THE PERFECT STORM - Part I
by Michael C. Ruppert
© Copyright 2003, From The Wilderness
Publications, www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved.
May be reprinted, distributed or
posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes
only.
- And
most of the American people, with their bankrupt
and corrupt economy, will welcome cheap oil, while
it lasts, and they will engage in a multitude of
psychological and sickening rationales that will,
in the end, amount to nothing more than saying, "I
don't care how many women and children you kill.
Just let me keep my standard of living." -- From The Wilderness, August 27, 2002.
- What
does big oil want in Iraq?
To regain influence over the great Middle
East oilfields... and the race
seems likely to be won by American and British firms:
ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, Shell and BP Newsweek, March
24, 2003 issue
- The most common cause of recessions, a surge in oil prices, is again afflicting
the global economy The New York Times, March 2, 2003
- French and Russian oil and gas contracts signed with the Saddam Hussein
regime in Iraq "will
not be honored," Kurdish Prime Minister Barhim Salih
said in Washington Friday. Newsmax Wires March 14, 2003
March 19, 2003 1700 PST, (FTW) Diplomacy
ended on Monday and the reality and risks of a global
war are now placed in the immediate and unavoidable
focus of a world which has for the most part chosen
not to understand what is at stake. This war will not
be fought solely with bullets and bombs. The chain
of events which is about to be set in motion dictates
that the United States, assuming its Iraqi conquest
is successful, continue upon a series of global military
occupations to control the last remaining significant
oil reserves on the planet. With the shedding of the
first blood, the dropping of the first bomb, the killing
of the first Iraqi child, and the death of the first American
serviceman, a one-way border will have been crossed. And
with that crossing economic and political forces that
might combine to form the Perfect Storm aimed at America have
made themselves visible.
George W. Bush's United
States will punish its recent adversaries
at the UN. They will be cut out of the Iraqi spoils.
But Germany, France, Russia and China have a much more realistic view of Iraqi oil than the U.S. does. Bush and his corporate allies have marketed to the markets that sometime
in the next month or two we're going to see a real
bonanza as oil prices fall back to $15-20 dollar per
barrel and stay there. It is not going to happen.
On March 7, FTW Contributing
Editor for Energy, Dale Allen Pfeiffer broke down the reality of Iraqi oil. It's not what's in the ground
that counts now, it's what can be gotten to market.
The Bush gamble is a big long shot and getting longer
by the minute. Iraqi oil infrastructure is crumbling
after twelve years of sanctions and there won't be
any increase in Iraqi production without major investment
and rebuilding. That takes time. The Guardian disclosed
on January 26 that the U.S. is currently buying more than a million barrels per day (Mbpd) from Iraq out
of the ten million that it imports from around the
world. What might happen if just that million barrels
went away?
For a detailed look
at the current state of Iraq's oil industry please visit:
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/030703_us_intentions.html
What we know from
previous stories in FTW is that the world
has no spare production capacity to make up for any
significant loss of supply in Iraq. Sure OPEC has stated that they will increase production by three to five Mbpd.
Venezuela has staged a remarkable recovery after the
recently failed "strike" to reach 3 Mbpd of its pre-strike
level of 4 Mbpd. But Venezuelan fields are old, tired,
depleting fast and the oil is heavy and expensive to
refine. Venezuela offers no cushion. The promises of Saudi Arabia and the other mid east OPEC
nations, on their face, sound comforting but they mean
nothing because the planet is consuming a billion barrels
(Gb) of oil every 12 days and that rate of consumption
is increasing. Recent stories by the Agence France
Presse (March 12) and the BBC (March 10) tell us that
auto sales jumped 48% last year in Thailand and 50% in China respectively. This is the double edged sword behind Peak Oil. Without increased
sales of consumer goods and autos, the Western economies
collapse anyway and the emerging economies of the Far East are steadily increasing both consumption and demand.
So if Iraqi production
drops as a result of war, where will the U.S. make up the difference and how much will it cost? Bush has indirectly threatened
to punish France, Germany and Russia by locking them out of the promised booty. All of them, especially France and Russia have major investments there. But those countries still have something the
U.S. does not, access to a ready supply of oil in the
short term from Russia which no doubt has guaranteed
its allies supply to make up for any losses from Iraq.
If he really wanted to play hardball Russian President
Vladimir Putin could bifurcate his
pricing structure to favor the Moscow-Berlin-Paris
alliance. He would find ready sympathy from Russian
oil companies now eliminated from collecting on approximately
$40 billion worth of new oil construction contracts
and an $8 billion Iraqi debt. Russia has not forgotten how it was shamelessly looted out of an estimated $500 billion
by Goldman Sachs, The Harvard Endowment and the U.S.
Treasury during the 1990s. That shameless episode,
which rendered Russia incapable of resisting U.S. military
moves post-9/11, resulted in what a committee chaired
by Congressman Christopher Cox, R-CA described as three times worse than the Great Depression.
The whole issue of
Peak Oil has been moved ahead of schedule by Europe. Within a few short years the entire planet will begin
to suffer societal collapse as a result of diminishing
non-renewable resources. Russia has long passed its production peak and cannot continue pumping at wildly expanded
rates for very long. It might take two to five years
before production costs for the dregs inevitably shrink
exports. But Moscow, Paris and Berlin don't need three years. The complete devastation of the U.S. economy might be a sure thing in three to six months. That's how fragile it
is.
And what has Putin
got to lose? He knows that the American agenda is to
secure those reserves that have not yet peaked (i.e.
The Persian Gulf sans Iran), drive the price of oil down to $13-20 per barrel, break OPEC's back and simultaneously
destroy the economic recovery that $40 oil is bringing
to Russia which spends
much more to produce its oil than OPEC does.
France, Germany and Russia have not opposed the American Empire lightly, nor will their resistance end
now. In fact, it must intensify. The fact that these
nations have not introduced a Security Council resolution
condemning the invasion might signal that they are
hedging their bets and it might also signal that they
are just awaiting the first U.S. misstep which is sure to come. But a clue is that, of the three, Russia has
bluntly labeled the U.S. invasion illegal. These countries know that the Bush administration has placed
the United States in a violent, all-or-nothing position and that it has less than a 50-50 chance
of winning.
While the blood is
being shed the real battle will be economic and political;
the dollar vs. the Euro, images of bombs and tanks
vs. images of reason, caution and diplomacy. In the
meantime the U.S. economy has placed all its hopes and stability on a bonanza of cheap oil which
careful analysis shows is more fantasy than probable
outcome. Even the Council on Foreign Relations agrees
on this point.
In a brilliant Feb.
11th analysis of the current oil situation,
Marshall Auerback, writing for The Prudent Bear web
site quoted from a recent CFR report co-sponsored by
Bush crony, oil man and former Secretary of State James
Baker:
"Notwithstanding
the value of Iraq's
vast oil reserves, there are severe limits on them
both as a source of funding for post-conflict reconstruction
efforts and as the key driver of future economic
development. Put simply, we do not expect a bonanza."
Worse, according to
a March 17 story in the Miami Herald revenues
from Iraqi oil would not cover the costs of rebuilding
the bridges, dams, power generating stations and roads
that are sure to be destroyed in the coming weeks.
The U.S., of necessity, will turn all cash flow toward rebuilding the oil fields while
it must leave the devastated Iraqi populace to live
in pestilence among the rubble. In light of America's unilateral bullishness the EU announced last week that
there might be limits to how much assistance it could
render to the Iraqi people, especially if their countries
were prevented from performing on their legal contracts.
Multiple recent reports
from the oil industry state clearly that recent price
hikes are the result of over-stretched production capacity
and historically low reserve levels. Currently U.S. oil
reserves are at a 28-year low and the White House has
acknowledged plans to tap the 700 million barrel Strategic
Petroleum Reserve at the start of the conflict. That's
enough to protect the U.S. economy from further price shocks for about 70 days. Then what? Under the best
of circumstances it takes mid-east oil about six weeks
to get from the oil fields into your gas tank.
Further confirmation
of Peak Oil's arrival is found in recent stories from AP and The Guardian stating that Norway, once a major exporter, is expecting a decline in production and drilling due
to dwindling reserves and that Shell has just eliminated
one fifth of its North Sea jobs. And on March 18 Hong Kong announced
that it will allow eight airlines to levy an emergency
fuel surcharge of between $8.50 and $13 per passenger.
At home soaring gasoline prices are just the ticket the Bush
administration wants to curb demand and exploit a subliminal
unspoken deal with consumers that will sanction the
slaughter and keep the poll numbers manageable for
a while. But economic demons are bashing down the door. Americans vote with their wallets says the clichι. On March 16,
angry black residents staged a protest in Los Angeles claiming that they could not afford to drive to work while paying two dollars
a gallon. On the one hand they don't have a clue about
what the global oil reality is and on the other they
will achieve nothing by demanding lowered prices and
more supply without realizing that there is no more
cheap oil to supply them or anybody else for that
matter. At least there is certainly not enough to make a difference for
more than a few months or a year. But with less discretionary
income to absorb the price shocks, the inner city poor
are the prototypes for what the rest of us will be
doing soon enough.
The poor always die
first. And this is just one of the many signs that
the Empire is starting to crumble from within.
Consider:
There are serious
signs of a major political revolt brewing in the United States one that could end the Bush Presidency George W. Bush still has his finger
on the trigger and he knows that his only hope for
survival is to pull it. U.S. and British intelligence agencies are leaking documents left and right disputing
White House "evidence" against Iraq that has repeatedly been shown to be falsified, plagiarized and forged. Quiet
meetings are being held in Washington between members of Congress and attorneys like Ramsey Clark discussing Bush's
impeachment. Leaders of the World Trade Organization
(WTO), as reported in a March 15 story in the International
Herald Tribune have said, "All international institutions would suffer a loss of credibility
if the one superpower appeared to be choosing which
rules to obey and which to ignore." And a Rockefeller has called for an investigation of a Bush. On March 14 The Associated
Press reported that W. Va. Senator
Jay Rockefeller has asked the FBI to investigate forged
documents which were presented first by Britain and then the United States showing that Iraq had been trying to purchase uranium from the African country of Niger for its weapons program. Of all the glaring falsehoods told by the administration
the fact that these forgeries were noted by a Rockefeller
may make them the second-rate Watergate burglary of
the 21st century. (See Part II)
There are few things
more closely connected to or identified with Bush
family power than globalization and the Rockefellers.
He has
most likely failed both of them and both have the
power to remove him.
Too much, too little,
too late; at least as far as preventing a war and massive
carnage is concerned. But these developments suggest
that the real powers that be might be getting ready
to have Bush impeached just as soon as he has humiliated
the United States, started a World War leading to the deaths of perhaps millions of people, destroyed
the efficacy of the United Nations and secured the
Iraqi oil fields. This is a playing field which the
biggest money might desire and for which it might be
willing to offer a sacrifice if it becomes necessary.
If the war turns out to be a dismal failure then the
scapegoat has volunteered for his own hanging and there
are signs that it is being prepared.
One thing is certain.
If George W. Bush is removed from within, it will signal
nothing other than a new "kinder, gentler" set of managers
pursuing the exact same agenda as before. The dirtiest
work will have been done.
COMING IN
PART II The
signs of a pending coup as Bush, Cheney, Powell and
Rumsfeld are betrayed by a litany of former allies.
Why is President Bush, "Poppy" Bush (and Prescott Bush)
part of this Secret Society? Is this driving U.S. Policy?
