Putin's hands on the oil pumps

[TeeYiYi]

Putin's hands on the oil pumps
By John Helmer

MOSCOW - For a decade Washington has backed the Turkish and Azerbaijan governments to steer the export of Caspian region crude oil away from Russia. Russia's newest riposte has been to ally the Russian and Iranian oil industries, and open up the shortest, cheapest and most lucrative oil route of all, southwards out of the Caspian to Iran.

The economics of the southward route are the latest blow for the Bush administration as it tries to redraw the geography of the Caucasus on an anti-Russian map. But for oil exporters and shippers in the Caspian, President George W Bush's jawboning looks to be as futile as King Canute telling the sea to roll backwards.

<snip>

Transneft sources, along with oil industry executives in Moscow, agree on one thing about the eastern option for shipping Russian oil. The principal market for this crude will be Asia, and not the US West Coast. But think for a moment what might have happened if the Yukos owners had managed to sell control of their company last July to Chevron-Texaco or Mobil, as Khodorkovsky intended - Russia as an independent oil exporter would have been on its way to a level of independence that is less than Aramco, the Saudi oil company. It is unsurprising that the US media have failed to report the Yukos affair in this light, let alone to have noticed that the US, the world's largest oil consumer, has tried, but so far failed, to compel Russia, the world's second or first-largest oil exporter, to ship and market oil in the way Washington, or Houston, wants.

More: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/FH26Ag01.html

[Ghetto_Boy]

1. Welcome to Capitalism.... here's your cut.....

[TeeYiYi]

2. Oil's slippery slope

Oil's slippery slope
By Pepe Escobar

BRUSSELS and DUBAI - As the neo-conservative dream of a "liberated" Iraq came true in April 2003, who would have predicted that 16 months later oil would become the ultimate time bomb for the Bush administration?

And the Saudi royal/oil family cavalry is not exactly coming to the rescue.

Many factors explain the current rise in the price of oil toward US$50 a barrel - and counting: incapacity - or unwillingness - of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to respond to growing global demand; maximum terrorist risk in Saudi Arabia; the Yukos saga in Russia; the recent referendum in Venezuela; ethnic trouble in Nigeria; China's unquenchable oil thirst; widespread speculation frenzy propelled by pension funds; and serial pipeline bombing in Iraq.

<snip>

Cheap oil is the Holy Grail of the Bush administration's global strategy. According to the sanitized version of US Vice President Dick Cheney's secret energy report published in May 2001 - the work sessions and the people involved remain classified information - the US in 2020 will be importing 66% of its oil, against 55% in 2001. So, the report says, oil is "the priority of America's foreign and trade policy", and "Russia, Central Asia, the Caspian, the Gulf countries and Western Africa" need "special attention".

This, in the long term, represents one of the explanations for the invasion of Iraq. In the short term, the administration of President George W Bush is in for a lot of trouble when oil-guzzling SUV (sport-utility vehicle) armadas of voters start making the connection between the unmitigated disaster in Iraq and oil at $50 a barrel and beyond. Analysts in Dubai estimate that the Iraqi premium - fueling uncertainty and speculation - adds at least $10 to each barrel of oil.

More: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/FH24Dj01.html

TYY

[TeeYiYi]

3. Houston, we have a Yukos problem

Houston, we have a Yukos problem
By Pepe Escobar

BRUSSELS - The crucial consequence of Moscow's campaign to nail Yukos, the country's leading oil producer, is the end of any possible energy alliance between Russia and the US, according to European Union diplomats and officials.

Yukos' former golden boy, chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky, languishing in jail since October 2003, was President George W Bush's and Vice President Dick Cheney's man. But way beyond his personal fate, it is the symbol of the fall of Yukos - no hope of cheap Russian oil for America and extra profits for ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips - that is really rattling markets and driving oil prices higher.

Soon after September 11, when the Bush administration seriously started looking for major oil sources other than the Saudis, a deal with Russian oligarchs might have seemed the ideal solution. In May 2002, at a summit in Moscow, Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin forged what looked like an alliance, further developed in an "energy summit" held in a Houston steel-and-glass tower in October of that year. The deal was straightforward: Washington/Houston injects tons of dollars into the Russian oil sector, and Russia up to 2010 becomes America's number one supplier. The key Russian partner in this deal was to be Khodorkovsky - the son of a Moscow worker turned king of business and head of Yukos, producer of 1.7 million barrels of oil a day and the largest Russian oil company ahead of LUKoil.

Khodorkovsky could not but be a Western darling. His hero was Standard Oil's founder John Rockefeller. He installed five Americans on the Yukos board. The company's public relations was handled by an American firm. He created a charity, Open Russia, which boasted Henry Kissinger and Lord Rothschild as chairmen. Wall Street loved him, because he guaranteed fortunes to Yukos' shareholders, especially himself (he owns 44% of the shares).

In April 2003, as the US was taking over Iraq, Yukos was about to take over one of its rivals, Sibneft. This would have created a US$35 billion company, the fourth-largest private company in the world and the first in Russia, with oil production similar to Kuwait's (2.3 million barrels a day). But just as Khodorkovsky was entertaining the idea of selling control of Yukos to ChevronTexaco, Putin struck. In October, Yukos was billed $3.4 billion for back taxes for 2000, its assets frozen and Khodorkovsky was in jail and on trial on separate charges of tax evasion and fraud.

More: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/FH26Ag03.html

TYY

[teryang]

4. Great posts!

But the links aren't working for me. Russian access to world markets through Persia. A total foreign policy diaster. Now we see another aspect of the "neocon" Iran strategy.

[TeeYiYi]

5. That's odd . . .

. . . they're not working for me either. (One works but the other two don't.)

I'll see if I can fix that. Thanks teryang.:hi:

TYY

[TeeYiYi]

6. Checked the links . . .

They seem to be working now.:shrug: Try again and see what happens. I checked all three links and they all worked. Maybe atimes.com was updating the pages and removed them temporarily.

TYY

[donkeyotay]

7. thanks for this link

Issues of oil and terror in Central Asia are important pieces in understanding where we're going to war and why. This administration pursues a strategy of empire, believing they have the right to keep us uninformed because we might come to the "wrong" conclusions.

And the Asia Times is a great resource.

Thanks for posting this great link, complete with maps and everything. This is so important; I'm nominating this for the homepage.

[TeeYiYi]

8. Caspian capers

Caspian capers
By Sergei Blagov

MOSCOW - As attempts to solve differences on how to divide the Caspian Sea riches between Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan go nowhere, the five littoral states remain divided in decade-long negotiations. Meanwhile, some evidence suggests that positions in the great Caspian could be shifting.

<snip>

As far as the Kremlin's goals in the region were concerned, Russia's special Caspian envoy sounded uncharacteristically blunt. "We have the Russian president's instructions to ensure the maximum volume of Caspian energy transit through Russia," Kalyuzhny stated.

On the other hand, Russia's new special Caspian envoy, Yusufov, in his previous capacity, has repeatedly reiterated Russian readiness to supply oil and gas to the United States, stating that Russia prioritizes energy ties with the US. It remains to be seen whether Kalyuzhny's replacement by Yusufov could indicate changes in Moscow's position in the Caspian debate, a step closer toward Washington.

<snip>

In terms of the great Caspian energy game, Moscow also seeks a pipeline ban as part of a future convention on the Caspian Sea's status. Such a ban would be detrimental to a US-backed project to send Caspian oil to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. Russian officials cited environmental reasons as the main argument for banning pipelines.

Moscow has been insisting that the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline is not economically viable, indicating that Russia remains wary of the US-backed project. Last February, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev came to Moscow to reassure Russia that the BTC was not intended to damage Russia's economic interests.

More: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/FH26Ag02.html

TYY

[TeeYiYi]

9. kick

TYY:kick: