Crude dudes By Linda McQuaig Toronto Star September 20, 2004
U.S. oil companies just happened to have billions of dollars they wanted to invest in undeveloped oil reserves
>From his corner office in the heart of New York’s financial district, Fadel
Gheit keeps close tabs on what goes on inside the boardrooms of the big oil
companies. An oil analyst at the prestigious Wall Street firm Oppenheimer &
Co., the fit, distinguished-looking Gheit has been watching the oil industry
closely for more than 25 years.
Selling the modern world’s most indispensable commodity has never been a bad business to be in — particularly for the small group of companies that straddle the top of this privileged world. But never more so than now.
"Profit-wise, things could not have been better," says Gheit, "In the last three years, they died and went to heaven .... They are all sitting on the largest piles of cash in their history."
But to stay rich they have to keep finding new reserves, and that’s getting tougher. Increasingly it means cutting through permafrost or drilling deep underwater, at tremendous cost. "The cheap oil has already been found and developed and produced and consumed," says Gheit. "The low-hanging fruit has already been picked."
Well, not all the low-hanging fruit has been picked.
Nestled into the heart of the area of heaviest oil concentration in the world is Iraq, overflowing with low-hanging fruit. No permafrost, no deep water. Just giant pools of oil, right beneath the warm ground. This is fruit sagging so low, as it were, that it practically touches the ground under the weight of its ripeness.
Not only does Iraq have vast quantities of easily accessible oil, but its oil is almost untouched. "Think of Iraq as virgin territory .... This is bigger than anything Exxon is involved in currently .... It is the superstar of the future," says Gheit, "That’s why Iraq becomes the most sought-after real estate on the face of the earth."
Gheit just smiles at the notion that oil wasn’t a factor in the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He compares Iraq to Russia, which also has large undeveloped oil reserves. But Russia has nuclear weapons. "We can’t just go over and ... occupy (Russian) oil fields," says Gheit. "It’s a different ballgame." Iraq, however, was defenceless, utterly lacking, ironically, in weapons of mass destruction. And its location, nestled in between Saudi Arabia and Iran, made it an ideal place for an ongoing military presence, from which the U.S. would be able to control the entire Gulf region. Gheit smiles again: "Think of Iraq as a military base with a very large oil reserve underneath .... You can’t ask for better than that."
There’s something almost obscene about a map that was studied by senior Bush administration officials and a select group of oil company executives meeting in secret in the spring of 2001. It doesn’t show the kind of detail normally shown on maps — cities, towns, regions. Rather its detail is all about Iraq’s oil.
The southwest is neatly divided, for instance, into nine "Exploration Blocks." Stripped of political trappings, this map shows a naked Iraq, with only its ample natural assets in view. It’s like a supermarket meat chart, which identifies the various parts of a slab of beef so customers can see the most desirable cuts .... Block 1 might be the striploin, Block 2 and Block 3 are perhaps some juicy tenderloin, but Block 8 — ahh, that could be the filet mignon.
The map might seem crass, but it was never meant for public consumption. It was one of the documents studied by the ultra-secretive task force on energy, headed by U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney, and it was only released under court order after a long legal battle waged by the public interest group Judicial Watch.
Another interesting task force document, also released under court order over the opposition of the Bush administration, was a two-page chart titled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfields." It identifies 63 oil companies from 30 countries and specifies which Iraqi oil fields each company is interested in and the status of the company’s negotiations with Saddam Hussein’s regime. Among the companies are Royal Dutch/Shell of the Netherlands, Russia’s Lukoil and France’s Total Elf Aquitaine, which was identified as being interested in the fabulous, 25-billion-barrrel Majnoon oil field. Baghdad had "agreed in principle" to the French company’s plans to develop this succulent slab of Iraq. There goes the filet mignon into the mouths of the French!
The documents have attracted surprisingly little attention, despite their possible relevance to the question of Washington’s motives for its invasion of Iraq — in many ways the defining event of the post-9/11 world but one whose purpose remains shrouded in mystery. Even after the supposed motives for the invasion — weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda — have been thoroughly discredited, talk of oil as a motive is still greeted with derision. Certainly any suggestion that private oil interests were in any way involved is hooted down with charges of conspiracy theory.
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