when the Big Oil boys sit down in Washington to define what our government's foreign policies will be, it's a fairly simple analysis ... bean-counter types call it cost/benefit analysis ...
the benefits for the Big Oil boys are fairly easy to calculate ... the amount of oil potential they can pull out of the ground in Iraq or Venezuela or wherever can be reasonably determined by running tests on the oil fields ...
but the costs are another matter ... the strategies are basically divided into carrots and sticks ...
for those who read "Confessions of an Economic Hitman", you saw the US and its multi-national mega-corporations trying to essentially "con" the resources out of foreign governments ... wildly distorted revenue projections were fabricated to give foreign countries a false view of their potential revenues from massive, costly investments in projects that would be done by US corporations ... then, when the revenues failed to materialize, the US would "assist them" with loans from the World Bank (that they would never be able to repay) and the US then would provide "help" with the loans for "certain favors" ... this, we might call the non-violent "carrot" approach although foreign leaders who refused to cooperate were often assassinated ... so much for carrots ...
but that hasn't been the neocon style ... who needs carrots when US corporations can use the US military and the US intelligence community to further their own greedy objectives at no cost to themselves ... this is a great arrangement ... you want oil; you see oil; you take oil ... and the US public foots the bill in terms of blood and treasure ... no corporate executives were harmed in the making of this movie ...
some might be tempted to question whether this strategy really works for Big Oil ... they might point to the total failure of the US in Iraq ... but look at Big Oil's bottom line ... they're making all-time record profits ... that's not exactly failure ...
the problem is, in the longer-term, the US will be placed at very real risk ... oil producing nations will stop selling their oil to the US ... there's no incentive for them to do it and there's plenty of disincentive ... the disincentives are obvious: they increasingly hate the US because of our "all sticks" conduct in the world ...
and they don't need our business anymore either ... with the emergence of mega-economic powers in India and China, the US is no longer the only game in town ...
the following article gives a good picture of what the US will be up against as our desperate, junky-dependency on oil continues ... China is opting for carrots and making great progress procuring oil from Venezuela; the US tried to topple the democratically elected Chavez regime and is still trying to do so ... in the long-run, the carrot approach is going to prevail ...
source:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-venez29aug29,0,2854802.story?track=tothtml China to Invest $5 Billion in Venezuela Oil Projects
The deal is the Asian nation's latest in Latin America to help meet its rising energy needs.CARACAS, Venezuela — Officials announced Monday that China had agreed to invest $5 billion in energy projects here, a deal that underscored the Asian nation's way of doing business in Latin America: Lock up significant natural resources with promises to fund huge public works projects.
China's investment will be poured into new and mature oil fields through 2012, Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez told state television. The announcement in Malaysia followed a six-day trip by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to China, his fourth since taking office.
During the trip, Chavez said he would triple sales of oil to China to 500,000 barrels a day by 2009.
China also agreed to build 13 oil drilling rigs and 18 oil tankers for Venezuela. As part of the deal, China agreed to help Venezuela build a $9-billion railroad line, as many as 20,000 housing units and a fiber-optic network.
Last year, China began work on a communications satellite for Venezuela that should be in orbit by 2008.
The Venezuelan projects are on a long list of Chinese projects in the region. China has signed energy deals in at least seven countries in the Western Hemisphere, from the tar sands of Canada to natural gas fields of Argentina.
China said it would invest in a new $8-billion railway in Argentina, while acquiring a stake in that country's Pluspetrol oil and gas firm. The Asian nation has signed $10 billion in energy and transportation deals in Brazil, including a commitment to help finance a $1-billion gas pipeline, several hydropower projects and a trans-Amazon road linking Sao Paulo to Lima.
In Bolivia, China announced a $1.5-billion investment in oil and gas exploration in state-run oil company YPF Boliviano while promising to fund power plants and pipeline infrastructure to deliver gas to homes. And in Ecuador, China's $1.4-billion purchase of assets from EnCana Corp., a Canadian oil company, included an interest in one of Ecuador's two main oil pipelines.
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