy pipelines that will link the Persian Gulf, Central Asia, South Asia, Russia, and China. What Iran and Qatar have to offer is the gigantic South Pars natural gas field estimated to hold at least 9% of the world's proven natural gas reserves. Russia and Iran together control roughly 20% of the world's oil reserves and nearly 50% of its gas reserves. It is in their interests to go along with this scenario.

When it comes to Russia, Tehran and Moscow have a long history of close relations, going back to Tsarist times. During that period and the subsequent Soviet era, the two states shared the inland Caspian Sea. Now, as two of the five littoral states of the Caspian, Iran and Russia still share a common fluvial border. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, relations between the Islamic Republic and Russia warmed. Defying pressures from both the Clinton and Bush administrations, Russia's state-owned nuclear power company continued building a civilian nuclear power plant near the Iranian port city of Bushehr.

An other important scenario is the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline, also known as the "peace pipeline," whose construction was initiated in 2008. Both Pakistan and India stood shoulder to shoulder in rejecting relentless pressure from the White House administration to stop this deal.

Iran's relations with both Russia and China are harmonous and will remain so no matter who is elected the new Iranian president next month. China needs Iranian oil and gas and has already made a deal with the Iranians, and has loads of weapons and cheap consumer goods to sell. No less close to Iran, Russia wants to sell them even more weapons, as well as nuclear energy technology.

Why Afghanistan matters is simply not part of the discussion at the White House. Obama and his Administration want the world to believe Americans are invading Afghanistan to liberate Afghan women. An important goal of U.S. foreign policy since President Richard Nixon's era in the early 1970s has been to split Russia and China. The leadership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has been focused on this since the U.S. Congress passed the Silk Road Strategy Act five days before beginning the bombing of Serbia in March 1999. That act clearly identified American geo-strategic interests from the Black Sea to western China with building a mosaic of American protectorates in Central Asia and militarizing the Eurasian energy corridor. Afghanistan, as it happens, sits conveniently at the crossroads of any new Silk Road linking the Caucasus to western China, and four nuclear powers (China, Russia, Pakistan, and India) lurk in the vicinity. "Losing" Afghanistan and its key network of U.S. military bases would, from the Pentagon's point of view, be a disaster. Afghanistan itself is a lot more than the towering mountains of the Hindu Kush and immense deserts: it's believed to be rich in unexplored deposits of natural gas, petroleum, coal, copper, chrome, talc, barites, sulfur, lead, zinc, and iron ore, as well as precious and semiprecious stones. It is crucial for the White House to build several important military bases in Afghanistan for the build up and control of pipelines in the region. The military will see that oil & gas from the Middle East will flow to the West, including of course to European nations. For decades, Central and South Asia have been considered by American energy strategists crucial places to plant the flag; and once the Soviet Union collapsed, control of the energy-rich former Soviet republics in the region was quickly seen as essential to future U.S. global power. The invasion of Afghanistan has made both Russia and China on the defensive. China has vital interests in the region. For some time now China has seen Americans as invading the oil and gas lands of Central Asia, especially in the Caspian Sea region and so, in June 2001, Chinese leaders joined with Russia to form the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). It is the unique alliance of five non-Western civilizations -- Russian, Chinese, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist -- and, because of that, capable of evolving into the basis for a collective security system. Originally, the SCO's junior members were the energy-rich former SSRs of the Soviet Union, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan, which the Clinton administration and then the new Bush administration, had been wanting to control. The organization was to be a multi-layered economic and military regional cooperation society that, as both the Chinese and the Russians saw it, would function as a kind of security blanket around the upper rim of Afghanistan. And then, of course, there are those competing pipelines that, if ever built, either would or wouldn't exclude Iran and Russia from the action to their south. In April 2008, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India (TAPI) actually signed an agreement to build a pipeline to deliver natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India without the involvement of either Iran or Russia. It would cut right through the heart of Western Afghanistan, in Herat, and head south across lightly populated Nimruz and Helmand provinces, where the Taliban, various Pashtun guerrillas and assorted highway robbers now merrily run rings around U.S. and NATO forces and where the U.S. is now building in Dasht-e-Margo ("the Desert of Death") a new mega-base to host President Obama's surge troops.


TAPI's rival is IPI, also theoretically underway and widely derided by Heritage Foundation types in the U.S. Theoretically, TAPI's construction will start in 2010 and the gas would begin flowing by 2015. Afghanistan would collect only $200 million a year. BP-Amoco, already developing the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, now has become the major investor in what had already been dubbed the Trans-Afghan Pipeline or TAP. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Russian energy behemoth Gazprom agreed to buy Nyazov's natural gas at the 40% mark-up the dictator demanded. In return, the Russians received priceless gifts. Nyazov turned over control of Turkmenistan's entire gas surplus to the Russian company through 2009, indicated a preference for letting Russia explore the country's new gas fields, and stated that Turkmenistan was bowing out of any U.S.-backed Trans-Caspian pipeline project. And while he was at it, Putin also cornered much of the gas exports of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as well. Thus, almost five years later, with occupied Afghanistan in increasingly deadly chaos, TAPI seemed dead-on-arrival.

Iran is, of course, an important energy source of West Asia, but needs a major foreign investment to modernize its huge oil and gas resources and thus sell much more to the West than U.S. imposed sanctions now allow. No wonder Iran soon became a target for the White House. And no wonder an air assault on that country remains the goal of Israel and the White House. As seen by the elite from Tehran and Delhi to Beijing and Moscow, such a U.S. attack would be a war not only against Russia and China, but against the whole project of Asian integration that the SCO is coming to represent.

The state-owned Chinese oil corporations have been locking up hydrocarbon resources as far away as Brazil. Not surprisingly, Iran, with the second largest oil as well as gas reserves in the world, looms large in the strategic plans of Beijing. The Chinese want to import Iran's petroleum and natural gas through pipelines across Central Asia, thus circumventing sea routes vulnerable to U.S. naval interdiction.

The SCO has expanded its aims and scope since 2001. Today, Iran, India, and Pakistan enjoy "observer status" in an organization that increasingly aims to control and protect not just regional energy supplies, but the build up of pipelines in every direction. This is, of course, the role the White House ruling elite would have wanted NATO to play across Eurasia. Given that Russia and China expect the SCO to play a similar role across Asia, clashes of various sorts are inevitable.

Beijing's scenario is truly the rising world order of the twenty-first century but will be significantly further defined by a quadrangle of BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) plus the future Islamic triangle of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Add in a unified South America, no longer in control by Americans, and you have a global SCO-plus.

In Central Asia, the energy scenario revolves around the huge Kashagan oil field in the Caspian crown with reserves of as many as 9 billion barrels. No one yet knows which routes will deliver Kashagan's oil to the world after production starts in 2013. Perhaps the Russian-controlled Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) will pump Kashagan crude to the Black Sea. If that happens then the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, seen by Americans as the Western escape route from dependence on Persian Gulf oil, will not survive. Even though Moscow never planned to occupy Georgia long-term in its 2008 war, or take over the BTC pipeline that now runs through its territory, Alfa Bank oil and gas By briefly cutting off the BTC oil flow, Russian troops made it clear to global investors that Georgia was not a reliable energy transit country.

As it stands at the moment, however, Russia still dominates the global energy pipeline scenario, ensuring Central Asian gas flows across Russia's network and not through the Trans-Caspian networks privileged by the U.S. and the European Union. This virtually guarantees Russia's crucial geopolitical status as the top gas supplier to Europe and a crucial supplier to Asia as well. Meanwhile, in "transit corridor" Pakistan, there is the under-populated southern Pakistani province of Balochistan. The future of the energy pipeline competing giants IPI vs. TAPI battle may depend on Gwadar. Gwadar is an Arabian Sea port in that province. The port was built by China. China badly needs Gwadar as a link for another long pipeline to be built to western China. The gas flowing in that pipeline will come from Iran.

Looking eastward now, several other nations want to get in this global energy scenario. Deep in Central Asia there is Turkmenistan.

Pakistan will finally become a key transit corridor for either Iranian gas from the monster South Pars field heading for China, or a great deal of the Caspian gas from Turkmenistan heading Europe-wards. Pakistan would then be a pivotal place for both NATO and the SCO. So now we have NATO vs. the SCO. With either IPI or TAPI, Turkmenistan wins. With either IPI or TAPI, Russia loses. With either IPI or TAPI, Pakistan wins. With TAPI, Iran loses. With IPI, Afghanistan loses. In the end, it all comes down to the top two global oil & gas customers: Washington and Beijing.



Far more significant is India's decision to throw its weight behind the TAPI Turkmenistan pipeline that is plagued by a host of uncertainties, not least the adequacy of supplies. Turkmenistan is one of the great repositories of natural gas with an estimated of 10-14 trillion cubic meters (tcm) of reserves. The 1,680-km line that will snake its way from the Dauletabad gas field in the central Asian country, cut across Afghanistan and Pakistan, taking in Herat, Kandahar and Multan before reaching Fazilka on the Indian border. This pipeline is better known in the West as the Trans Afghan Pipeline because close to half its length (830 km) lies in war-torn Afghanistan; just 170 km of this audacious venture will lie in Turkmenistan. TAPI, much more than IPI, straddles the most volatile region in the world. Obama and other NATO troops, are fighting the Taliban forces in Afghanistan where an increasing number of suicide bombings have added to the mayhem. TAPI is projected to supply 90 mmscmd (million standard cubic meters daily) of gas, of which Afghanistan will get 5 mmscmd during the first two years and 14 mmscmd from the third year onwards. The rest is to be shared equally between Pakistan and India. That's roughly around 30 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas annually. Turkmenistan has been involved in a flurry of deals that put a huge question mark over supplies to the Afghan pipeline. Russia has a virtual monopoly over exports from Turkmenistan with Gazprom allowed to take up to 50 bcm of gas annually for another two decades. China has been promised 30 bcm from 2009 and Iran 8 bcm. There is also a report that another 10 bcm will be sent to the European Union, bringing its projected gas exports to over 100 bcm annually. Russia has also been a strong supporter of the IPI pipeline and is not likely to view with favour India opting for TAPI in preference to IPI. From all accounts, the latter has been slotted as high-risk by India because of the potential threat of the US attacking Iran. There is also the question of unrest in Baluchistan where existing pipelines have been blown up by tribal insurgents. Commercial reasons are ostensibly the major stumbling block on the IPI pipeline with India and Pakistan still squabbling over the transit fee. India is asking Pakistan to lower the transit fee to 15 cents per million British thermal units (mmBtu) from the 42 cents it is demanding in addition to a flat payment of $200 million a year that Pakistan is seeking for the security and maintenance of the pipeline. For India, it is a choice between a rock and a hard place. Both pipelines traverse some of the most hazardous combat zones with little hope of governments being able to provide foolproof guarantees of secure supplies. But with gas supplies falling far short of demand and leaving significant power and fertiliser assets stranded for the past three years, it clearly has to take a gamble and hope that its choice will pay off. Will the IPI pipeline prove less risky than the TAPI line? A decision on Iran by the White House along with events unfolding in Afghanistan and Pakistan could soon settle the debate.

Across the globe, reserves of oil and gas that were previously regarded as uneconomic are being actively explored and developed. From the Arctic to East Asia to the South Atlantic, untapped billions of barrels of oil are attracting the interests of energy companies and speculative finance capital, seeking to take advantage of the high price of crude oil. One of the greatest potential oil and gas bonanzas is to be found beneath the Arctic Ocean. A report issued by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), estimated that the Arctic region holds around 90 billion barrels of oil—equal to the total proven reserves of Russia, the world’s second biggest oil producer. Up to 30 percent of the world’s unproven natural gas deposits could also lie beneath the ice, as well as a possible one-fifth of untapped reserves of natural gas liquids. To date, most of the Arctic Ocean is international water, covered all year by a thick ice sheet. Russia, like all countries around the North Pole, claims sovereignty over the seas up to 200-nautical miles (370 km) from its coast.

Canada is developing military capabilities in its far north, with an army training centre based at Resolute Bay and a port for a new fleet of ice-strengthened patrol ships on the northern tip of Baffin Island. These capabilities, as well as a C$40 million mapping project in the Arctic, are aimed at fending off its rivals. Canada is especially concerned about the US claim that the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, should it open due to retreating ice, must be an international sea route. Ottawa insists that the passage would be an internal Canadian waterway. Energy reserves in Alaska and the Chukchi Sea have become a key part of US plans to boost domestic oil production. Speaking for the oil conglomerates who stand to make tens of billions of dollars from these oil fields, on June 18 President Bush pressed Congress to reverse the longstanding ban on offshore drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, as well approving the development of onshore production on federal lands.

Once again, this time in Iraq, we see the natural resource wealth of an entire nation enriching none but a criminal class and megacorporations. Iraq has 115 billion barrels of known oil reserves. That is more than five times the total in the United States. And, because of its long isolation, it is the least explored of the world’s oil-rich nations. A mere two thousand wells have been drilled across the entire country; in Texas alone there are a million. It has been estimated, by the Council on Foreign Relations, that Iraq may have a further 220 billion barrels of undiscovered oil; another study puts the figure at 300 billion. If these estimates are anywhere close to the mark, US forces are now sitting on one quarter of the world’s oil resources. The value of Iraqi oil, largely light crude with low production costs, would be of the order of $30 trillion at today’s prices. For purposes of comparison, the projected total cost of the US invasion/occupation is around $1 trillion. Who is getting Iraq’s oil? One of the White House administration’s ‘benchmarks’ for the Iraqi government is the passage of a law to distribute oil revenues. The draft law that the US has written for the Iraqi congress would cede nearly all the oil to Western companies. The Iraq National Oil Company would retain control of 17 of Iraq’s 80 existing oilfields, leaving the rest – including all yet to be discovered oil – under foreign corporate control for 30 years.

Successive White House administrations have made sure Iraq ends up as an American protectorate for the next few decades – a necessary condition for the extraction of its oil wealth. The costs are about ten billion dollars a month plus a few dozen American fatalities are negligible compared to $30 trillion in oil wealth, assured American geopolitical supremacy and oil & gas. Seen this way the invasion of Iraq is a success.

In Canada, the oil & Gas industry is mostly under the control of the USA corporations. The oil & gas is pipeline from Canada to the USA at no costs to Americans. Even security is paid by Canadian taxpayers. Similarly in Iraq, the USA corporations and puppet friendly government of the USA control the Iraquis oil & gas and the Iraquis taxpayers are paying dearly of its security and transportation to the West.

For example in Canada, the property of the hydrocarbons, the oil and natural gas, and tarsands, have mostly owned by American and other foreign corporations. Our natural resources have been bought out by foreigners. Pipelines have been built to transport the oil and natural gas to the customers in the United States without paying taxes to Canada. Canadian corporations have been taken over by American corporations with bankrupted money, paper money, Stock Exchange money, money that Americans dont even have. The White House prints dollar bills by the trillions and give them to corporations to buy more Canadian corporations. This is no longer a fair exchange of something tangible with something else of an equivalent value. We have natural resources and Americans have bankrupted money to exchange with. That's not right! How can we let that happened? It is time to nationalize Canadian natural resources.

Over time Canadian corporations were created to supply oil and gas to the US, especially California. Pipelines were built throughout Canada and now feed US customers. Now that Americans control those Canadian corporations, the cost of selling the petroleum products to US customers have been lower than what Canadians actually pay for them. No income tax are paid by the US corporations on Canadian land. Basically, Canadian natural resources are being 'legally' stolen from Canada at no cost to Americans (bankrupted money) and no tax to be paid to Canada. Somewhat like what the World Bank and the IMF are doing in the world but then the US is also in charge of these two organizations. The US uses bankrupted money to supply them with the cash they need to promote American values in the world and take away Earth resources from the developing nations. This way of doing things has been going on ever since WWII. Americans are buying their way with bankrupted money.

In Canada, American corporations have the full legal protection of the WTO and NAFTA agreements. What is even worse is that the cost of security for sending the petroleum products to the US, by now US control corporations, is dumped onto Canadian taxpayers, not on the oil and gas, and pipeline corporations. How fair is that?! How is that possible?! How can we let that happened?! First American corporations buy Canadians corporations with money they dont own, bankrupted money. Then they carry Canadian natural resources through pipelines also built by Canadians taxpayers. They pay no taxes. And Canadian taxpayers are responsible of security for the transportation of the petroleum products to the US customers. Canadians are not getting a fair exchange of natural resources for fake money. They call that ' free trade '. Canadian environmental standards have to be lowered from beginning to end, from the exploration phase to development and transportation of the resources to the US customers in favour of corporations that allow more pollution into the environment and favor the violation of labour rights in the process.

Gee!!! What world are we living in?! It is the US invading Canada, legally. It is the US invading the world, developing nations, legally??!! Well! Not so legally! In Canada it is economic warfare! And of course Canadians have no chance against trillions of dollars of bankcrupted money, fake money. In other countries, the US White House use both military and economic warfare.

Once Canadians have recovered these natural resources through a nationalization process of natural resources, it will generate employment. The plundering of our natural resources by international and transnational oil and gas companies has come to an end.

Oil and gas companies are responsible and accountable of their products from beginning to end. The 'end' for an oil company does not end at the gas pump where a consumer buy your refine products. No! The end for you goes all the way to global warming, to pollution of the environment, to the destruction of the global life-support systems, to taking away lives of future generations, to the destruction of life on Earth. Very much so!

Copyright © 2010 Global Community WebNet Ltd.