BBC: US oil companies return to Libya (shocked ... I'm shocked!)

[Bozita]

What took 'em so long?



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4219623.stm

US oil companies return to Libya

US oil companies have been awarded most of the contracts on offer at the first open licence auction in Libya.

Companies like Occidental and Chevron Texaco will return to Libya for the first time in more than 20 years.

European oil and gas companies were not awarded any of the license to explore 127,000 sq km (51,000 sq miles).

Libya - which has Africa's largest oil reserves - is seeking massive foreign investment now that sanctions against Tripoli have been lifted.

more...

[Tinoire]

1. Oil, oil everyhwere and not a drop to drink!. Not just rhetoric anymore!

Not just rhetoric anymore!

Sunday, January 30, 2005
Not just rhetoric anymore

Nine days ago, U.S. President George W. Bush delivered his second inaugural speech, a rousing, 21-minute address in which, among other things, he extolled liberty and proclaimed "ending tyranny in our world" the ultimate goal of U.S. policy. God himself backed this policy, Mr. Bush said. Wasn't it in full accord with history's "visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty," i.e., God -- that very special friend of America's? Every day since, the White House has been busy running damage control. What went askew?

That kind of rhetoric is certainly what foreign observers have come to expect from American politicians. They have been jarred by such language so often they barely twitch now when they hear it. Most were probably less surprised by Mr. Bush's second inaugural speech itself than they were to find large numbers of Americans suddenly wondering how it must have sounded, and what it might mean, to the rest of the world.

Because an odd thing happened. Americans didn't receive the speech with their accustomed languor. They replayed the tape, pored over the transcript, dissected the imagery, counted the number of times the words "freedom" or "liberty" were used (42) and for some reason -- the Iraq misadventure suggests itself -- decided to take the speech's well-worn, God-driven rhetoric seriously. A Los Angeles Times commentary Jan. 21 summarized the common reaction well: "We take this president at his word. And the words are startling."

A barrage of questions followed -- and has not ended yet -- about the speech's real-life implications for U.S. foreign policy. The White House has been asked so often whether it signaled some major policy shifts (what, for instance, did Mr. Bush mean when he said relations with "every ruler and every nation" would henceforward depend on how they treated their own people?) that it has been busy ever since issuing denials, corrections and clarifications. The day after the speech, reporters were summoned to the White House to be told that the speech did not signify a change in policy.

The day after that, the president's father, George H.W. Bush, intervened to say that his son's words did not mean "new aggression or newly asserted military forces." And in a news conference Wednesday, the president himself reiterated that, while the speech "set a bold new goal for the future," it still reflected "the policy of the past." Pakistan, China, Libya, Syria, Russia and other not-too-democratic allies needn't worry, in other words. The speech did not apply to them.

(snip)

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/geted.pl5?ed20050130a1.htm

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