PALAST: If war drove DOWN the price of oil, would oil corps allow it?

[yurbud]

BLOOD IN BEIRUT: $75.05 A BARREL

The failure to stop the bloodletting in the Middle East, Exxon's record second-quarter profits and Iran's nuclear cat-and-mouse game have something in common -- it's the oil.

By Greg Palast
July 26, 2006

<snip>

...But let's not forget: Hamas is broke and a joke without the loot and authority of Saudi Arabia. King Abdullah can stop these guys tomorrow. He hasn't.

<snip>

Maybe because mayhem and murder in the Middle East are very, very profitable to the sponsors of these characters with bombs and rockets. America, Iran and Saudi Arabia share one thing in common: they are run by oil regimes. The higher the price of crude, the higher the profits and the happier the presidents and princelings of these petroleum republics.

<snip>

In Tehran, President Ahmadinejad may or may not have a plan to make a nuclear bomb, but he sure as heck knows that hinting at it raises the price of the one thing he certainly does have -- oil. Every time he barks, 'Mad Mahmoud' knows that he's pumping up the price of crude. Just a $10 a barrel "blow-up-in-the-Mideast" premium brings his regime nearly a quarter of a billion dollars each week (including the little kick to the value of Iran's natural gas). Not a bad pay-off for making a bit of trouble.

Saudi Arabia's rake-in from The Troubles? Assuming just a $10 a barrel boost for Middle Eastern mayhem and you can calculate that the blood in the sand puts an extra $658 million a week in Abdullah's hand.


<snip>

We are trained to think of Middle Eastern conflicts as just modern flare-ups of ancient tribal animosities. But to uncover why the flames won't die, the usual rule applies: follow the money.

Am I saying that Tehran, Riyadh and Houston oil chieftains conspired to ignite a war to boost their petroleum profits? I can't imagine it. But I do wonder if Bush would let Olmert have an extra week of bombings, or if the potentates of the Persian Gulf would allow Hamas and Hezbollah to continue their deadly fireworks if it caused the price of crude to crash. You know and I know that if this war took a bite out of Exxon or the House of Saud, a ceasefire would be imposed quicker than you can say, "Let's drill in the Arctic."

FULL TEXT:
http://www.gregpalast.com/blood-in-beirut-7505-a-barrel#more-1466

[kenny blankenship]

1. Somewhat ironically, it used to drive down the price of oil

or maybe I should say it was once used to drive down the price of oil. Remember the 80s?
Our energy policy during the 1980s wasn't conservation & efficiency, or alternate fuels research and development, it was all about fomenting and sustaining a fullscale war between Iraq and Iran. This conflict drove both countries to cheat on their OPEC production quotas, opening the door for other OPEC member states to cheat like crazy too, overstating their reserves thus enlarging their permissible production levels, thus unconstraining supply and dropping the price of oil. OPEC the terror of the 1970s was broken virtually overnight (meantime, production in non-MiddleEastern areas commenced and/or intensified--North Sea, Nigeria, Venezuela, Mexico, Canada and Alaska) America went back to building and buying gas guzzling cars and back to electing What-Me-Worry? corn-pone huckster Republicans.

And even though it was very bad for the environment to burn oil like we did, and even though one million people would die in the Persian Gulf War, for a time all was well...until the snakes pursued us...onto our planes.

[Skink]

2. Reagan wasn't an oil man.

Back then we were just weapons merchants.

[yurbud]

3. Papa Bush was, and a lot of same players are in cabinet. Also...

I got the impression that like Baby Bush, Reagan was mostly a figurehead , especially after the assassination attempt.

His faculties seemed to slip after that.