no "war for oil"

Palast:

""It's about oil," Robert Ebel told me. Who is Ebel? Formerly the CIA's top oil analyst, he was sent by the Pentagon, about a month before the invasion, to a secret confab in London with Saddam's former oil minister to finalize the plans for "liberating" Iraq's oil industry. In London, Bush's emissary Ebel also instructed Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum, the man the Pentagon would choose as post-OIF oil minister for Iraq, on the correct method of disposing Iraq's crude.

And what did the USA want Iraq to do with Iraq's oil? The answer will surprise many of you: and it is uglier, more twisted, devilish and devious than anything imagined by the most conspiracy-addicted blogger. The answer can be found in a 323-page plan for Iraq's oil secretly drafted by the State Department. Our team got a hold of a copy; how, doesn't matter. The key thing is what's inside this thick Bush diktat: a directive to Iraqis to maintain a state oil company that will "enhance its relationship with OPEC."

Enhance its relationship with OPEC??? How strange: the government of the United States ordering Iraq to support the very OPEC oil cartel which is strangling our nation with outrageously high prices for crude.

Specifically, the system ordered up by the Bush cabal would keep a lid on Iraq's oil production -- limiting Iraq's oil pumping to the tight quota set by Saudi Arabia and the OPEC cartel.

There you have it. Yes, Bush went in for the oil -- not to get more of Iraq's oil, but to prevent Iraq producing too much of it.

You must keep in mind who paid for George's ranch and Dick's bunker: Big Oil. And Big Oil -- and their buck-buddies, the Saudis -- don't make money from pumping more oil, but from pumping less of it. The lower the supply, the higher the price.

It's Economics 101. The oil industry is run by a cartel, OPEC, and what economists call an "oligopoly" -- a tiny handful of operators who make more money when there's less oil, not more of it. So, every time the "insurgents" blow up a pipeline in Basra, every time Mad Mahmoud in Tehran threatens to cut supply, the price of oil leaps. And Dick and George just love it.

Dick and George didn't want more oil from Iraq, they wanted less. I know some of you, no matter what I write, insist that our President and his Veep are on the hunt for more crude so you can cheaply fill your family Hummer; that somehow, these two oil-patch babies are concerned that the price of gas in the USA is bumping up to $3 a gallon.

Not so, gentle souls. Three bucks a gallon in the States (and a quid a litre in Britain) means colossal profits for Big Oil, and that makes Dick's ticker go pitty-pat with joy. The top oily-gopolists, the five largest oil companies, pulled in $113 billion in profit in 2005 -- compared to a piddly $34 billion in 2002 before Operation Iraqi Liberation. In other words, it's been a good war for Big Oil."

here's what i've said in january:

" i've never really understood the 'war for oil' argument. i've been meaning to reiterate this forever - the 'war for oil' slogan doesn't identify the issues. as best as i can tell, this argument relies on the logic that the world is running out of oil and that america needs to have access to the vital resource to ensure that the economic engine keeps running smoothly, and there's another version of that which is that with india and china growing like crazy, there's a geo-political need to ensure some sort of competitive advantage over economic rivals.

Here's the problem with that logic. the outlaw criminals don't give a flying fuck about future generations, and they don't care about their historical legacy that they spout about. think about it - they don't care that their war has tripled the price of oil today, why would they care about the price (or availability) of oil 30 years hence? particularly when they are more likely to be demonized for focussing on oil due to environmental issues, and even more despised for going to war for it - and the historical record will show that the evidence about global warming was on all their desks, and they ignored it.

i am willing to entertain one element of the 'war for oil' narrative - in that the war has benefited, more than anyone, those who sell oil - whether from the ground such as saudi arabians, and texans, and iranians, or the oil companies. untold wealth. given that the egadministration is a bunch of outlaw criminals for sale at the highest price, the people who could afford the most are those in the oil industry in one way or other - but i want to make it very clear, i'm not talking about some nebulous concept of 'oil' or a 'strategic national resource' or any such - i'm talking about personal greed, pure and simple."

or here in 2003:

"i never really bought the 'war for oil' story - despite compelling evidence. i think its more likely to be something along the lines of 'war for my friends, who happen to have oil interests'. i think the idea of war4oil is too generous - it suggests that at least they have the (economic) interest of the 'west' at heart."