Many days a week, our newspapers are filled to overkill, to numbness, with largely repetitive material on the Iraqi situation — the military buildup in the Gulf, life on a carrier, arguments at the UN, arguments about “material breaches,” the inspectors at a new site, Saddam and his horrific acts, Saddam’s fate, the Kurds in the north, the latest leaked and amended plans for an American invasion, the Iraqi opposition in London, the war temperature in various capitals, and so on. But it’s a rare day when oil is a topic of Iraqi news, and then the piece usually starts with some kind of embarrassed denial that oil is crucial to, or central to the developing situation.
I find this exceedingly strange (as, I think, would most people on earth). Our rulers have, by and large, led oil soaked lives. They naturally think in terms of an oil-soaked world. (Let’s keep in mind that we have our first National Security Advisor after whom, thanks to Chevron, an oil tanker was named.) They are the vulgar Marxists. And we’re not talking something simpleminded here. Oil isn’t simply another raw material like tungsten. Oil is what makes our world turn, but it’s also a kind of dream (as gold once was for European plunderers), of control, of wealth, undoubtedly of immortality.
My antidote to the lack of oil coverage in our world is to send around pieces on the subject when I happen to stumble across them. Below you’ll find a piece from the British Guardian by Anthony Sampson, author of an oil classic, The Seven Sisters, and a piece on oil, Iraq, and us from the Nation by Dilip Hiro, who has just published Iraq, In the Eye of the Storm. Both men emphasize the dreaminess of this administration’s oil thinking, the levels of fantasy that it plays upon. Sampson points out that administration oil dreams may be the nightmares of those now running the major oil companies, and Hiro, that American control over Iraqi oil may prove nothing but a chimera. Both are, for my taste, too dismissive of the importance of oil dreams, but I found the pieces interesting nonetheless. Tom
Oilmen don’t want another Suez
By Anthony Sampson
December 22, 2002
The ObserverWhile Washington hawks depict a war against Iraq as achieving security of oil supplies, Western oil companies are worried about the short-term danger and the supposed long-term benefits of intervention.
Left-wing critics in Britain depict the proposed invasion as an oil war. Former Cabinet Minister Mo Mowlam has called it a ‘war to secure oil supplies’ as a cover for a war on terrorism. And the fact that President George Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney have both been enriched by oil companies raises suspicions about their motives for war.
But oil companies have had little influence on US policy-making. Most big American companies, including oil companies, do not see a war as good for business, as falling share prices indicate; while the obvious beneficiaries of war are arms companies.
While Washington hawks depict a war against Iraq as achieving security of oil supplies, Western oil companies are worried about the short-term danger and the supposed long-term benefits of intervention.
Left-wing critics in Britain depict the proposed invasion as an oil war. Former Cabinet Minister Mo Mowlam has called it a ‘war to secure oil supplies’ as a cover for a war on terrorism. And the fact that President George Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney have both been enriched by oil companies raises suspicions about their motives for war.
But oil companies have had little influence on US policy-making. Most big American companies, including oil companies, do not see a war as good for business, as falling share prices indicate; while the obvious beneficiaries of war are arms companies.
To read more Sampson click here
Oil, Iraq and America
by Dilip Hiro
The Nation Magazine
December 16, 2002Of the two slogans that the Bush Administration has coined to sell the idea of invading Iraq–installing democracy and monopolizing Iraq’s petroleum riches–the one about democracy means little to ordinary folks. It is the prospect of uncontested access to the world’s second-largest oil reserves–leading to the end of America’s growing reliance on petroleum from Saudi Arabia, the homeland of most of the 9/11 hijackers–that excites popular imagination in the United States. And the US hawks, who are determining Iraq policy, know it.
Interestingly, there is a rare concurrence of perception between Americans and Iraqis at both official and popular levels regarding the centrality of Iraqi oil to the current crisis and the earlier conflicts with Baghdad.