|
No Blood for... er... um...The Oil Majors Take a Little Sip of the Ol' Patrimony By Tom Engelhardt More than five years after the invasion of Iraq -- just in case you were still waiting -- the oil giants finally hit the front page… Last Thursday, the New York Times led with this headline: "Deals with Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back." (Subhead: "Rare No-bid Contracts, A Foothold for Western Companies Seeking Future Rewards.") And who were these four giants? ExxonMobil, Shell, the French company Total and BP (formerly British Petroleum). What these firms got were mere "service contracts" -- as in servicing Iraq's oil fields -- not the sort of "production sharing agreements" that President Bush's representatives in Baghdad once dreamed of, and that would have left them in charge of those fields. Still, it was clearly a start. The Times reporter, Andrew E. Kramer, added this little detail: " include a provision that could allow the companies to reap large profits at today's prices: the ministry and companies are negotiating payment in oil rather than cash." And here's the curious thing, exactly these four giants "lost their concessions in Iraq" back in 1972 when that country's oil was nationalized. Hmmm.
You'd think the Times might have slapped some kind of "we wuz wrong" label on the piece. I mean, remember when the mainstream media, the Times included, seconded the idea that Bush's invasion, whatever it was about -- weapons of mass destruction or terrorism or liberation or democracy or bad dictators or… well, no matter -- you could be sure of one thing: it wasn't about oil. "Oil" wasn't a word worth including in serious reporting on the invasion and its aftermath, not even after it turned out that American troops entering Baghdad guarded only the Oil and Interior Ministries, while the rest of the city was looted. Even then -- and ever after -- the idea that the Bush administration might have the slightest urge to control Iraqi oil (or the flow of Middle Eastern oil via a well-garrisoned Iraq) wasn't worth spending a few paragraphs of valuable newsprint on.
I always thought that, if Iraq's main product had been video games, sometime in the last five years the Times (and other major papers) would have had really tough, thoughtful pieces, asking really tough, thoughtful questions, about the effects of the invasion and ensuing chaos on our children's lives and the like. But oil, well... After all, with global demand for energy on the rise, why would anybody want to invade, conquer, occupy, and garrison a country that, as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz once observed, "floats on a sea of oil"?
And let's be fair. At the time of the impending invasion, reasonable people couldn't possibly have imagined that it had anything to do with oil, not while George W. Bush was politely ignoring the subject, except when referring obliquely to Iraq's "patrimony" of "natural resources." Forget that our President had had an 11-year career in the energy business (and had been Arbusto-ed); or that his Vice President had been the CEO of a giant energy services corporation, Halliburton -- retiring during the presidential campaign of 2000 with a $34 million severance package; or that, back in those distant years, he had not hesitated to talk about the necessity of getting a tad more oil into the international pipeline. (As he told an oil industry crowd back in 1999, "By some estimates there will be an average of two percent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three percent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from?" Where indeed? He then answered his own question: "While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies.")
http://tomdispatch.com/post/174947/finally_the_oil_
Not much has changed in 50 years where oil is concerned (other than it is more essential and more valuable than ever). A 'great venture':
overthrowing the government of Iranby Mark Curtis This is a slightly abridged version of part of chapter four of Mark Curtis's book The Ambiguities of Power: British Foreign Policy since 1945 (Zed Press, 1995). * * * In August 1953 a coup overthrew Iran's nationalist government of Mohammed Musaddiq and installed the Shah in power. The Shah subsequently used widespread repression and torture in a dictatorship that lasted until the 1979 Islamic revolution. The 1953 coup is conventionally regarded primarily as a CIA operation, yet the planning record reveals not only that Britain was the prime mover in the initial project to overthrow the government but also that British resources contributed significantly to the eventual success of the operation. Two first-hand accounts of the Anglo-American sponsorship of the coup - by the MI6 and CIA officers primarily responsible for it - are useful in reconstructing events. (1) Many of the secret planning documents that reveal the British role have been removed from public access and some of them remain closed until the next century - for reasons of 'national security'. Nevertheless, a fairly clear picture still emerges. Churchill later told the CIA officer responsible for the operation that he 'would have loved nothing better than to have served under your command in this great venture'. (2) In the 1950s the Anglo Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) - later renamed British Petroleum - which was managed from London and owned by the British government and British private citizens, controlled Iran's main source of income: oil. According to one British official, the AIOC 'has become in effect an imperium in imperio in Persia'. Iranian nationalists objected to the fact that the AIOC not only made revenues from Iranian oil 'greatly in excess of the revenues of the Persian government but dominates the whole economic life of Persia, and therefore impairs her independence'. (3) The AIOC was recognised as 'a great foreign organisation controlling Persia's economic life and destiny'. The British oil business fared well from this state of affairs; the AIOC made £170 million in profits in 1950 alone. (4)
Iranians could also point to AIOC's effectively autonomous rule in the parts of the country where the oilfields lay, its low wage rates and the fact that the Iranian government was being paid royalties of 10% or 12% of the company's net proceeds, whilst the British government received as much as 30% of these in taxes alone. (5) Shown the overcrowded housing afforded to some of the AIOC workers, a British official commented: 'Well, this is just the way all Iranians live'. (6)
SNIP
The coup decision is taken
The go-ahead for the coup was finally given by the US in late June - Britain by then already having presented a 'complete plan' to the CIA (54) - and Churchill's authorisation soon followed, the date being set for mid-August. (55) That month, the head of the CIA operation met with the Shah, the CIA director visited some members of the Shah's family in Switzerland, whilst a US army general arrived in Tehran to meet 'old friends', among them the Shah and General Zahidi. (56)
When the coup scenario finally began, huge demonstrations proceeded in the streets of Tehran, funded by CIA and MI6 money, $1 million dollars of which was in a safe in the US embassy (57) and £1.5 million which had been delivered by Britain to its agents in Iran, according to the MI6 officer responsible for delivering it. (58)
SNIP
Stability' is restored
'I owe my throne to God, my people, my army - and to you', the Shah told the head of the CIA operation responsible for installing him; by 'you' meaning the US and Britain. (77) Now that the 'dictator' had been installed in line with Foreign Office wishes, 'stability' could be restored, initially under the auspices of the favoured candidate for Prime Minister, General Zahidi. Thus the British understanding, outlined in 1951, that the Shah 'does not sufficiently check the members of his family and their entourage from interference in politics and their profitable incursions into business' and that 'the chief complaint of his political critics that he wishes to monopolise power for himself', became a harsh reality. (78) An agreement was signed the year following the coup establishing a new oil consortium in which Britain and the US both had a 40% interest, and which controlled the production, pricing and export of Iranian oil. Britain's share was thus reduced from the complete control it had prior to Musaddiq but was nevertheless more than the latter's nationalisation plan had envisaged. The US, meanwhile, had gained a significant stake in Iranian oil and political influence in the country, a change of fortune which symbolised the relative power of the partners in the special relationship.
http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/l30iran.htm
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
