Korean Job Discussion Forums

[keane]

When the US started its drumbeat to invasion of Iraq, one thing was very clear: it was about control of the oil supply. Why was it so clear? Simple logic and educated analysis. In fact, one would have had to have been near-brain dead to believe otherwise. Why?

- Almost every major player in the Bush administration was from oil. Bush, Cheney and Rice, just to name a few.

- It is inconceivable they did not know of the coming problems with oil supply, particularly Cheney, being CEO of Halliburton.

- The US had had a policy of intervening in the ME, and in oil supply, for over 50 years as it was. With supply problems looming, this would only become more so given their erroneous beliefs. These were based on the miscalculation noted above. That miscalculation? The Middle East harbored enough oil to make the next 40 years a transition period away from oil without collapsing the economy.

Oops.

(The political failures and misconceptions have all been done over. No need to go into them here.)

In fact, ME oil reserves were badly overstated. While the US EIA thought the ME nations, notably OPEC, could double their output by 2020, the facts were very different. The six nations bordering the Persian Gulf at that time produced about 22mb/d of oil. Today, OPEC produces about 30mb/d. OPEC is not now expected to ever exceed that by more than a few million barrels, if that. All that oil was a mirage. OPEC had raised its claims of reserves for political reasons in the 1980s and had never opened their books so anyone could confirm. (A sleuthing made it clear this was not the case. In recent years both Kuwait and the UAE have been shown, by internal documents, to have roughly half what they claimed. Just in the last few weeks the former chief of Aramco's production and exploration stated OPEC reserves were 300,000,000,000 lower than stated.) Only Saudi Arabia has any significant spare capacity, and that will be coming on-line in the next two to three years. They will go from about 8.9mb/d to between 10.5 and 12.5 mb/d by about 2011. Cheney thought that combined they would be producing around 23mb/d more than they were in 2001 by 2025. That will never happen. There is no spare supply anywhere else in the world.

And then we get to depletion. At that time, CHENEY estimated depletion at about 3 percent a year. A conservative estimate. (Three of the major oil producers have a combined 7 percent depletion rate over the last three years, for example.) The combination of new demand, then and now running close to 2% and depletion of 3%+ equals a horrific level of required NEW oil to cover the gap between production and demand. By their estimates (2001) the world would need about 60mb/d of new production by 2015. It doesn't exist.

So, the great error? The invasion of Iraq to gain control of a non-existent savior pool of oil. Instead of taking a world view, and a holistic view, of problem solving, they took a profit- and power-motivated view: control of resources equals power. The fundamental error was that the oil there would give them time. Or just give them a cushion from the chaos.

One to two trillion dollars would have moved us well along the development curve for renewables, conservation, localization and actually resulted in GREATER oil production from Iraq. It also would have helped in mitigating what we now know to be an extremely accelerated climate change situation, Instead, the world burns while they play GI Joes with little plastic ships and imaginary soldiers... who do, in the end, get injured and/or die.

The futility of it all is enormous in scale and tragedy.

You can read about this all here.

[yushin]

whoops!!!

[sojourner1]

OP, I would say it's a massive miscalculation too as the financial value and economic benefits do not appear to be in America's future for invading Iraq to control it's oil. It's a severe financial loss as well as an unnecessary loss of many lives to go there and fight in the armed forces. The morale of the army and the American people who are not monetarily rich, is less than stellar these days and then the super rich know they are goofing up, but won't admit it and work on fixing the mess they created. Many Americans are talking that a revolution comparable to the Boston Tea party sparking the 1st American revolution is coming our way...

[keane]

[Junior]

Theres no oil? In that case I'm sure the moral arguments for staying in Iraq will die down in no time.

[ontheway]

Have to disagree a little.

The greatest miscalculation wasn't about oil reserves or depletion or rates of consumption or peak oil ...


It was the idea that they could walk in, take control, and somehow manage the Middle East, dominate the region and control the oil at the very least, and steal it outright if possible.

They seem to have miscalculated the resistance of some of the indigenous inhabitants known as human beings. They seem to have forgotten the CIA warnings about what would happen AFTER the US invasion. They seem to have forgotten about what the CIA calls "blowback" which is what caused 911 and now looms over America even more than before 2001.

The entire effort would have been counterproductive, even if all the oil thought to be there was indeed there.


And they forgot that America was founded NOT because of a desire for democracy. It was founded out of a desire for LIBERTY.

And you can't spread liberty around the world at the point of a gun.

[keane]

[chris_J2]

The goal of the 9/11 terrorists, was to cripple the US economy. Even if they'd taken out the entire NY city, the US would still have functioned as a robust economy. Ironic, that it now seems like the US is doing this to itself by overextending in Iraq, Afghanistan et al.

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

[chris_J2]

It went down slightly, but rose. Then it plummeted in March 2003, when the US invaded Iraq. Coincidence?



http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2005/07/terror_attack_i.html

The above link quotes "September 11 is hardly viewable on a 10 year Chart"

[thepeel]

[Ya-ta Boy]

[thepeel]

The governmental economic data is not trustworthy anymore. Independent economists run a site that uses older means of statistical calculation. Their graph of post 9/11 economy looks like this:

[ernie]

was the 'miscalculation' a mistake or deliberate? that's the interesting question, IMO...

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]