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[At the recent ASPO conference in Lisbon, I spoke with Dr. David Ige, the General Manager of Executive and Strategic Planning of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. FTW asked him about Nigeria's plans for Peak, and how it will manage its reserves to optimum benefit as global scarcity deepens. But Dr. Ige let me know that there are no such plans: the Nigerian people are so desperate in their current economic straits that nobody contemplates a measured sale of oil. "We just don't have those conversations," he said. Though the price may triple tomorrow, they will sell today lest they starve.
How could fifty years of international "aid" yield nothing but tyranny and destitution? One doesn't learn the answers in school: "aid" is an American euphemism for "loan." When the unpayable loans come due, the poor countries have to beg the World Bank for new terms. The new terms of debt include "austerity measures" (loan-sharking) and "trade agreements" - such as, permission to dump American farm goods onto the third world nation's market, destroying its domestic farming sector. Unable to get a viable cash price for their crops, peasant farmers leave the land and move into the cities, where the industrial economy is "developing." But urban social services are overwhelmed or nonexistent and there is not enough work.
It's enough to make a young man join the police force, or the right wing security services, or a jihadist organization - anything but the emasculating helplessness of unemployment in a shanty town. This could be a description of Port-au-Prince just as much as of Nigeria. Michael Hudson has explained that the World Bank of International Reconstruction and Development was created with a specific mandate: to make only those loans that were likely to be self-amortizing. In other words, the WB was never intended to help anybody feed her kids. Subsistence agriculture will not get a penny; it does not generate a profit from which the loans can be repaid. And since any successful domestic agriculture tends to shut out American wheat and other imported farm goods, domestic profit-oriented agriculture is unlikely to get much credit support either. When enough peasants have migrated to the cities looking for work, the country's ability to feed itself is destroyed.
With its centralized planning and $230 billion in U.S. T-bills, China may prove a more helpful partner than the Bank has been. But given the coming global conflict - and the equally global racism against Africans, from whom every one of us is descended - it remains to be seen just who will stand with Nigeria as the wells run dry. Until then, help will come from Iran and Venezuela. -JAH]
China, Nigeria sign oil supply pact
www.chinaview.cn
2005-07-09 05:13:25
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-07/09/content_3195552.htm
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
ABUJA, July 8 (Xinhuanet) -- PetroChina International and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) here on Friday signed an oil supply pact, with the latter selling 30,000 barrels of crude a day to the former.
Si Bingjun, managing director of PetroChina, and Edmund Daukoru, special adviser to Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo on Energy and Oil Matters, signed the contract on behalf of their respective sides. The contract is for a period of one year and is also at the prevailing cost of crude at the international market.
Si said China and Nigeria should continue to have cooperation given the healthy trade and stable development among the two countries.
He said China has submitted bids for two oil blocks in the 2005licensing opening in August.
According to him, China is considering building a hydro-station in Mambilla and has already expressed interest to take over the Kaduna Refinery and Petrochemicals as core investors in the event of privatization.
The contact which is renewable after one year will fetch the NNPC about 800 million US dollars.
According to the Nigerian presidential adviser, Nigeria will continue to offer China opportunity to meet its high demand of energy.
He said President Obasanjo has approved four oil blocks to China aimed at assisting it to secure more crude to meet the needs of its expanding economy.
Recent years have witnessed fast growth of foreign trade and economic cooperation between China and the West African country. In 2004, the bilateral trade between the two countries stood at more than 2 billion US dollars.
[There are two very important statements in this article:
"Oil isn't just a commodity, like coffee: When oil prices triple, it isn't simply a matter of skipping your morning cup and enduring a little headache. Oil is fundamental to our economy. Not only does oil supply 95 percent of our transportation sector (without which our high-growth economic model cannot work) but we have no alternative."…
"The next energy economy will be built by the market, at a profit, or it won't happen at all."
As I have said for years, until you change the way money works you change nothing. I still ask the same question I have asked at my lectures so often. To put it simply, "What if it is more profitable to destroy everything than to save it?" When I returned from the Paris Peak Oil conference in 2003 I was haunted by what remains one of the most chilling statements I have ever heard from Dutch economist Maarten Van Mourik who told attendees. "It may not be profitable to slow decline." - MCR]
Our Post-Oil Future Needs a Push
By Paul Roberts
Washington Post
Thursday, July 14, 2005
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/13/AR2005071301991_pf.html
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
If American motorists seem unpanicked at the prospect of $60-a-barrel oil, it's understandable. After four years of steadily rising crude prices, the predicted oil crisis hasn't materialized. Our economy is humming. Gasoline is flowing. We're still buying enormous cars and driving more miles, and most of us couldn't care less that Congress can't reform U.S. energy policy.
Such a blasé attitude is, by conventional economic theory, normal and even healthy. In a free market, consumers respond rationally to prices. When oil really does get costly enough to cause pain, we can depend on market forces to kick in. Demand will fall. We'll buy more efficient cars, or develop alternative fuels, or start riding bikes or buses. In time, a whole new energy economy will be born -- more efficient, perhaps cleaner, and certainly less reliant on worrisome places such as Saudi Arabia or Venezuela. Best of all, it will have happened not because Congress bullied Detroit into building wee little cars but because it made sense economically.
That, at least, has been the guiding theory for U.S. energy policymakers, who since the early 1990s have been more or less content to let markets determine how quickly and in which direction our oil system evolves. When prices get high enough, we'll change. Until then, there is no crisis: If we don't feel compelled to change, then, by definition, the status quo is fundamentally sound. And all the urgent talk about higher fuel economy standards or programs to brew gasoline from farm crops is misguided and unnecessary. For although $60 oil may mean the end of cheap energy, it doesn't mean the end of our current energy paradigm.
There is, however, a less comforting way to look at all of this. Even if $60 oil isn't high by inflation-adjusted historical standards, it's plenty high enough to indicate a global supply system that is dangerously overheated. And the fact that consumers can afford to ignore these problems isn't necessarily a sign of economic rationality but evidence that markets may not be so brilliant when it comes to building our energy future.
There are three big reasons oil prices have more than doubled since 2000, and none of them offers any reason to have confidence in the market.
First, demand for oil, in the United States but also in China and India, is rising faster than anyone expected. Indeed, it is rising despite higher prices, in part because we have no easy alternative to oil in the transportation sector.
Second, even as demand rises, supply is strained. The OPEC countries, Russia and other big exporters are already pumping oil at near maximum capacity. The Saudis try to blame high prices on America's lack of refineries to turn crude into gasoline. But the real problem is a lack of crude to put in those refineries. That's why, when OPEC promised recently to pump more oil, the market called the bluff and oil prices rose still higher.
Third, in a market this tight, there is no spare capacity -- no extra oil wells, pipelines or tankers that could be brought online quickly in case of disruptions in world supply. And such disruptions become more probable every day. With few exceptions, nearly every major oil exporter, from Saudi Arabia to Russia to Venezuela, is less politically stable now than it was five years ago -- and thus more likely to suffer a crisis that cuts off exports.
At $60 a barrel, oil traders are essentially betting that a disruption is more likely than it was four years ago, when oil was at $24. They're also betting that such a disruption would be more severe, because we lack much spare capacity to cushion the blow. In fact, almost any disturbance -- new unrest in Venezuela or continued deterioration in Iraq -- could easily send prices above $100 a barrel.
Would $100 oil be such a bad thing? After all, it's only when prices get that high that consumers will be likely to start the move to a post-oil economy, which is where a lot of experts think we'll need to be eventually. The problem is that such a transition can't happen overnight. Oil isn't just a commodity, like coffee: When oil prices triple, it isn't simply a matter of skipping your morning cup and enduring a little headache. Oil is fundamental to our economy. Not only does oil supply 95 percent of our transportation sector (without which our high-growth economic model cannot work) but we have no alternative.
We will find one, certainly, for we are a clever species. But innovation of that scope and scale takes years to develop and decades to roll out. Even a partial replacement for oil won't be concocted overnight -- and certainly not fast enough to avoid one of those monster recessions that have followed every spike in oil prices in the past half-century.
Put another way, rather than reflecting any inherent economic wisdom, today's blasé oil attitudes may mask a dangerous split reality in the world of oil. Prices aren't yet high enough to curb demand in America, China or elsewhere, which means demand pressure will continue to build. Nor are prices high enough to spur the innovation needed to move away from oil. And yet, by the time prices do rise, which they will, and the market performs its inevitable "correction," the invisible hand will have moved too late to do anyone any good.
This isn't to argue for a centrally planned energy system: The next energy economy will be built by the market, at a profit, or it won't happen at all. But if that transformation is to happen fast enough to make a difference, the process will need a push by policymakers -- and more likely a whole series of pushes, from billions in funding for research to, yes, some kind of tax on carbon emissions.
These are precisely the kind of intrusions that irritate many conservative economists, who still insist that price alone is sufficient to bring any transformation. Yet, as the widening gap between domestic consumption and global production now shows, that comforting logic may no longer hold.
Paul Roberts is the author of "The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World."
Oil Peak 'Looms'
13 July 2005
The Press New Zealand
http://www.rednova.com/news/science/173347/oil_peak_looms/
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
Energy lobbyists want the Government to stop wasting money on new roads and put it into public transport as cheap oil dries up.
The Sustainable Energy Forum (SFE) says New Zealand is poorly prepared to meet the peak in the production of conventional light crude oil -- forecast to be 2007 by one energy group.
SEF is a group of individuals from the energy industry or with an interest in energy.
SEF's transport and peak oil group co-ordinator, Tim Jones, said the peak oil date is closer and more urgent than most politicians thought.
The Association for the Study of Peak Oil (A.S.P.O.) says oil production will peak in 2007. The New Zealand oil exploration industry disputes that.
The International Energy Agency predicts the peak some time between 2013 and 2037.
Jones said A.S.P.O. was an association of petroleum geologists who had worked for oil companies. When they did they were too constrained to publicise the urgency of oil production peaking and falling. The group was gaining more attention worldwide.
The peak in the production of light crude oil would cause a sharp and sustained rise in world oil prices and a physical shortages in oil might occur. Dirtier fossil fuels, which were harder to extract, would be used, but they had financial and environmental downsides.
An urgent need existed for the Government to launch a review of the New Zealand economy to investigate which sectors would be affected and how high the oil price would soar. The Treasury and Ministry of Economic Development needed to change how they forecast oil prices in the future because they were getting it wrong, Jones said.
The Government should put in vehicle fuel efficiency standards and stop importing gas-guzzling vehicles.
But the Petroleum Exploration Association of New Zealand executive director Mike Patrick said SEF's explanation was over- simplified and alarmist. "The critical thing is it's going to be the end of cheaper oil," he said.
But oil prices were still not as high as after the oil shocks of the 1970s when a barrel of oil was the equivalent of $US90 in today's prices.
"It's the end of light sweet crudes. There will come a time, it won't be 2007, there will come a time when those reserves will start declining," Patrick said.
Different sources of oil would become more economic to extract and refine with higher oil prices, such as oil from tar sands in Canada or heavy oils from Venezuela.
"The peak in world oil production including these heavy oils will be decades away." The oil industry suggested 30 to 50 years away.
Patrick said SEF did not factor in the tar sands and heavy oils being produced when they should not be dismissed. Dearer oil would be produced from these sources and the world economy would not crash and burn as a result.
Technologies would see diesel extracted from coal and natural gas. The technologies were proven but expensive. Other technologies would replace the use of oil gradually.
Eventually oil would be priced off the market and other technologies would emerge and be commercialised. Oil might not be used for power and transport in the future but was expected still to be used to make plastics and chemicals and medicines.
--------------------
Story from REDNOVA NEWS:
http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=173347
Published: 2005/07/13
Top Chinese general warns US over attack
By Alexandra Harney in Beijing and Demetri Sevastopulo and Edward Alden in Washington
July 14 2005 21:59 Last updated: July 15 2005 00:03
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/28cfe55a-f4a7-11d9-9dd1-00000e2511c8,
ft_acl=,s01=1.html
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
China is prepared to use nuclear weapons against the US if it is attacked by Washington during a confrontation over Taiwan, a Chinese general said on Thursday.
"If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons," said General Zhu Chenghu.
Gen Zhu was speaking at a function for foreign journalists organised, in part, by the Chinese government. He added that China's definition of its territory included warships and aircraft.
"If the Americans are determined to interfere [then] we will be determined to respond," said Gen Zhu, who is also a professor at China's National Defence University.
"We . . . will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds . . . of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese."
Gen Zhu is a self-acknowledged "hawk" who has warned that China could strike the US with long-range missiles. But his threat to use nuclear weapons in a conflict over Taiwan is the most specific by a senior Chinese official in nearly a decade.
However, some US-based China experts cautioned that Gen Zhu probably did not represent the mainstream People's Liberation Army view.
"He is running way beyond his brief on what China might do in relation to the US if push comes to shove," said one expert with knowledge of Gen Zhu. "Nobody who is cleared for information on Chinese war scenarios is going to talk like this," he added.
Gen Zhu's comments come as the Pentagon prepares to brief Congress next Monday on its annual report on the Chinese military, which is expected to take a harder line than previous years. They are also likely to fuel the mounting anti-China sentiment on Capitol Hill.
In recent months, a string of US officials, including Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, have raised concerns about China's military rise. The Pentagon on Thursday declined to comment on "hypothetical scenarios".
Rick Fisher, a former senior US congressional official and an authority on the Chinese military, said the specific nature of the threat "is a new addition to China's public discourse". China's official doctrine has called for no first use of nuclear weapons since its first atomic test in 1964. But Gen Zhu is not the first Chinese official to refer to the possibility of using such weapons first in a conflict over Taiwan.
Chas Freeman, a former US assistant secretary of defence, said in 1996 that a PLA official had told him China could respond in kind to a nuclear strike by the US in the event of a conflict with Taiwan. The official is believed to have been Xiong Guangkai, now the PLA's deputy chief of general staff.
Gen Zhu said his views did not represent official Chinese policy and he did not anticipate war with the US.
Additional reporting by Richard McGregor in Beijing
[Want to know what I think the main reason was for the London bombings? Here it is. - MCR]
America feels the heat
George Bush refused to tackle climate change at the G8 summit, but the world is moving on without him, reports Paul Brown
Thursday July 14, 2005
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,,1527598,00.html
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
The gap between scientists' increasingly urgent warnings about climate change and the lack of action by politicians was never more apparent than at the end of the G8 summit in Gleneagles last week.
Much of the reaction across the world was of disappointment, of hopes dashed by the intransigence of the US president, George Bush. But the fact that the issue had such a high profile at the summit was a milestone in itself, and a tribute to Tony Blair's political courage. He took the risk of being branded a failure because he was unable to influence his Iraq war ally.
It was ironic that the terrorist attack on London came on the day that the discussions about climate reached the crunch point at Gleneagles. The aftermath of the bombings deflected world attention from the stalemate that was reflected in the lack of promised action in the final communique.
If David King, the government's chief scientist, is right in describing climate change as "a greater threat than terrorism", then Thursday's terrorists let the politicians off the hook by diverting the world's attention.
In contrast to Gleneagles, the Exeter conference called by Blair in January to inform the G8 leaders of the latest science, agreed that the temperature rise the world had already experienced was 0.7C above pre-industrial levels, and that another 0.6C was inevitable. This is because there is a 30-year lag between carbon dioxide getting into the atmosphere and the warming due to the greenhouse effect catching up. These Exeter calculations add up to 1.3C, already perilously close to the 2C that the European Union adopted several years ago as the threshold that the world should not risk crossing.
At the current increasing speed of emissions, the scientists were divided on whether politicians had 10 or 20 years to reverse the current trends. Some felt that it might already be too late, including some Americans. Switch to Gleneagles six months later and there was a debate about whether Bush would accept the scientific consensus that the world was warming. The heads of government of China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa were left kicking their heels in the corridor, having been invited by Blair to join the discussions on how to combat climate change, only to find there was nothing on offer.
Unlike previous summits, not even broad agreement on climate change could be reached before the summit. In addition, there was even less intelligence than usual being used by civil servants to link the other big issue, Africa, with climate change. There will be no solving the problems of hunger, disease, poverty and migration in Africa unless the increasing drought and heat is tackled at the same time.
In the event, the best world leaders managed to agree was: "Climate change is a serious and long-term challenge that has the potential to affect every part of the globe ... While uncertainties remain in our understanding of climate science, we know enough to act now to put ourselves on a path to slow and, as the science justifies, stop and then reverse the growth of greenhouse gases."
The key to the compromise was the "as the science justifies". To the scientists at Exeter, the science justifies urgent action immediately. To Bush, it means nothing needs to be done in his term of office, because as he has repeatedly said, there are too many uncertainties in the science to allow action which might threaten the wellbeing of the US economy by cutting fossil-fuel use.
So where does the world go from here, onwards to destruction, or is there a chance of reprieve? The encouraging signs were that everyone at Gleneagles, apart from Bush, was ready and willing to do more. Already three summits have been arranged between the EU and three big players -China, India and Russia - to work on joint approaches to climate change, which involve transferring new technology and updating old power plants. Climate change is top of the agenda for the UK presidency of the EU, again at the behest of the prime minister, who is hosting a conference in November on cleaner, more efficient vehicles.
There will be another attempt alongside that to move G8 forward in November, when energy, environment and development ministers meet again to make progress on the issue. The key is what flows from that and the meeting in December at the annual meeting of the parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Montreal.
Since 1997, these annual meetings have been taken up with first agreeing the Kyoto protocol for industrialised nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and then pushing through with the details until it finally came into legal force last February. All this time, the US has been obstructive to the process; one of Bush's first acts as president was to repudiate the Kyoto protocol.
The fact is that the Bush administration failed to derail the process. Despite immense difficulties, the rest of the world, apart from Australia, has pushed forward with Kyoto. That alone gives hope for the future.
In Montreal, the agenda is no longer going to be dominated by making Kyoto work. Countries have to report on their progress towards targets (which is often poor), but the focus is what happens when the Kyoto agreement expires in 2012. It is then that further, deeper cuts in carbon dioxide emissions are needed to prevent what the treaty calls "dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system". If the more optimistic scientists are right, then there will still be time to halt climate change before it spirals out of control.
By 2012, Bush will be out of office, and there will be a new round of science when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change provides its fourth assessment of the threat in two years time. Each of the three reports so far has been more detailed and more certain that large parts of the world are seriously threatened. The ice melting, the permafrost disappearing, forests dying and deserts growing are the predictions made in 1990 that in 2005 are documented observations. How long can the US administration stand up against a world consensus that this is alarming, and caused by man?
All the evidence is, not much longer. This is partly because the mood of the American people is changing. Eventually, even the people of Florida must see a link between the ever warmer oceans and the battering the citizens keep getting from the weather.
Even since Bush was re-elected last November there has been opinion shift across the country. The Union of Concerned Scientists in the US described his stand at Gleneagles as "stubborn and irresponsible". They say there is still time for Bush to show leadership, and they contrast his efforts with those of fellow Republican, governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's "bold initiative last month to cut California's heat-trapping pollution 80% by 2050". They also point to the fact that two weeks ago a majority of the US senate called for mandatory limits on global warming emissions, and more than 150 US mayors pledged to cut their cities' heat-trapping pollutants to 1990 levels.
For a president said to be heavily influenced by the oil and coal lobby, the advocacy for economy-wide carbon regulation by General Electric, Ford, Cynergy, Exelon and DuPont could be an awkward counterweight.
The scientists conclude: "It is also time for the president to stop repeating the deceit that reducing global warming pollution will wreck the American economy, when the growing market for more energy efficient buildings, appliances and vehicles, renewable energy production, and biomass and biofuels feedstock is already proving to be profitable for US companies."
In other words, the tide is turning both in the developing world and in America. Gleneagles could just have been the last hurrah for the climate sceptics. If the scientists are right, it had better be so.
Reactions to G8
"Bush said 'we need to develop clean technologies, and developing countries need to be assisted in having access to these technologies at affordable prices '. I think that is some step forward. Beyond that, I agree that the communique does not come to grips with the challenges of climate change."
Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh
"In the face of growing and compelling scientific evidence that global warming is advancing ... Bush's ability to block concrete action on global warming at the G8 summit is irresponsible. In Scotland, he resembled an isolated soul in a global warming tug of war."
Kevin Knobloch, president, Union of Concerned Scientists
"This is a very disappointing finale. The G8 have delivered nothing new here, and the text conveys no sense of the scale or urgency of the challenge. Bush appears to have effectively stalled all progress ... While the leaders carry on talking, the world continues warming."
Tony Juniper, vice-chairman, Friends of the Earth International
[The war of words heats up over Central Asia. In response to recent pronouncement by Russia and China over the shape of a "New World Order" General Myers' statements seem weak.
Recently a story circulated on the internet that Russia and China had mobilized 10 divisions to surround US bases in the region. That story is bogus. Both Stan Goff and I agree that this would be the wrong war, at the wrong time and in the wrong place. US military sources have told us that there is no evidence of any such mobilization order and, had there been such an order, US response would have been an almost immediate escalation in the US Defcon status. This has not taken place. A direct superpower confrontation in Central Asia would almost certainly lead directly to nuclear conflict, especially if it threatened the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline running west out of the Caspian basin to Turkey. The article announcing this alleged mobilization, written by Sorcha Faal was careful to document everything except the mobilization order. I am amazed at how many people ran with that article as though it were true without thinking or checking first.
Sometimes our learning curve on how to analyze and judge stories is slower than I would like. FTW recalls the now-legendary quotation from Professor Peter Dale Scott who said, "Disinformation, in order to be effective, must be 90% accurate." - MCR]
U.S. Military Accuses Russia, China of Bullying Ex-Soviet Republics
15.07.2005
MosNews
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/07/15/baseaccusations.shtml
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
A top U.S. military officer, Gen. Richard B. Myers, accused Russia and China on Thursday of "trying to bully" smaller Central Asian nations that host U.S. troops and cooperate with Washington in fighting terrorism, Associated Press reported.
A regional alliance led by Russia and China called on the U.S. during a summit last week to name a date for withdrawing forces from bases in the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
U.S. forces have used a base in each country since the early days of the war in Afghanistan. Both governments have recently questioned the need for continued U.S. access.
Uzbekistan has imposed new limits on U.S. use of its Karshi-Khanabad airbase, after the Bush administration spoke critically of Uzbekistan's handling of anti-government rioting in May that killed 200 or more people.
The statement last week by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization was interpreted by some as an attempt by Russia and China to push the U.S. out of a region that Moscow regards as historically part of its sphere of influence and in which Beijing seeks a bigger role because of the region's extensive energy resources.
"No, I don't think the Shanghai memo or communiqué or whatever that came out was particularly useful," Myers said. "Looks to me like two very large countries were trying to bully some smaller countries. That's how I view it."
Myers said the U.S. has much to offer that region.
"Security and stability in Central Asia is an important concept, and those who can bring security and stability ought to be welcome in Central Asia," he said.
At the Pentagon, spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had not been in contact with his counterparts in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan since they publicly questioned the continued presence of U.S. forces.
Di Rita said the administration was considering its options and he suggested that the U.S. military had enough flexibility to get along without access to the bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
"There's no single installation anywhere in the world that we must have and can't live without, so we'll make adjustments if we're not going to use those installations going forward," Di Rita said.
The spokesman acknowledged that the presence of U.S. forces on Russia's periphery has been a sensitive issue.
"It's an issue that does arise when the secretary meets with his Russian counterpart, the U.S. activities in Central Asia," Di Rita said.
"But it's part of our operations in this struggle against violent extremism, and I think the Russians understand that. The same thing applies to our involvement in (the former Soviet republic of) Georgia, which we know is a situation of some anxiety for the Russians."
[For more than a year I have insisted that there will be no US invasion of Iraq. First, the world (especially China, Japan, India and Europe) cannot do without Iranian oil and will fight to prevent any supply disruptions -- a virtual certainty if the US were to invade. But recent deals by Iran to train Iraqi security forces, and now to supply Iraq
with refined gasoline, have made a stable Iran essential to overall regional stability, even in Iraq where the Bush regime is getting its butt kicked. Both Pakistan and India now also need a stable Iran to ensure their futures.
It appears that the US faction of the NWO has been totally outmaneuvered on this front, as it has been on so many others. - MCR]
Iran's oil diplomacy frustrates U.S. policy
Washington's goal of isolating the Islamic Republic stands in conflict with its aims in Iraq, Pakistan and India
The Daily Star Lebanon
Will Rasmussen
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=3&article_ID=16782
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
BEIRUT: With yesterday's announcement of a landmark oil and power agreement with Iraq, Iran is on the move diplomatically. Under the deal with Iraq, the two countries will swap refined oil for crude oil and connect their electricity grids. Also this week, Iran secured "serious commitment" from India and Pakistan for a $4.5 billion pipeline deal carrying Iranian oil eastward.
The United States is wary of Iran's oil diplomacy. While reluctant to speak out against the Iraq deal, it has made no secret of its displeasure with the India-Pakistan pipeline.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said tersely: "We have communicated to the Indian government our concerns about gas pipeline cooperation between Iran and India."
The Iraq agreement stemmed perhaps more from the fledgling government's desperation to solve its energy crisis, and the U.S. offered tepid support.
The deal with Iraq comprises a 40 kilometer oil pipeline between the Iraqi oil center of Basra and Iran's Abadan port, using Iran's Caspian ports to import refined fuels into Iraq from Central Asia. A senior Iraqi official said it will be signed next week.
Mismanagement and sabotage against power facilities have turned Iraq into an importer of refined fuels, mostly from Turkey and the Gulf, after the U.S. invasion in 2003 created severe energy shortages.
Iraq will export 150,000 barrels per day of crude oil to Abadan and receive the equivalent in return in refined oil, helping to ease shortages in the country.
A State Department spokesperson told The Daily Star: "While we have serious concerns about Iranian policies - including its support for international terrorism - decisions regarding Iraq's oil and power generation sectors are purely for the Iraqi government to make. It is in Iraq's interests to have solid, cooperative relationships with all its neighbors, and we support the Iraqi government in these efforts."
Building its regional sphere of economic influence isn't Iran's only goal in the recent agreements.
The Islamic state is depending on increased revenue from oil, which amounts to almost 90 percent of its total exports, to bridge the growing divide between rich and poor.
The U.S. is worried that Iran will use the money to advance a nuclear arms program, and has threatened sanctions. Pakistan has said it is aware it faces sanctions if it goes ahead with the Iran-India gas pipeline but cannot abandon the project due to the economic benefits it will bring.
Yesterday's announcement of a "serious commitment" on the part of Pakistan and India suggests that U.S. influence hasn't succeeded in foiling, or even slowing, the project. A joint statement issued at the end of talks in New Delhi between Indian and Pakistani oil officials this week said technical, financial, commercial, and legal
aspects were discussed about the pipeline. The project is expected to be operational by 2010, the year an energy shortage is expected in Pakistan.
"Both sides conveyed their serious commitment to address various issues pertaining to the project so as to maintain the momentum of the dialogue," the statement said.
India and Pakistan will meet again in August to negotiate remaining issues, including the pricing of gas. The three countries are scheduled to hold bilateral talks before shifting discussions to a multi-forum dialogue. Negotiations for the pipeline began in 1994 but were stifled due to political tensions between the two countries. Recently, India and Pakistan have been engaged in a peace process that has established the best relations the two nations have had in recent history. For this reason, the project poses a major foreign policy challenge for the U.S. as it tries to balance its interest in endorsing the Indo-Pakistan peace process with its objective to isolate Iran.
U.S. Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns stated recently: "Our problem is not with the government of India. As you know, our problem in other realms is with the government of Iran. None of us around the world want to see Iran acquire the capability to produce fissile material or to produce a nuclear weapon," he added.
The Iran and Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) forbids more than $20 million of investment in Iranian oil and gas projects. The violator can be deprived of U.S. economic assistance and may also face sanctions.
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