Frank Viviano Writes Energy future rides on U.S. war
Conflict centered in world’s oil patch
- Paris — Beyond American determination to hit back against
the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks, beyond the likelihood
of longer, drawn-out battles producing more civilian casualties
in the months and years ahead, the hidden stakes in the war against
terrorism can be summed up in a single word: oil.- The map of terrorist sanctuaries and targets in the Middle
East and Central Asia is also, to an extraordinary degree, a
map of the world’s principal energy sources in the 21st century.
The defense of these energy resources — rather than a simple
confrontation between Islam and the West — will be the primary
flash point of global conflict for decades to come, say observers
in the region.- “You cannot discuss the violence of this region outside
the context of oil, ” says Vakhtang Kolbaya, deputy chairman
of the parliament in the republic of Georgia. “It’s at the
heart of the problem.”- WORLD’S ENERGY CENTER
The terrain of the globe’s energy future ranges along a swath
of mountain and desert with resource-poor Afghanistan and Pakistan
at its volatile eastern end.- Outside of this core, where suspected terrorist leader Osama
bin Laden and many of his supporters are located, terrorist groups
are active in Saudi Arabia, Libya, Bahrain, the Gulf Emirates,
Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Sudan and Algeria. Their operations also threaten
to destabilize regimes in Turkmenistan,- Kazakstan and Azerbaijan. They also are active in areas –
such as Chechnya, Georgia and eastern Turkey — where major pipelines
carry energy resources to markets worldwide.- Altogether this region accounts for more than 65 percent
of the world’s oil and natural gas production, according to the
Statistical Review of World Energy. By 2050, it will account
for more than 80 percent, according to forecasts.- The combined total of proven and estimated reserves in the
region stands at more than 800 billion barrels of crude petroleum
and its equivalent in natural gas. By contrast, the combined
total of oil reserves in the Americas and Europe is less than
160 billion barrels, most of which, energy experts say, will
have been exhausted in the next 25 years.- It is inevitable that the war against terrorism will be seen
by many as a war on behalf of America’s Chevron, ExxonMobil and
Arco; France’s TotalFinaElf;- British Petroleum; Royal Dutch Shell and other multinational
giants, which have hundreds of billions of dollars of investment
in the region. There is no avoiding such a linkage or the rising
tide of anger it will produce in developing nations already convinced
they are victims of a conspiratorial collaboration between global
capital and U.S. military might.- Nowhere is that alleged collaboration more reviled than on
the Arabian Peninsula, where U.S. armed forces have been present
at six military bases since the Gulf War and where more than
30,000 Americans work for multinational oil giants. They are
seen as the main conduits for the inflow of secular, Western
values in a profoundly conservative society — and for the huge
outflow of its resources.- Fueling this resentment in other oil-producing states is
the yawning gap between the living standards of expatriate Western
oil workers and a small local elite on one hand, and the vast
majority of ordinary citizens on the other.- OIL’S FAILED PROMISE
Azerbaijan, the ex-Soviet Muslim nation on the Caspian Sea, sandwiched
between fundamentalist Iran and violent Islamic insurgencies
in Russian Dagestan and Chechnya, is a case in point. In Baku,
the booming capital city, the streets hum with Mercedes limousines.
Former state-subsidized housing units have been gutted and refurbished
as luxury apartments that rent for up to $5,000 per month.- A scant 20 miles away from Baku in the rural town of Qaza,
just adjacent to an oil field, there is no electricity, no drinkable
water and, most astonishingly, no heating oil on sale. “All
of our hopes rested on the discovery of oil,” says a 42-year-old
father of three children. “But we have seen nothing to justify
that hope.”- Such despair is growing daily, its anger fed by the awareness
that the region’s own political leaders are often the chief beneficiaries
of oil wealth,- and that corruption is rampant. “It’s everywhere, including
my own country,” says a senior, Cabinet-level official in
one oil state, speaking off the record.- The official recounted a ministerial conference he had attended
in Kuwait to discuss the suppression of corruption. His Kuwaiti
host’s bathroom was equipped with solid gold toilet fixtures.- “Even in a corrupt world, there should be limits,”
says the official, shaking his head
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