Jerome a Paris put a lot of time into his diary debunking what he claims is a conspiracy theory about a pipeline in the Middle East. He covers it all; costs, risks, construction, etc.
In spite of all he covered, he is wrong. He's wrong because he covered everything except the most important part of getting a pipeline into place.
So, let's go over it...
First is the question; has there been, in the past or present, any plan to build a pipeline? Yes. You can find references to various pipelines here. In fact, Jerome even quotes these pipelines in his diary.
11 August 2008
As the great powers seek energy security, Turkmenistan is at the center of a number of pipeline proposals.
After years of isolation, Turkmenistan has been host to hundreds of official delegations from the world’s great powers, as Europe, Russia, China, and India pursue energy security with an eye toward the country's gas deposits. President Berdymukhamedov has forsaken at least some of his predecessor’s inward focus, in favor of a "multi-vector" natural resource strategy. The strategy relies on multiple hydrocarbon export routes, and the various gas importers each have a route in mind. Key pipeline proposals include the Caspian coastal pipeline, the Central Asia-China pipeline, the TAPI and IPI pipelines, and the Nabucco and Trans-Caspian pipelines.
If you read the article, there are still concerns that could prevent a pipeline from being built, but, there is serious talk about it.
In fact, the BBC reported in 2002 that a natural gas pipeline deal was in the works.
Mr Razim said US energy company Unocal was the "lead company" among those that would build the pipeline, which would bring 30bn cubic meters of Turkmen gas to market annually.
Unocal - which led a consortium of companies from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Japan and South Korea - has maintained the project is both economically and technically feasible once Afghan stability was secured.
"Unocal is not involved in any projects (including pipelines) in Afghanistan, nor do we have any plans to become involved, nor are we discussing any such projects," a spokesman told BBC News Online.
The US company formally withdrew from the consortium in 1998.
"The Afghan side assures all sides about the security of the pipeline and will take all responsibilities for it," Mr Razim said.
At the moment, the biggest question is security of the pipeline -- the same concern that was there in 1999 when UNOCAL withdrew from the consortium. So, it isn't that a pipeline plan isn't in the works, only who is going to be involved in it and how security for it will be provided.
Security isn't the only concern. Stability of the region, friendly governments, and the non-nationalization of the resources are also concerns. It is these concerns that must be met before all the other factors Jerome brings out in his diary can even begin.
Does that mean that we invaded Afghanistan primarily for a pipeline? Not at all. But, it cannot be dismissed that after we helped install Hamid Karzai as President, he signed the pipeline deal that was proposed over a decade ago and abandoned.
With improved regional security after the fall of the Taleban about a year ago, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Pakistan have decided to push ahead with plans for the ambitious 1,500-kilometre-long gas pipeline.
This pipeline would start in Turkmenistan, go through Afghanistan into Pakistan, and either end at the port city of Karachi, or, extend into India (view here).
On the other side, in the Middle East, you have oil pipelines running from Iraq into Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
In between the two regions is Iran. There is simply no way to link these two regions with a pipeline without going through Iran. A water pipeline across the Caspian Sea must end in Azerbaizan and then cross Armenia or Georgia to get to Turkey (view here).
The countries with the top oil reserves as of 2008 are:
- Saudi Arabia - 264.3
- Canada - 178.8
- Iran - 132.5
- Iraq - 115.0
- Kuwait - 101.5
- United Arab Emirates - 97.8
- Venezuela - 79.7
- Russia - 60.0
- Libya - 39.1
- Nigeria - 35.9
- United States - 21.4
As I have previously documented, Iran, Iraq and Venezuela were targeted for regime change by George. W. Bush. The CIA was involved in the 2002 coup attempt of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. We invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003, deposing Saddam Hussein for a U.S. friendly government. or as friendly as we could buy. And, we know that the call for regime change in Iran has never stopped. Does anyone really believe that it mere coincidence that they are the countries with the most oil reserves?
As of 2007, the countries with the most natural gas reserves:
- Russia
- Iran
- Qatar
- Saudi Arabia
- United Arab Emirates
- United States
- Nigeria
- Venezuela
- Algeria
- Iraq
We see Iran, Iraq and Venezuela topping the list of countries with the most natural gas reserves that aren't friendly to the United States (Iraq pre-war). Again, who believes that this is coincidence given the actions of George W. Bush?
Were Dick Cheney's secret energy meetings mere conspiracy theory?
A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress.
Was the fact that Cheney and these oil execs were talking about Iraqi oil fields during their meetings mere conspiracy theory?
(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and abuse, said today that documents turned over by the Commerce Department, under court order as a result of Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit concerning the activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force, contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as 2 charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts." The documents, which are dated March 2001, are available on the Internet at: www.JudicialWatch.org.
I'm sure the timeline is merely coincidence;
- Cheney holds secret energy meetings with oil execs in March 2001 that detail Iraq's oil and gas projects.
- The CIA tries to overthrow Hugo Chavez in a failed coup in April 2002.
- George W. Bush invades Iraq in March 2003, ignoring Afghanistan after installing Hamid Karzai as President who happens to sign the gas pipeline deal right after being installed.
- The drumbeat for regime change in Iran is non-stop since the occupation of Iraq.
All coincidence that those three countries were specifically targeted both before and after Afghanistan. Or not.
(CNN) -- The Bush administration began planning to use U.S. troops to invade Iraq within days after the former Texas governor entered the White House three years ago, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill told CBS News' 60 Minutes.
"From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," O'Neill told CBS, according to excerpts released Saturday by the network. "For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap."
Bush wanted to invade Iraq and Cheney wanted to open up the oil fields to western oil companies. No conspiracy theory needed -- just a conspiracy between the President and Vice President.
But, remember, no pipelines could be built without U.S.-friendly governments in place to begin with, so, let's look at the key players.
Turkmenistan:
FOREIGN RELATIONS
Turkmenistan's declaration of "permanent neutrality" was formally recognized by the United Nations in 1995. Although the Government of Turkmenistan has favored high-profile purchases from the United States like Boeing aircraft, it has significant commercial relationships with Turkey, Russia, and Iran, and increasingly with China. The government worked closely with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan until September 11, 2001, and until that time had a growing cross-border trade with the regime in Afghanistan.
The five states of Central Asia wrestle with sharing limited water resources and environmental degradation caused by the shrinking of the Aral Sea. Multilaterally accepted Caspian Sea seabed and maritime boundaries have not yet been established. Up to now, Iran has insisted on dividing the Caspian Sea into five equal sectors while Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Russia have generally agreed upon equidistant seabed boundaries. Turkmenistan is negotiating bilateral delimitation with Azerbaijan.
U.S.-TURKMENISTAN RELATIONS
For several years, Turkmenistan was a key player in the U.S. Caspian Basin Energy Initiative, which sought to facilitate negotiations between commercial partners and the Governments of Turkmenistan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey to build a pipeline under the Caspian Sea and export Turkmen gas to the Turkish domestic energy market and beyond--the so-called Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline (TCGP). However, the Government of Turkmenistan essentially removed itself from the negotiations in 2000 by refusing all offers by its commercial partners and making unrealistic demands for billion-dollar "pre-financing." Following a tripartite summit with the presidents of Russia and Kazakhstan in May 2007 in which gas was a major topic, however, President Berdimuhamedov again resurrected the idea of a Trans-Caspian gas pipeline, explicitly refusing to rule out the possibility of constructing such a pipeline in the future.
The United States and Turkmenistan agreed in February 2007 to "turn a new page" in the bilateral relationship and find ways to cooperate on political and human rights reform, economic and agricultural reform, education and health care, energy, and security.
Again, merely coincidence in timing; one month after the U.S. and Turkmenistan agree to "turn the page" on relations, the President of Turkmenistan resurrects the idea of a pipeline.
Afghanistan:
Rise and Fall of the Taliban
The Taliban had risen to power in the mid-1990s in reaction to the anarchy and warlordism that arose after the withdrawal of Soviet forces. Many Taliban had been educated in madrassas in Pakistan and were largely from rural southern Pashtun backgrounds. In 1994, the Taliban developed enough strength to capture the city of Kandahar from a local warlord and proceeded to expand its control throughout Afghanistan, occupying Kabul in September 1996. By the end of 1998, the Taliban occupied about 90% of the country, limiting the opposition largely to a small mostly Tajik corner in the northeast and the Panjshir valley.
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Following the Taliban's repeated refusal to expel bin Laden and his group and end its support for international terrorism, the U.S. and its partners in the anti-terrorist coalition began a military campaign on October 7, 2001, targeting terrorist facilities and various Taliban military and political assets within Afghanistan. Under pressure from U.S. military and anti-Taliban forces, the Taliban disintegrated rapidly, and Kabul fell on November 13, 2001.
Afghan factions opposed to the Taliban met at a United Nations-sponsored conference in Bonn, Germany in December 2001 and agreed to restore stability and governance to Afghanistan--creating an interim government and establishing a process to move toward a permanent government. Under the "Bonn Agreement," an Afghan Interim Authority was formed and took office in Kabul on December 22, 2001 with Hamid Karzai as Chairman. The Interim Authority held power for approximately 6 months while preparing for a nationwide "Loya Jirga" (Grand Council) in mid-June 2002 that decided on the structure of a Transitional Authority. The Transitional Authority, headed by President Hamid Karzai, renamed the government as the Transitional Islamic State of Afghanistan (TISA). One of the TISA's primary achievements was the drafting of a constitution that was ratified by a Constitutional Loya Jirga on January 4, 2004. On December 7, 2004, the country was renamed the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
Within a year of being installed as President, Karzai signs the pipeline deal.
Pakistan:
After the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked on September 11, 2001, Musharraf pledged complete cooperation with the United States in the war on terror, which included locating and shutting down terrorist training camps within Pakistan's borders, cracking down on extremist groups and withdrawing support for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. In a referendum held on April 30, 2002, Musharraf's presidency was extended by five more years. The handover from military to civilian rule came with parliamentary elections in November 2002, and the appointment of a civilian prime minister, Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali. Having previously promised to give up his army post and become a civilian president, General Musharraf announced in late 2004 that he would retain his military role. In August 2004, Shaukat Aziz was sworn in as prime minister, having won a parliamentary vote of confidence, 191 of 342 votes, in which the opposition abstained.
On October 6, 2007, Musharraf was elected president for a 5-year term. He relinquished his army post in November 2007.
After a three-month state of emergency imposed by Musharraf, legislative elections were held in February 2008. Musharraf was elected president in the elections, but resigned on August 18, 2008, as the Parliament prepared for impeachment proceedings. Asif Ali Zardari was elected to replace Musharraf as president on September 6, 2008. Yousef Raza Gilani became prime minister on March 24, 2008.
How has the United States tried to keep a U.S.-friendly government in Pakistan? Money and weapons, of course.
The history of our involvement in Iraq is well documented. That George W. Bush failed to get his Iraqi Hydrocarbon Law (supported by the Iraq Minister of Oil) or SOFA agreement does not change the pre-war facts. Nor, does it change the fact that the Bush administration was pushing for an oil deal in the Kurdish region of Iraq.
Iran speaks for itself. Without regime change, there is no way for the United States to get its mitts on the Iranian oil and gas reserves. Of course, that is exactly what George W. Bush was pushing for in Iran; regime change.
Jerome ends his diary with:
So, please, please, do not use the Afghan pipeline as an example of nasty oilmen conspiracies. There are enough of these going on not to focus on those that have no serious basis in reality. It just makes you lose credibility with those that know anything about the sector.
Remember, oil is a multi-hundred-billion dollar business. Spending a few million here or there to make or keep friends and make them believe you are their friend is a small investment in the larger scheme of things. Making big announcements is a way of life for politicians and it costs oil companies little [ed: word added for clarity] to flatter them by letting them having their ways and the positive PR even if there is nothing behind the announcements.
Here's a question for Jerome; how many trips to the Middle East has he made? How many Kurd's, Sunni's and/or Shi'ite's has he sat down and talked to? Because if the argument is "I know more about the Middle East than you do, so any future argument you have will only make you look silly", those are fair questions.
George W. Bush himself said that the United State's couldn't allow Iraqi oil to "fall into the hands of terrorists".
George W. Bush himself called the United State's dependence on foreign oil a national security concern in a 2006 Bloomberg article.
Alan Greenspan stated that the Iraq war was for oil.
John McCain implied that the Iraq war was about oil.
Even the Washington Post stated that it was hard to see how the Iraq war was for anything but oil, citing the same foreign policy concern of oil since FDR. From the same article, the same person (Mr. Cordesman) that states he doesn't believe the war was about oil, then stated there was a "strategic realities":
"If we went to war for oil, we did it as clumsily as anyone could do. And we spent more on the war than we could ever conceivably have gotten out of Iraq's oil fields even if we had particular control over them," says Anthony Cordesman, an expert on U.S. strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who rejects the idea that the war was designed on behalf of oil companies.
But that doesn't mean that oil had nothing to do with the invasion. In his recent memoir, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil."
Says Cordesman: "To say that we would have taken the same steps against a dictator in Africa or Burma as we took in Iraq is to ignore the strategic realities that drove American behavior."
But, Mr. Cordesman's statement sums up the entire Bush-era, not to mention is life -- incompetence at everything he touched.
Just because the final situation didn't turn out as Bush and Cheney wanted doesn't mean that it wasn't their goal, or, part of their objective.
Just because the political situation in a country changes doesn't mean that oil companies aren't sitting and waiting for the day they can pounce.
The United States has no alternative but to remove our troops from Iraq, without the Hydrocarbon Law or SOFA, simply because Bush's plans failed. The Iraqi government had no choice but to bow to the will of their people or face rebellion. Afghanistan is another case. The United States does have the option of withdrawing from Afghanistan, or not.
President Karzai hangs onto control of the government now through what is widely seen as a fraudulent election (here and here). He has no forces or military other than the United State's military to keep control. It is our military that is now fighting to keep his illegitimate government in power.
To say that the United States is staying in Afghanistan in order to save the pipeline would be as ridiculous as denying that our military protection of Karzai's government doesn't keep a pipeline deal alive in the future.
These pipeline deals have always depended on having a U.S.-friendly government, non-nationalized resources, stability in the country and ability to provide security. Only then, as we've seen time and again, can western oil companies capitalize. That doesn't mean that the United States government hasn't tried, however, only that we've continued to fail for the 60 years we've seen oil as part of our foreign policy.
The 1953 coup in Iran was about oil.
Britain, fearful of Iran's plans to nationalize its oil industry, came up with the idea for the coup in 1952 and pressed the United States to mount a joint operation to remove the prime minister.
What makes anyone believe that the objective -- oil -- changed simply because it was the year 2000? Or that it was Iraq this time, by military force instead of a coup in Iran? Or, even, that it wasn't supposed to encompass the countries of Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and Venezuela?
Why? Simply because it failed? That makes it a conspiracy theory despite all of the evidence to the contrary?
That's pure "silliness"...