|
By By Kaleem Omar
The News International (Pakistan)
November 10, 2007
The United States is the worlds biggest consumer and importer of oil. But
the Chinese economic juggernaut is fast catching up with the US as an oil
importer and is projected to have more cars than the US by the year 2020. The
competition between the two countries for new sources of oil is going to be
intense. With crude oil prices closing in on an all-time high of $ 100 a barrel
this week and expected to breach that barrier within the next few days, the US
s interest in getting a hammerlock on Central Asias vast oil and gas
reserves is likely to become greater than ever before.
The United States is spending $ 83 million to ugrade its two main air bases
in Afghanistan, the Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, and Kandahar Air Field
in the south. Both bases are being equipped with new runways, new navigation
aids and other facilities. The move reinforces the view that Washington
intends to maintain a permanent military presence in Afghanistan in order to ensure
that the US continues to have access to the huge deposits of oil and gas in
Central Asia and the Caspian region.
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgystan and Kazakhstan make up the
eastern side of the Caspian Sea Basin, Azerbaijan the western side and Iran
the southern side a seven-country region beneath which lie oil reserves to
rival those of Saudi Arabia and the worlds richest reserves of natural gas.
Iran is already the second-biggest OPEC oil producer. It also has large gas
reserves. There are also billions of dollars to be made from the oil and gas
reserves of the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. This is what is driving
the new Great Game in Central Asia.
It has often been said that the business of America is business and that its
foreign policy in the post-cold war era is driven more by commercial
considerations than other factors. That certainly seems to be the case when it comes
to President George W. Bushs administration, many of whose senior members,
including Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney, have close ties to big
business and, more specifically, to major players in the energy and arms
industries..
As CEO of the US energy services giant Haliburton Corporation for five years
(1995-2000), Cheney spent much of the 1990s scheming with his fellow oil
barons to get a pipeline from the fields of the Caspian Sea where a projected
$ 4 trillion in profits are waiting for them through Afghanistan and
Pakistan to the Arabian Sea.
Cheneys business interests in oil and arms, temporarily divested while he
helps direct American policy in energy and defence, rival those of former
President George Bush Senior and his son. The Bush family has close connections
to the Washington-based Carlyle Group, a $ 14 billion private equity firm that
has parlayed a roster of former top-level government officials, largely from
the Reagan and Bush Senior administrations, into a money-making machine.
On the board of directors for Carlyle is former President George Bush. James
A. Baker, who was Secretary of State under the first President Bush and
spearheaded George W. Bushs crisis management team in the Florida vote-recount
episode in the 2000 presidential election, is currently senior counsel to the
Carlyle Group. He was a classmate of former Defence Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld at Yale University.
Rumsfeld was the roommate of Frank C. Carlucci at Yale. Carlucci, who was
Secretary of Defence under President Ronald Reagan, is currently chairman of
the Carlyle Group. The current President Bush was a director of a firm called
Caterair during the years 1990-94. Caterair is owned by the Carlyle Group.
A report published in the New York Times on March 5, 2001 said that during
the 2000 presidential campaign, former President George Bush took time off
from his sons race to visit Saudi Arabia.to talk to top-level Saudi officials
about American-Saudi business affairs.
In a new spin on Washingtons revolving door between business and
government, where lobbying by former government officials is restricted but soliciting
investment is not, Carlyle has upped the ante and taken the practice global.
Bush Senior and Baker were accompanied on their trips by former Prime
Minister John Major of Britain, another of Carlyles political stars.
George W. Bushs own business interests were once tied to Saudi financiers.
In 1979, Bushs first business, Arbusto Energy, obtained financing from James
Bath, a Houstonian and close family friend. One of many investors, Bath gave
Bush $ 50,000 for a 5 per cent stake in Arbusto. At that time, Bath was the
sole US business representative for Salem bin Laden, head of the wealthy
Saudi Arabian family and a brother (one of 17) to Osama bin Laden. It has long
been suspected but never proven that the money came directly from Salem bin
Laden.
In a statement issued shortly after the September 11 attacks on the United
States, the White House vehemently denied the connection, insisting that Bath
invested his own money, not Salem bin Ladens, in Arbutso.
In conflicting statements, Bush at first denied ever knowing Bath, then
acknowledged his stake in Arbutso and that he was aware that Bath represented
Saudi interests.
An article by Neela Banerjee in The New York Times headlined Fears again of
oil supplies at risk addressed the nightmares that George W. Bushs war in
Afghanistan had raised among those concerned about oil.
Banerjee restated other points that need emphasising, such as the fact that
while US dependence on Gulf oil is down to 13 per cent of overall use, Saudi
Arabia remains the USs biggest single supplier of crude. Moreover, said
Banerjee, the Saudis are the only ones with enough spare oil-field capacity
to call on if there is a severe disruption (of supplies) elsewhere.
Meanwhile, ex-President and ex-CIA Director George Bush has reportedly been
using his Saudi connections to further the business interests of the Carlyle
Group.
The American public-interest law firm Judicial Watch in 2001 strongly
criticised this situation, pointing out in a March 5 statement that it was a
conflict of interest that could cause problems for American foreign policy in the
Middle East and Asia. In a follow-up statement on September 29 (nineteen
days after the 9/11 attacks on the United States), Judicial Watch said: This
conflict of interest has now turned into a scandal.
Hidden behind President Bushs invasion of Afghanistan, could there be an
Oil Agenda? Michael Klare, author of Resource Wars, has suggested that the
long-term Bush/Cheney plan is to establish a Pax Americana in Central Asia and
secure the vast oil and natural gas resources of the Caspian Basin.
US oil companies have been negotiating with the post-Soviet republics of
Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan for access to the oil and gas resources for years
but have been stymied by political instability in the region. Oil conglomerates
were torn between two possible pipeline routes to Western markets: west
through the war-torn Caucasus Mountains to Turkey, or south through war-torn
Afghanistan to Pakistan and the Arabian Sea.
Until it was put on hold in 1997, Unocal, a leading US energy firm, which
spearheaded the Afghanistan project, was to have built a 1,030-mile oil
pipeline, called the Central Asian Oil Pipeline Project (which would start at
Chardzhou in Turkmenistan and link Russias Siberian existing oil pipelines to
Pakistans Arabian Sea coast), and a companion 918-mile natural gas pipeline, in
addition to a tanker loading terminal at Gwadar, on the Mekran coast. The
company projected annual revenues of $ 2 billion, or enough to recover the cost
of the project in five years.
Unocal opened offices in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Pakistan
and got every faction of Afghanistans Northern Alliance to sign on. According
to a report published in the New York Times on May 12, 1998, even former US
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger got on board to help sell the project in
the region.
Backing the Caspian plan is none other than US Vice-President Dick Cheney,
who, as CEO of Halliburton, was successful in winning contracts from Caspian
Sea states to be part of any future development. In 1994 Cheney helped broker
a deal between US Oil giant Chevron and the state of Kazakhstan when he sat
on the Oil Advisory Board of that Central Asian state.
In a speech on June 23, 1998 to oil executives at the Washington-based Cato
Institute, a Conservative think tank, Cheney said: The current hot spots for
major oil companies are the oil resources of the Caspian Sea region. Former
Soviet states Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan are all seeking to
quickly develop their oil reserves, which languished during the years of Russian
domination.
The stakes in that region could be as much as 200 billion barrels of oil
and natural gas, Cheney told his audience. |
