Sunday, March 11, 2007

OIL TOO CHEAP if no Iraq War says Oil & Gas Journal in 2002

The BBC's Greg Palast ran a story a year ago about a former top CIA oil analyst, who he names, telling him the Iraq War was in part to keep Iraq from producing too much oil and driving the price down.

Later, the Downing Street Minutes of Bush & Blair's planning for the war seemed to confirm this when Bush sent assurances to Russia's Vladimir Putin that a successful invasion would NOT result in lower oil prices.

PALAST & DSM STORIES

I stumbled across further confirmation in Oil & Gas Journal, the primary publication of the oil industry, while looking for something else. They seem very concerned that without the war, which would begin in four months, the price of oil per barrel would drop.

Unmentioned is that this would mean lower prices for us at the pump. So in effect, we went to war for the right to pay more for gas.

How long do you think we'd have to wait for the war to end and Bush and Cheney to be impeached if the Democrats investigated this and said it everyday?

If they are serious about getting these bastards out of the driver's seat, this is what it will take.

Most people call it honesty.

Democrats should try it instead of just telling nicer lies than the Republicans.
KEY EXCERPTS:




Market hotline: OPEC faces bigger challenge without Iraq war

Bob Williams. Oil & Gas Journal.
Dec 2, 2002

OPEC price threat

Absent a war, says CGES [Centre for Global Energy Studies], the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will need to make substantial output cuts to keep oil prices from falling below the floor of its $22-28/bbl official target price range (for a basket of OPEC crudes).

Noting that the price of oil had fallen by $6/bbl from mid-October to mid-November, the London-based think tank said that the OPEC 10 (excluding Iraq) had opted for boosting production in October. With Iraq doubling oil exports to 1.7 million b/d in October, that hiked total OPEC output by 1 million b/d that month. "Unless Iraq's oil exports collapse again, the rest of OPEC needs to begin curtailing overproduction to prevent further falls in the price in the coming months," CGES said.

***

This could be achieved without changing quotas, for OPEC 10 production would need to fall to 22.6 million b/d, still almost 1 million b/d over the current 21.7 million bid group quota. Without such restraint, oil prices would start to drift down towards the lower end of the OPEC price band by yearend, says CGES. Failure to act immediately, the think tank warns, would then require a cut of 1.5 million bld in second quarter 2003 just to keep Brent crude at $18.50-20.50/bbl next year.

"OPEC cannot afford to wait for a disruption to Iraq's oil exports to bring the oil market back into balance," CGES said. "The threat of war will linger until Iraq is given a clean bill of health by the UN's weapons inspectors.

"In the meantime, there is too much oil in the market for OPEC to achieve its price target unless, in an uncharacteristic burst of altruism, OPEC accepts that the global economy needs cheaper oil."

LINK TO FULL TEXT ARTICLE
(requires subscription. If you find a free link to this, let me know).

OIL MOTIVE for Iraq War resources
http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/2006/09/iraq-oil-war-resources.html



public relations

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

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