Anwaar

I have a few items to add to your essay for a more complete analysis. I’m glad you mentioned the following:

“…about Iraq’s 112 billion barrels of proven, close to the surface and easily extractable oil reserves, the second largest in the world after Saudi Arabia, along with roughly 220 billion barrels of other probable and possible resources.”

There is more to add here; the widespread use of advanced extraction techniques like water-injection and horizontal-brush drilling are the hallmarks of field maturity and imminent production collapse. It is important to note that Iraq’s oil fields are easily extractable because the other great world oil fields are at death’s door, including Saudi Arabia’s great mother, Ghawar. Ghawar is by far the largest conventional oil field ever discovered. Since first tapped in 1948, Ghawar has produced some 60 billion barrels of oil and accounted for 60-65% of Saudi production from 1948-2005. While actual field by field production numbers remain a Saudi State secret, Ghawar is estimated to produce more than five million barrels per day or 6.5% of the planet’s daily production total of 84 million barrels.

The Saudis have thus far prevented the appropriate authorities from investigating. We have only second hand reports of her demise. Of these accounts, the most notable is investment banker Matthew Simmons’ book Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy. Simmons assembles a picture of declining Saudi production from publicly available technical reports written by Saudi-Aramco’s own reservoir engineers in recent decades. His portrayal of the situation is dire indeed. He claims that “When Saudi Arabia peaks (enters the unavoidable state of permanent production decline) the world, categorically, has peaked.” It looks like the 2006 numbers confirm Simmons’ 2005 prophecy.

The writers at the Oil Drum, a data driven oil analysis website, after assessing the production data from several independent reporting agencies, claim that Saudi production is down a whopping 8% in 2006 from 2005 numbers. The decline would have been closer to 14% without the addition of the Haradh III mega-project. They assert that Saudi Arabia has now officially peaked and that the pace of production decline there is likely to accelerate. Remember, Ghawar accounts for 60% of Saudi production.

Here’s the latest on other fields around the globe:

“Kuwaiti oil production from the world’s second-largest field (Burgan) is ‘exhausted’ and falling after almost six decades of pumping” according to the chairman of the Kuwaiti state oil company. The L.A. times tells us that “Production at Cantarell, the world’s second-largest oil complex, which provides about 60% of Mexico’s crude, averaged 1.78 million barrels a day in 2006. That’s a 13% drop from 2005.” The famous North Sea basin and it gigantic Forties Field, the oil find that made Britain a petroleum exporter for the past 20 years, is about to experience a precipitous production decline. These fields and others like them have fueled the global capitalist system now enshrined and deified in American mass-culture. Our own [US] Southern oil fields took only 40 years to outlive their usefulness from 1930 to 1970.

Back in 2000 China’s only super-giant field, Da Qing was also at death’s door. This is interesting to note because prior to Unocal’s merge with Chevron Corporation on August 10, 2005, the Chinese government attempted a hostile buyout (through CNOOC Ltd., which they control 70% of) to gain control of Unocal. This goes counter to your claim of other oil producing countries not wanting to touch Iraqi oil contracts:

“And that is that under the new law oil majors such as BP and Shell in Britain, and Exxon and Chevron in the US, would be able to sign deals of up to 30 years to extract Iraq’s oil, a kind of contract which other oil producing countries do not want to touch by a mile long pole.”

It seems to me that China, or any other super power countries or persons, would gladly take a huge share of the pie, if they could.

I’d also like to add that National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, was a former member of the board of Chevron. The company has named one of their supertankers the SS Condoleezza Rice. I believe her father was a high official with Chevron too.

More concerning Karzai and Khalilzad [and others]:

Karzai, a one time leader of the southern Afghan Pashtun Durrani tribe, he was a member of the mujaheddin that fought the Soviets during the 1980s. He was a top contact for the CIA and maintained close relations with CIA Director William Casey, Vice President George Bush, and their Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) Service interlocutors. Later, Karzai and a number of his brothers moved to the United States under the auspices of the CIA. Karzai continued to serve the agency’s interests, as well as those of the Bush Family and their oil friends in negotiating the CentGas deal, according to Middle East and South Asian sources.

Khalilzad, a fellow Pashtun and the son of a former government official under King Mohammed Zahir Shah, was, in addition to being a consultant to the RAND Corporation, a special liaison between UNOCAL and the Taliban government. Khalilzad also worked on various risk analyses for the project.

Khalilzad’s efforts complemented those of the Enron Corporation, a major political contributor to the Bush campaign. Enron, which filed for bankruptcy in the single biggest corporate collapse in the nation’s history, conducted the feasibility study for the CentGas deal. Vice President Cheney held several secret meetings with top Enron officials, including its Chairman Kenneth Lay, earlier in 2001. These meetings were presumably part of Cheney’s non-public Energy Task Force sessions. A number of Enron stockholders, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, became officials in the Bush administration. In addition, Thomas White, a former Vice Chairman of Enron and a multimillionaire in Enron stock, currently serves as the Secretary of the Army.

A chief benefactor in the CentGas deal would have been Halliburton, the huge oil pipeline construction firm that also had its eye on the Central Asian oil reserves. At the time, Halliburton was headed by Dick Cheney. After Cheney’s selection as Bush’s Vice Presidential candidate, Halliburton also pumped a huge amount of cash into the Bush-Cheney campaign coffers. And like oil cash cow Enron, there were Wall Street rumors in late December that Halliburton, which suffered a forty per cent drop in share value, might follow Enron into bankruptcy court.

Assisting with the CentGas negotiations with the Taliban was Laili Helms, the niece-in-law of former CIA Director Richard Helms. Laili Helms, also a relative of King Zahir Shah, was the Taliban’s unofficial envoy to the United States and arranged for various Taliban officials to visit the United States. Laili Helms’ base of operations was in her home in Jersey City on the Hudson River. Ironically, most of her work on behalf of the Taliban was practically conducted in the shadows of the World Trade Center, just across the river.

Readers will have to continue their own digging, it won’t be difficult to find more; this information has been around for a long time, years.

On a final note, I would add that it is completely off base to lump Dennis Kucinich with other presidential contenders, or even with other members of Congress. He is unique and has withstood pressure to bend or be bought by controlling interests in his long years of service. He has consistently voted against war and any funding for war. In lieu of the additional Administration’s appropriation request of $120 billion and the House voting for it, Dennis is calling for all citizens to take to the streets:

The House on Friday passed the controversial supplemental appropriations bill, H.R. 1591, by a vote of 218 to 212, in Roll Call 186. Congressman Kucinich voted NO. Standing firm with him on this NO vote were 13 Democrats: John Barrow [GA], Dan Boren [OK], Lincoln Davis [TN], Barbara Lee [CA], John Lewis [GA], Jim Marshall [GA], Jim Matheson [UT], Michael McNulty [NY], Michael Michaud [ME], Gene Taylor [MS], Maxine Waters [CA], Diane Watson [CA], and Lynn Woolsey [CA].

Congressman Kucinich immediately released a video, saying, “Washington hasn’t listened. Washington has said More War.”

Kucinich now calls for Americans now to act, to “go into the town squares … meet in libraries and on university campuses across the country, to cause the policies of the United States to emerge right from the grassroots, and be heard in Washington.”

Readers can read more on this at the FountainHead forum [renamed TS Forum at this site], scroll down to the appropriate reply:
Re: Kucinich for President!
« Reply #37 on 3/27/07 at 1:25pm »
It Is Time To Take A Strong Stand
3/24/07 11:49:48 PM Eastern Standard Time
http://tinyurl.com/36us5s

After reading the above, I invite all to read through the various posts at Kucinich for President! and to make up their own minds as to what kind of man Dennis Kucinich is. To me, he is a man who encourages us to engage in direct, face-to-face talks; cease using language that defines the other using “enemy” images; and promote more people-to-people exchanges. He embodies all that our country needs at this time, including a true spiritual healing for the united States.

Sincerely,
Michelle