Clipmarks | papananook's 'oil' clips

And they said the war wasn't for the oil

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 08:33:30 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: “We pretend it is not a centerpiece of our motivation, yet we keep confirming that it is,” Frederick D. Barton, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said in a telephone interview. “And we undermine our own veracity by citing issues like sovereignty, when we have our hands right in the middle of it.”
SURPRISE, SURPRISE---NOT!

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

A group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies to develop some of the largest fields in Iraq, American officials say.

The disclosure, coming on the eve of the contracts’ announcement, is the first confirmation of direct involvement by the Bush administration in deals to open Iraq’s oil to commercial development and is likely to stoke criticism.

In their role as advisers to the Iraqi Oil Ministry, American government lawyers and private-sector consultants provided template contracts and detailed suggestions on drafting the contracts, advisers and a senior State Department official said.

It is unclear how much influence their work had on the ministry’s decisions.

The contracts are expected to be awarded Monday to Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, Total and Chevron, as well as to several smaller oil companies.

Dollars, Oil and the Big Wipe Out

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 16:54:23 GMT

clipped by: papananook

Clip Source: www.brasschecktv.com

[Video]

The Petro-Dollar War

The first thing the US did when it invaded and took over Iraq was reverse Saddam Hussein's recently policy of demanding Euros in payment for his countries oil.

Some think that's what the war was all about and that Iran's insistence on receiving Euros for its oil is the real reason that country has been targeted.

Dollars? Euros? What's the difference?

The difference is this...if you are the dominant currency, you can support your lifestyle and war machine by printing more when you run out.

Take that power away and there will be a very economic painful dislocation in the US.

They're Baaack--Juan Coles take on Amerikan Big Oil in Iraq

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:52:10 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: Thanks to Ratilfar...Maybe he clipped it too but it deserves all the spreading it gets...excellent column by Juan Cole:

Bush and Cheney clearly went into Iraq primarily in order to put US petroleum firms in precisely this favored position. The US power elite wanted this outcome and connived actively at it. As Alan Greenspan put it, “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”

Poor Iraq has been looted, occupied, and disrupted by the industrialized West for a century because of the curse of its oil wealth. The Iraqi Petroleum Company was until 1929 the Turkish Petroleum Company since it began in 1912 with a concession from the Ottoman Empire, which ruled Iraq before the 1917 British conquest. The victors of World War I used their victory to leverage themselves into Iraqi oil. The Ottomans had thrown in with Germany and Austria in 1914, and were defeated by the victorious allies. Iraq was considered a s

Clip Source: www.juancole.com

They're Baaack;
It is Politically Inconvenient to Acknowledge . . .

The consortium of American and European oil companies that had dominated Iraqi petroleum in the twentieth century is returning to Iraq to carry out service agreements aimed at expanding production in four southern oil fields.

Jonathan Steele reports,

' But the deals, known as service contracts, are unusual, said Greg Mutitt, co-director of Platform, an oil industry research group. "Normally such service contracts are carried out by specialist companies ... The majors are not normally interested in such deals, preferring to invest in projects that give them a stake in ownership of extracted oil and the potential for large profits. The explanation is that they see them as a stepping stone..."

He said the companies' lawyers had been insisting "on extension rights under which each company would get first preference on any future contract for the field on which it has worked".'

Patrick Cockburn has more.

Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 02:51:02 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production.

There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract. The Bush administration has said that the war was necessary to combat terrorism. It is not clear what role the United States played in awarding the contracts; there are still American advisers to Iraq’s Oil Ministry.

Sensitive to the appearance that they were profiting from the war and already under pressure because of record high oil pric

Clip Source: www.commondreams.org

BAGHDAD - Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.

Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP - the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company - along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.

The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.

REPORT FINDS NOISE REDUCTION GUIDELINES DO NOT PROTECT WHALES AND DOLPHINS

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 05:11:24 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: The effort to open the OCS to drillin will just screw the ocean and make the Bi Oil boys richer--why are we even debating this stupid shit. Cuz the Prez sez.

Clip Source: www.greenpeace.org

WASHINGTON--A Greenpeace report released today found that Federal guidelines for limiting noise emitted from military sonar, oil and gas exploration, and other industrial sources may be insufficient to avoid harm to marine mammals. The study calls for additional restrictions that address how different physical characteristics of sound waves can injure or kill dolphins and whales that depend on their sense of sound for communication and survival.

The adverse impact that man-made sound has on marine mammals is well established in the scientific literature. For this reason, many countries, including the U.S., require their military forces and industry to limit potentially painful and lethal noises produced by their activities. However, despite substantial information demonstrating the need to incorporate multiple characteristics of sound waves—like form, frequency, and periodicity (or duration)—most mitigation efforts only focus on limiting volume.

crops will be significantly effected this year.

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 15:22:23 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: Corn is a bi scam when it comes to fructose syrup and bio-fuel. Big Ag has hijacked this once wonderful crop.

Clip Source: deesings.livejournal.com

On the heels of a year long rise in corn prices due to the rising cost of crude oil, Corn is now at an all time high and other crops, such as soybeans, are also on the rise.

Corn prices have shot up more than 80 percent in the past year amid a spike in crude oil prices, a weak U.S. dollar and rocketing demand for food in developing countries like China and India.

Other agriculture futures also climbed Friday, with soybeans nearing all-time highs.

Soybeans for July delivery rose 23.5 cents to settle at $15.60 a bushel on the CBOT, after earlier rising as high as $15.70. Soybeans hit their all-time high of $15.96, reached in March.

Meanwhile, wheat for July delivery gained 31 cents to settle at $8.82 a bushel.

(Associated Press)

It will be interesting to follow the development of this food crisis, particularly since there is a push towards production of alternative fuels using corn. Will the production of bio-fuels now decrease so that people can be fed?

While Congress argues, gas costs keep climbing

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:16:33 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: Watchin' these jazzbos on CSPAN is the best way to cure insomnia....all talk and no action.

Clip Source: www.sfgate.com

With gas prices soaring to a nationwide record of $4 a gallon, Americans might assume that Congress would move swiftly to address an issue that's hitting consumers' wallets and threatening the U.S. economy.

But both parties, caught up in election-year politics, seem more intent on blaming each other for the price spike.

The sharp partisanship was on display in the Senate on Tuesday as Democrats forced a vote on two bills to levy a windfall profits tax on the oil industry and eliminate $17 billion in tax breaks to oil and gas companies. Republicans succeeded in blocking debate on both measures.

"We've had a White House, we've had a Republican minority that have taken zero proactive steps to reduce our dependence on foreign oil," Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor.

The bickering isn't unusual in Congress, but energy analysts say the parties' efforts to score points over the issue could block any real action this year to address the nation's energy woes.

Stay home, read, have sex Will insane gas prices finally pummel us into evolving? How bad will it g

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:43:27 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: another good column from Mark Morford.

Clip Source: www.sfgate.com

It's the massive, painful spike in gas and oil prices, that most wonderful/frightening harbinger of doom/change/turmoil known to modern society that is fast turning into a calamitous global hurricane, ready to wreak havoc on just about every aspect of modern life, and that includes food and transport and sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll and just about everything else that makes America, America.

What, too dramatic? Not by much. The initial signs are all in place. The price of a barrel of oil is soaring, production levels are peaking, the world economy is shuddering in the face of a permanent production slowdown, even the most staid economists and prognosticators are blinking hard and saying holy hell, we really have no idea how this will all shake out.

The Corporations - Killers of Democracy

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:27:24 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: There is first of all world hunger and, on the same level of emergency, the phenomenon of global warming - both those enormous problems having to be seen as the disasters that must be dealt with in the most urgent way possible. And today, there is virtually no urgency displayed in the way those disasters are dealt with - or not dealt with.

And yet, those two huge problems have to be solved if the world is going to continue in a shape even vaguely like the world as we know it.

There is the planetary inequality which has caused the world hunger that finally seems to have attracted wide-spread attention. It is obviously not a recent phenomenon, but it has been enhanced by the rise in food prices, which have multiple causes - the use of food for biofuel, the rise in the price of oil for transport, the droughts in Australia and in Africa, the enormous sham of GMOs that were made out to be capable of saving the world from hunger, but instead are doing the opposite. And let's not forget

Clip Source: www.smirkingchimp.com

It's way too late at this moment to ask the question: Are we going to lose our democracy? We may not all have noticed it yet, but the Big Corporations stole our democracy a long time ago.

How did they manage? They bought up everything, from the heavy to the light industry, arms, oil, chemical, to the people in Congress who are supposed to protect us from abuse of power by applying the rules set down in the Constitution. But, above all, they bought up the media. There is no objective source for authentic news in the U.S. any more, other than the Internet.

Robert Murdoch and his equally power-hungry fellow media moguls have seen to it that we just get pre-cooked baby-formula infotainment. People are dumbed down by the non-stop stream of meaningless chatter and unceasing propaganda.

Two major disasters

proliferation of oil and gas blocks across the Peruvian Amazon.

Thu, 29 May 2008 18:29:15 GMT

clipped by: papananook

Clip Source: www.ens-newswire.com

LIMA, Peru, May 28, 2008 (ENS) - The Peruvian Amazon, a region that holds some of the most pristine and biodiverse rainforests on Earth, continues to face an unprecedented wave of new oil and gas exploration.

Peru recently released eight new Amazon oil blocks as part of its 2008 bidding round. According to analysis by Save America's Forests, that brings the total to 64 oil and gas blocks in Peru's vast Amazon region.

"Oil and gas blocks now blanket nearly 75 percent of the Peruvian Amazon," said Dr. Matt Finer, staff ecologist at Save America's Forests in Washington, DC, who is now in Peru. "That is over 123 million acres of megadiverse rainforest, roughly the size of California and Maine combined."

These blocks are auctioned by the state oil company Perupetro as license contracts for the exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbons. They now sprawl across both protected areas and indigenous territories.

Children from the isolated Ashaninka tribe, who live near the Yurua River, Peru.

Gay marriage is here, but so is the apocalypse. It's your choice!

Wed, 28 May 2008 21:19:50 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: Another good column by Mark Morford.

Clip Source: www.sfgate.com

The good news: Gas is racing merrily past four bucks a gallon and oil is skipping over a previously unheard-of $130 a barrel and Big Oil execs are snorting like pigs in diamond-crusted mud, and hence people are quickly rethinking their transportive ways, driving less and dumping the land yacht in favor of more Priuses and Mini Coopers and Smart cars, as ultra-efficient auto technology suddenly becomes very attractive indeed.

The bad news: Market-forced behavioral adjustments are a bitch. Driving less, walking more, caring about small cars? It's almost unnatural. What's more, it's a shift brought not by any deep concern for the environment, but by the fact that it costs $125 to fill the damn Explorer and suddenly you're asking, wait a second: Tank of gas or new couch? Tank of gas or case of wine and the mortgage payment? Dammit, we're Americans. We hate thoughtful restraint.

War Abroad and Poverty at Home

Sun, 25 May 2008 15:55:29 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: And yet we wait for Obama or Clinton to save The usa...What a stupid buncha sheeple!

Clip Source: www.opednews.com

The US Senate has voted $165 billion to fund Bush’s wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq through next spring.

As the US is broke and deep in debt, every one of the $165 billion dollars will have to be borrowed. American consumers are also broke and deep in debt. Their zero saving rate means every one of the $165 billion dollars will have to be borrowed from foreigners.

The “world’s only superpower” is so broke it can’t even finance its own wars.

Each additional dollar that the irresponsible Bush Regime has to solicit from foreigners puts more downward pressure on the dollar’s value. During the eight wasted and extravagant years of the Bush Regime, the once mighty US dollar has lost about 60% of its value against the euro.

The dollar has lost even more of its value against gold and oil.

Before Bush began his wars of aggression, oil was $25 a barrel. Today it is $130 a barrel.

the main cause is the eroding value of the dollar.

Change We Can Stomach--I Big Ag on the downslide?

Mon, 12 May 2008 12:47:02 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: Now that argument no longer holds true. With the price of oil at more than $120 a barrel (up from less than $30 for most of the last 50 years), small and midsize nonpolluting farms, the ones growing the healthiest and best-tasting food, are gaining a competitive advantage. They aren’t as reliant on oil, because they use fewer large machines and less pesticide and fertilizer.

In fact, small farms are the most productive on earth. A four-acre farm in the United States nets, on average, $1,400 per acre; a 1,364-acre farm nets $39 an acre. Big farms have long compensated for the disequilibrium with sheer quantity. But their economies of scale come from mass distribution, and with diesel fuel costing more than $4 per gallon in many locations, it’s no longer efficient to transport food 1,500 miles from where it’s grown.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Farming has the potential to go through the greatest upheaval since the Green Revolution, bringing harvests that are more healthful, sustainable and, yes, even more flavorful. The change is being pushed along by market forces that influence how our farmers farm.

Until now, food production has been controlled by Big Agriculture, with its macho fixation on “average tonnage” and “record harvests.” But there’s a cost to its breadbasket-to-the-world bragging rights. Like those big Industrial Age factories that once billowed black smoke, American agriculture is mired in a mind-set that relies on capital, chemistry and machines. Food production is dependent on oil, in the form of fertilizers and pesticides, in the distances produce travels from farm to plate and in the energy it takes to process it.

responded that if we’re feeding more people more cheaply using less land, how terrible can our food system be?

feeding more people more cheaply using less land, how terrible can our food system be?

Gotta keep up with the doom and gloom!

Thu, 08 May 2008 23:38:06 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: Aging systems releasing sewage into rivers, streams. “Local governments across the USA plan to spend billions modernizing failing wastewater systems — some of which are more than 100 years old — over the next 10 to 20 years, EPA, state and local sewer authority officials said. Those improvement efforts face a huge challenge mitigating problems in what the EPA estimates to be 1.2 million miles of sewers snaking underground across the USA.”

Bodies rot in cyclone-hit Burma. “Piles of rotting corpses are stacking up in remote villages of Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta, with residents saying they don't have enough fuel to cremate victims of deadly Cyclone Nargis.”

Deadly battles as Hezbollah says Lebabon 'declares war'. “Deadly gunbattles erupted in Beirut on Thursday after Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah charged that a Lebanese government crackdown on his group was tantamount to a 'declaration of war,' stoking fears of a full-blown sectarian conflict."

Clip Source: community.livejournal.com

Melting glaciers release toxic chemical cocktail. “Decades after most countries stopped spraying DDT, frozen stores of the insecticide are now trickling out of melting Antarctic glaciers.”

Palm oil wiping out key orangutan habitat: activists. “One of the biggest populations of wild orangutans on Borneo will be extinct in three years without drastic measures to stop the expansion of palm oil plantations...”

Survey shows US honey bee deaths increased over last year. “A survey of bee health released Tuesday revealed a grim picture, with 36.1 percent of the nation's commercially managed hives lost since last year… As beekeepers travel with their hives this spring to pollinate crops around the country, it's clear the insects are buckling under the weight of new diseases, pesticide drift and old enemies like the parasitic varroa mite…”

Flood risk fear over key UK sites. “Hundreds of UK power substations and water treatment plants are potentially at risk from flooding,

Environmental warning sins of doom

Wed, 07 May 2008 17:11:05 GMT

clipped by: papananook

Clip Source: community.livejournal.com

Dead ducks put Canada oil sands impact into focus. “Canada and the energy-rich province of Alberta are finding that nothing stains an oil supplier's environmental image, or emboldens its critics, like several hundred dead ducks. With 500 waterfowl killed in oily wastewater at the country's largest oil sands plant this week, government and industry now face a new struggle to convince the world they are not just paying lip service to cleaning up operations."

Low autumn flows sink Murray hopes. “South Australian Minister for the River Murray and Water Security Karlene Maywald said Lake Albert, at the bottom of the Murray, was in a critical state due to acid sulphate soils. 'We are going to see complete and utter ecological collapse unless we can raise the water level,' she said."

Tropics insects ‘face extinction’. “Many tropical insects face extinction by the end of this century unless they adapt to the rising global temperatures predicted, US scientists have said.”

Clipmarks | papananook's 'oil' clips

And they said the war wasn't for the oil

Dollars, Oil and the Big Wipe Out

They're Baaack--Juan Coles take on Amerikan Big Oil in Iraq

They're Baaack; It is Politically Inconvenient to Acknowledge . . .

Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back

REPORT FINDS NOISE REDUCTION GUIDELINES DO NOT PROTECT WHALES AND DOLPHINS

crops will be significantly effected this year.

While Congress argues, gas costs keep climbing

Stay home, read, have sex Will insane gas prices finally pummel us into evolving? How bad will it g

The Corporations - Killers of Democracy

proliferation of oil and gas blocks across the Peruvian Amazon.

Gay marriage is here, but so is the apocalypse. It's your choice!

War Abroad and Poverty at Home

Change We Can Stomach--I Big Ag on the downslide?

Gotta keep up with the doom and gloom!

Environmental warning sins of doom

They're Baaack;
It is Politically Inconvenient to Acknowledge . . .