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Oil and Natural-Gas Pipleline Wars
The war crimes being committed against the people of Gaza are being spun in every conceivable way except to state obvious. U.S. oil and gas companies need to be able to control the regions where crude and gas is found, and the routes to pipe it to market. Just look at a map of pipelines and you can see this. The CATO institute put it bluntly in 1991:
After 70 years of broken Western promises regarding Arab independence,
it should not be surprising that the West is viewed with suspicion and
hostility by the populations (as opposed to some of the political
regimes) of the Middle East.[3] The United States, as the heir to
British imperialism in the region, has been a frequent object of
suspicion. Since the end of World War II, the United States, like the
European colonial powers before it, has been unable to resist becoming
entangled in the region's political conflicts. Driven by a desire to
keep the vast oil reserves in hands friendly to the United States, a
wish to keep out potential rivals (such as the Soviet Union),
opposition to neutrality in the cold war, and domestic political
considerations, the United States has compiled a record of tragedy in
the Middle East. The most recent part of that record, which includes
U.S. alliances with Iraq to counter Iran and then with Iran and Syria
to counter Iraq, illustrates a theme that has been played in Washington
for the last 45 years. Cato Institute
World heavyweights fight over
Caspian carbon and pipeline routes:
Making
the Kazakh-China oil pipeline link even more politically interesting,
from the standpoint of an emerging Eurasian move towards some form of
greater energy independence from Washington, is the fact that China is
reportedly considering asking Russian companies to help it fill the
pipeline with oil, until Kazakh supply is sufficient. Initially, half
the oil pumped through the new 200,000 barrel-a-day pipeline will come
from Russia because of insufficient output from nearby Kazakh fields,
Kazakhstan's Vice Energy Minister, Musabek Isayev, said November 30 in
Beijing.
That
means closer China-Kazakh-Russia energy cooperation--the nightmare
scenario of Washington.
Simply
put, the United States stands to lose major leverage over the entire
strategic Eurasian region with the latest developments. The Kazakh
developments also have more than a little to do with the fact that the
Washington war drums are beating loudly against Iran. FinancialSense
America's pipe dream - George Monbiot
"Transporting all the Caspian basin's fossil fuel through Russia or
Azerbaijan would greatly enhance Russia's political and economic
control over the central Asian republics, which is precisely what the
west has spent 10 years trying to prevent. Piping it through Iran would
enrich a regime which the US has been seeking to isolate. Sending it
the long way round through China, quite aside from the strategic
considerations, would be prohibitively expensive. But pipelines through
Afghanistan would allow the US both to pursue its aim of "diversifying
energy supply" and to penetrate the world's most lucrative markets.
Growth in European oil consumption is slow and competition is intense.
In south Asia, by contrast, demand is booming and competitors are
scarce. Pumping oil south and selling it in Pakistan and India, in
other words, is far more profitable than pumping it west and selling it
in Europe."
Monbiot - Guardian - UK
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