BP's Browne Says Access to Oil Reserves Is Restricted

[shugah]

BP's Browne Says Access to Oil Reserves Is Restricted

Feb. 16 (Bloomberg) -- International oil companies face a ``serious problem'' gaining access to the world's largest oil reserves as they look to expand production, BP Plc Chief Executive Officer John Browne said.

While the world has ``plenty of resources,'' access to the biggest deposits is restricted by some governments, Browne said. The biggest oil and gas fields are in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq, and in Russia and West Africa.

``The resources on which we are going to rely are closed by governments'' to investment by foreign companies, Browne said in a speech to an annual Energy Institute conference in London.

Exxon Mobil Corp., BP and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, the world's three largest oil companies, are giving billions of dollars to shareholders as they look for ways to spend record profits. The three companies earned $83.8 billion last year as oil prices rose to all-time highs.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000085&sid=am59y4MRSLps&refer=europe

[Clara T]

1. Translation

"Dammit that's our oil"

[Webster Green]

2. Well boo, fucking hoo!

I really feel sorry for big oil.:cry:

[Strelnikov_]

3. Crude Dudes

U.S. oil companies just happened to have billions of dollars they wanted to invest in undeveloped oil reserves.

Sep. 20, 2004
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1095545411401&call_

. . .

Gheit just smiles at the notion that oil wasn't a factor in the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He compares Iraq to Russia, which also has large undeveloped oil reserves. But Russia has nuclear weapons. "We can't just go over and ... occupy (Russian) oil fields," says Gheit. "It's a different ballgame." Iraq, however, was defenceless, utterly lacking, ironically, in weapons of mass destruction. And its location, nestled in between Saudi Arabia and Iran, made it an ideal place for an ongoing military presence, from which the U.S. would be able to control the entire Gulf region. Gheit smiles again: "Think of Iraq as a military base with a very large oil reserve underneath .... You can't ask for better than that."

There's something almost obscene about a map that was studied by senior Bush administration officials and a select group of oil company executives meeting in secret in the spring of 2001. It doesn't show the kind of detail normally shown on maps — cities, towns, regions. Rather its detail is all about Iraq's oil. The southwest is neatly divided, for instance, into nine "Exploration Blocks." Stripped of political trappings, this map shows a naked Iraq, with only its ample natural assets in view. It's like a supermarket meat chart, which identifies the various parts of a slab of beef so customers can see the most desirable cuts .... Block 1 might be the striploin, Block 2 and Block 3 are perhaps some juicy tenderloin, but Block 8 — ahh, that could be the filet mignon.

. . .


One reason that regime change in Iraq was seen as offering significant benefits for Big Oil was that it promised to open up a treasure chest which had long been sealed — private ownership of Middle Eastern oil. A small group of major international oil companies once privately owned the oil industries of the Middle East. But that changed in the 1970s when most Middle Eastern countries (and some elsewhere) nationalized their oil industries. Today, state-owned companies control the vast majority of the world's oil resources. The major international oil companies control a mere 4 per cent. The majors have clearly prospered in the new era, as developers rather than owners, but there's little doubt that they'd prefer to regain ownership of the oil world's Garden of Eden. "(O)ne of the goals of the oil companies and the Western powers is to weaken and/or privatize the world's state oil companies," observes New York-based economist Michael Tanzer, who advises Third World governments on energy issues.

The possibility of Iraq's oil being reopened to private ownership — with the promise of astonishing profits — attracted considerable interest in the run-up to the U.S. invasion. In February 2003, as U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell held the world's attention with his dramatic efforts to make the case that Saddam posed an imminent threat to international peace, other parts of the U.S. government were secretly developing plans to privatize Iraq's oil (among other assets). A confidential 100-page contracting document, drawn up by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Treasury Department, laid out a wide-ranging plan for a "Mass Privatization Program ... especially in the oil and supporting industries."

. . .