Sharing the type of news you are unlikely to come across in the mainstream media.
Showing posts with label oil industry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oil industry. Show all posts
Sunday, 12 July 2026
Saturday, 7 February 2026
They Ran Trains Without Coal in 1870 — And That's Why The Compressed Air Technology Was Banned
Between eighteen seventy-six and nineteen seventeen, Paris operated entire fleet of trams powered by compressed air—silent, clean, no smoke, no coal, running commercially for forty-one years carrying millions of passengers. Louis Mékarski French-Polish engineer received patent eighteen seventy-six solving cold expansion problem through bouillotte system: compressed air from storage tanks at seventy-five atmospheres passed through heated water reservoir before entering engine cylinders, preventing freezing while maintaining consistent pressure. Compagnie Générale des Omnibus operated compressed air trams achieving thirty kilometers per hour, ten to fifteen kilometers range between compression station refills, passenger capacity comparable to horse-drawn systems with significantly lower operating costs—forty-one years documented commercial success then completely dismantled nineteen seventeen exactly when oil becoming dominant transportation fuel
Tuesday, 18 February 2025
Sunday, 25 August 2013
Sunday, 14 October 2012
Saturday, 21 July 2012
Ben Schreiner: On the Verge of An All Out War? Massive Military Build-Up in the Persian Gulf
On the Verge of An All Out War? Massive Military Build-Up in the Persian Gulf
By Ben Schreiner
Global Research, July 16, 2012
URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31940
The familiar menace of U.S. war drums have resumed at a fevered pitch, as Iran finds itself once again firmly within the Pentagon’s cross hairs.
According to multiple reports, the U.S. is currently in the midst of a massive military build-up in the Persian Gulf on a scale not seen in the region since prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. The military surge reportedly includes an influx of air and naval forces, ground troops, and even sea drones. Lest one forgets, the U.S. already has two aircraft carriers and their accompanying striker groups in the region.
A growing sense of Iran war fever can also be seen mounting in Washington. For instance, in an effort to foil ongoing nuclear negotiations between Iran and the so-called P5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany), a bipartisan group of 44 U.S. Senators recently sent a letter to President Obama urging the administration to “focus on significantly increasing the pressure on the Iranian government through sanctions and making clear that a credible military option exists.”
Such hawkish posturing occurs despite the fact that the U.S. intelligence community (as well as the Israeli intelligence community, for that matter) finds no evidence that Iran has decided to pursue a nuclear weapon--the ostensible reason behind Western sanctions and threats of attack. Moreover, as an April Pentagon report states, Iran’s military doctrine remains one of self-defense, committed to “slow an invasion” and “force a diplomatic solution to hostilities.” (Compare this to the U.S. military doctrine rife with notions of global “power projection” and one sees where the credible threat lies.)
The nuclear issue, though, is but a pretext used to veil U.S. imperial designs in the region. As a senior U.S. Defense Department official recently let slip to the New York Times: “This is not only about Iranian nuclear ambitions, but about Iran’s regional hegemonic ambitions.” In other words, it is about removing one of the last irritants to U.S. power projection in the resource-rich Middle East.
Of course, Iran already finds itself under siege from a lethal trifecta comprised of U.S.-led cyber attacks, Israeli-led assassinations, and oppressive Western economic sanctions. The latter of which has left ordinary Iranians to confront a toxic mix of ballooning inflation and rampant unemployment. In short, as Conn Hallinan writes at CounterPunch, the West is “already at war with Iran.”
The question, then, is just how far this "war by other means" shall ultimately escalate?
Towards a Dangerous Escalation
Although punitive economic sanctions are frequently sold as an alternative to war, history is replete with evidence to the contrary. In the end, sanctions are often but a prelude to military hostilities. (One only needs to cross over to Iraq and look at the history of Western sanctions and eventual U.S. invasion.)
In fact, a recent report in the New York Times warned of much the same. The current round of Western economic penalties imposed on Iran, the paper wrote, “represent one of the boldest uses of oil sanctions as a tool of coercion since the United States cut off oil exports to Japan in 1940. That experiment did not end well: The Japanese decided to strike before they were weakened.”
But much like the attempted torpedoing of Japan’s economy prior to the Second World War, the current attempt to bring Iran to its knees via economic sanctions may very well be designed to draw an attack from Iran--thus creating a justification for a full-fledged U.S. military campaign to impose "regime change."
And much the same as in the 1940s, a global crisis of capitalism greases our current path to war. After all, war enables the forcible opening of new markets, along with bounties galore to be wrought via “creative destruction”; both of which are desperately needed for the sustenance of an imperiled economic system predicated on limitless growth and expansion. Indeed, this enduring allure of war has already reared its ugly head amidst the current crisis.
The colonial smash-and-grab that was the 2011 N.A.T.O. intervention into Libya, as Alexander Cockburn has deemed it, was our first evidence that Western elites have settled on war as a means to resolve the current intractable capitalist crisis. But the spoils from Libya have proven to be insufficient to revive growth stymied since the onset of the 2008 financial crisis.
A heavily sanctioned Iran, on the other hand, boasts a G.D.P. over five times larger than pre-“liberated” Libya, while also sitting atop the world’s third largest oil reserves and the second largest natural gas reserves. A defeated and placated Iran able to be enveloped more fully into the U.S.-dominated capitalist system thus holds great potential for global capitalism’s needed regeneration. Of course, in seizing control over Iran’s energy resources, the U.S. and its allies would also come to possess a monopoly over the Middle East’s energy resources--a strategic key in any future conflict with rivals Russia and China.
And so it is that under the imperative of renewing global capitalism that the U.S. swiftly amasses its military hardware to the Persian Gulf under to cloak of combating nuclear proliferation. The accompanying talk of military hostilities and of using “all options” against Tehran by elites in Washington thus ought not to be taken as idle threats.
Clearly, we stand at the very precipice of outright war.
Ben Schreiner is a freelance writer based in Oregon. He may be reached at bnschreiner@gmail.com or via his website.
Thursday, 17 May 2012
Vermont Becomes First State to Ban Natural Gas Fracking
Vermont has become the first U.S. state to ban the natural gas drilling practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. On Wednesday, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin signed the measure into law at a ceremony attended by environmentalists and a group of high school students who pushed for the ban.
Gov. Peter Shumlin: "This bill will ensure we do not inject chemicals into groundwater in a desperate pursuit for energy. It is a big moment. I hope other states will follow us. The science on fracking is uncertain at best. Let the other states be the guinea pigs. Let the Green Mountain State preserve its clean water, its lakes, its rivers and its quality of life."
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Saturday, 12 May 2012
Nein Danke. German Government to Oppose Fracking
By Der Spiegel Online International
Berlin is opposed to plans to use the controversial fracking process to extract natural gas in Germany, SPIEGEL has learned. Government ministers are "very skeptical" about the technology, which environmentalists claim can pollute groundwater.
Germany has put the brakes on plans to use hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, to extract natural gas in places where it is difficult to access, such as shale or coal beds. Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen and Economy Minister Philipp Rösler have agreed to oppose the controversial process for the time being, SPIEGEL has learned.
Sources in the German government said that the ministers were "very skeptical" about fracking, which injects chemicals as well as sand and water into the ground to release natural gas. "There are many open questions which we will first have to carefully examine," Rösler told close associates.
With their stance, the two ministers are opposing plans by energy companies to use the fracking process to tap into deposits of natural gas in shale, especially in northern and eastern Germany. In order to access the gas, the shale needs to be fractured using a mixture of hot water, sand and chemical additives, some of which are poisonous. Environmental groups reject the use of the technology, saying that the chemicals used can contaminate drinking water.
Local Protests
Last week, the energy giant ExxonMobil presented a study by the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research, in which researchers expressed their support for test drilling in the states of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia.
Local environmental groups in the affected regions have already got into gear, setting up citizens' initiatives to collect signatures for petitions and organize protests in a bid to block the fracking plans. Activists fear that the chemicals could pollute the local groundwater.
Fracking has been widely used in the US, where production of natural gas has sharply increased in recent years as the use of hydraulic fracturing becomes more widespread. Earlier this month, President Barack Obama's administration unveiled new regulations to improve transparency on the chemicals used during fracking on public land.
spiegel/jas
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
Russia's High Stakes Energy Geopolitics
Nord Stream, the huge Russian-German pipeline project, began delivering gas to the EU
By F. William Engdahl
On November 7 the first of two pipelines for Nord Stream, the huge Russian-German gas pipeline project, began delivery of gas. The event was no minor affair. German Chancellor Merkel and Russian President Medvedev along with the prime ministers of France and the Netherlands and the EU Energy Commissioner formally opened the first of two 1224-kilometre pipelines at Lubmin in northern Germany, beginning delivery of the first gas direct from Russia’s Yuzhno-Russkoye gas field in Siberia to Germany.
Nord Stream was not cheap. It cost a total of more than $12 billion for the complex 760 mile long undersea pipeline through the Baltic Sea from Vyborg near Russia's St Petersburg to north eastern Germany. It was laid in remarkable time and with extraordinary environmental precautions to insure protection of sea life, a precondition set by several EU Baltic countries. When the second pipeline is finished in late 2012, Nord Stream will be able to deliver 55 billion cubic meters of Russian gas a year, almost ten percent the entire EU annual gas consumption, or roughly one third the entire current gas consumption of China.
Nord Stream estimates it will provide enough energy to fuel 56 million West European households. With current EU political decisions over reducing CO² “carbon footprint” emissions, the Russian gas giant argues its natural gas gives 50% less CO² than rival coal plants at as much as 50% greater energy efficiency.
Even if Moscow is being more than somewhat opportunist and is not convinced about the shoddy science of global warming, Gazprom does not hesitate to use this as a shrewd political selling point. The EU is going for natural gas energy big time and Moscow intends to be a major, if not the major beneficiary of that push. In addition to delivering Siberian gas to Germany, Nord Stream will deliver to the United Kingdom, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and the Czech Republic.
Moscow appears to hold a winning hand in the one important non-military lever it has to tip the global geopolitical balance of power in its direction and away from Washington's overwhelming dominance. Oil and natural gas are at the heart of the strategy. For some months Russian production of crude oil has surpassed Saudi Arabia’s to be the world’s largest oil producer with over 10.3 million barrels daily, nearly one million barrels more.[1] And in terms of known reserves of natural gas Russia is far away the world leader according to industry data.
Russian natural gas has increasingly been the foundation for a brilliant series of Russian energy geopolitical initiatives for several years. Gazprom, a closely-held state company, is the centerpiece of this energy strategy.
To counter the eastward march of NATO into countries of the former Warsaw Pact such as Poland, the Czech Republic or Romania and the various US attempts to lure Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, both as President and more recently as Prime Minister, has used the economic lever of Gazprom. With its enormous gas resources Russia seeks to win stronger economic ties in western Europe, thereby hopefully neutralizing somewhat the potential military strategic threat from the NATO encirclement. No country has been more the focus of this Russian pipeline diplomacy than former wartime foe Germany where Nord Stream lands.
The undersea route across the Baltic to Germany was chosen by a German-Russian consortium including Gazprom with 51% and the German chemicals group BASF Wintershall and E.ON Ruhrgas of Germany each today with 15.5% share, giving the German-Russian partners a dominating 82% control. Further adding to the political support from key EU countries, later they were joined by N.V. Nederlandse Gasunie and France’s GDF Suez which each own a 9% share.
The Baltic undersea route was chosen deliberately to avoid potential geopolitical disruptions such as occurred several years ago when a pro-NATO Ukrainian government blocked Russian gas deliveries to Western Europe to undercut Russian attempts to come closer to western Europe. Behind Ukraine was the long arm of Washington. [2]
Had Ukraine joined NATO as Washington urgently sought after Kiev’s 2004 "Orange Revolution" brought Washington’s man Viktor Yushchenko in as President, then Ukraine would have been in a strategic position to economically strangle Russia on command. Prior to opening of Nord Stream in November some 80% of all Russian gas exports to EU countries—mainly to Germany, Italy and France—were flowing across Ukrainian territory. Political instability and ongoing NATO meddling in Ukraine dictated the decision to build the new Nord Stream undersea route to Germany and other EU markets bypassing entirely Ukraine and Poland. Today some 40% of all state revenue in Russia comes from Russia's oil and gas exports.[3]
South Stream vs Nabucco
While few outside the energy industry and special political interest groups have paid much attention to it, at the same time Nord Stream was coming into play a ferocious geopolitical battle has also been raging over a second planned major Gazprom Russian gas pipeline project to EU countries called South Stream. South Stream gas pipeline will be laid on the Black Sea floor, pass through Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Slovakia and on to west European markets from the southern part of the EU.
To politically counter the growing Russian energy ties to the EU, with strong Washington backing, the EU Commission proposed an alternative in 2002 called the Nabucco pipeline, curiously named after the Verdi opera. To date Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Austria have agreed “in principle” to build the 3,900 km Nabucco pipeline that theoretically would pump up to 31 billion cubic meters of gas annually from the Caspian and the Middle East across Turkey into western Europe. Nabucco partners to date include energy companies RWE of Germany; OMV of Austria; MOL of Hungary; Botas of Turkey; Bulgaria Energy Holding of Bulgaria; and Transgaz of Romania.
The problem is that the Nabucco partners have yet to secure gas anywhere to fill the pipeline. Moscow has deftly locked up the gas from the obvious supplier Azerbaijan, and surplus gas from former Soviet Republic Turkmenistan is also secured in deals with Gazprom, leaving only Iran as an option, something politically Washington is not ready to consider, to put it mildly.
Both Nord Stream and South Stream came into being when Ukraine's previous Yushchenko regime, with reported strong US behind-the-scenes backing, twice disrupted transit gas flows to European markets beginning 2006. To assure stability of supplies, Moscow created both new pipeline projects to bypass Ukraine.[4]
The geopolitical problem for Washington and its allies in Brussels is the fact that its Nabucco project appears dead in the water before it even gets started. Not only has Gazprom locked up the major gas supply sources including Azerbaijan. Nabucco is also far more costly than its Russian rival.
Latest estimates put Nabucco's ultimate construction cost at almost double that of South Stream. Tamás Fellegi, Hungarian National Development Minister, recently stated that the cost of Nabucco gas pipeline will exceed original plans by four times. "No one can predict the final cost of Nabucco, but according to optimistic estimates, its cost may reach 24-26 billion euro," Fellegi said.[5]
In late October Gazprom made a major move to secure partners for its South Stream in a Moscow meeting with its largest consortium partner, Italy’s ENI. [6] Some days before in September, Gazprom secured the significant participation into South Stream of its major Nord Stream German partner, BASF Wintershall, a major blow to Nabucco hopes. They joined the major French energy company EDF to give the South Stream project major clout versus the floundering Nabucco.
Last April, Turkey, also at least on paper a key player in Nabucco, gave permission to Gazprom to begin offshore prospecting for the potential undersea route of South Stream, a first step to gain Turkish approval to begin construction in Turkish territorial waters on the Black Sea. Turkey is trying to play a new role as an energy crossroads between the EU and its neighbors. By giving Gazprom the green light to begin prospecting, Turkey’s Erdogan government clearly has decided not to put all its energy eggs into the NATO Nabucco basket.[7]
Possible routes for Gazprom’s South Stream Pipeline
Already Gazprom is the largest natural gas supplier to the EU. Gazprom with Nord Stream and other lines plans to increase its gas supply to Europe this year by 12% to 155 billion cubic meters. It now controls 25% of the total European gas market and aims to reach 30% with completion of South Stream and other projects.
Rainer Seele, chairman of Wintershall, suggested the geopolitical thinking behind the decision to join South Stream: "In the global race against Asian countries for raw materials, South Stream, like Nord Stream, will ensure access to energy resources which are vital to our economy." [8]
But rather than Asia, the real focus of South Stream lies to the West. The ongoing battle between Russia’s South Stream and the Washington-backed Nabucco is intensely geopolitical. The winner will hold a major advantage in the future political terrain of Europe.
According to Andrei Polischuk, an energy analyst at the BKS Finance Group, Nabucco is in far the weaker position at present. “This project is facing several problems. One of them is how to fill it with gas and how to find a resource basis. The second is its growing cost. Earlier, the project was estimated at 8 billion US dollars, but at present, it has grown up to 12 to 15 billion US dollars.” says Polischuk. “All these projects have first and foremost a hidden political motive. By implementing them, Europe tries to lower its dependence on Russian gas.” [9]
Reinhard Mitschek, director of Nabucco Gas Pipeline International, recently admitted that Nabucco now has been pushed back until 2017, three years later than originally planned. The construction work won’t begin until at least 2013. He feebly admitted in a recent press conference when pressed on a date for gas deliveries, that gas would flow, “as soon as there are firm indications that gas supply commitments are in place.” [10]
EU Nacht und Nebel Raid on Gazprom
As if on cue, just days before the planned opening ceremony for Gazprom's Nord Stream pipeline the EU launched an unprecedented “nacht und nebel” style raid on the offices of Gazprom and its EU partners covering ten countries.
In response to a complaint by the Washington-friendly government of Lithuania, on September 28 EU officials raided Gazprom and associated offices in central and eastern European states to investigate firms involved in the supply, transmission and storage of natural gas. The Commission claimed the raids were linked to “suspicions” about anti-competitive practices.
The raids were an unprecedented use of new EU “antitrust” weapons including the threat of fines up to 10% of a company's global turnover. Following a Thatcherite “free market” model, the EU Commission has in recent years forced E.ON, RWE and ENI to open up or sell their energy pipelines to rivals. E.ON and GDF were also forced to dismantle their market-sharing deals.
The EU is working a so-called Third Energy Package, which imposes limits on ownership of EU pipeline infrastructure by gas suppliers and calls for the "unbundling" of over-concentrated ownership. Under the rules, Russia could be forced to sell off parts of its pipeline network in the EU, something Moscow is understandably not about to do. It could open a Pandora’s box of geopolitical interference with potential for anti-Russian companies to in effect sabotage the vital and growing Russian gas trade with the EU, a mainstay today of Russian state finances.
The Gazprom raids were explicitly political. The EU even admits it has little evidence: “We're at the beginning of the investigation; we have our suspicions and we have to see whether these are confirmed on the basis of the evidence we find and our analysis," Commission spokeswoman Amelia Torres told press in Brussels.[11]
According to Reuters, “A Commission official, who declined to be named, told Reuters the raids were part of the EU's efforts to wean itself off reliance on Russian gas and concerns about Gazprom's power as a state-controlled entity.” Gazprom itself clearly links the raids to their recent progress on South Stream: “My guess is that it comes as Russia is speeding up its projects, including the South Stream underwater link,” a Gazprom source said. [12]
Vladimir Feigin, a member of the Russian delegation discussing the issue with EU officials, charges the European Commission with taking a "dangerous path" with the raids. “It's not a simple demonstration of muscles ... There are lots of issues, which are highly politicized, including Gazprom's long-term contracts,” he insisted. [13]
While free market game rules may sound attractive to market outsiders, for the future planning of Gazprom long-term fixed contracts are essential. As oil markets reveal in recent years, while prices sometimes fall, most often they are subject to manipulation by major Wall Street banks like JP MorganChase, Citigroup or Goldman Sachs, the gang that pushed oil prices above $147 a barrel in June 2008 at a time supply on the world market was in glut, making a literal killing in the process.[14]
In anticipation of the larger export market for its gas to Europe, Gazprom has been making huge infrastructure investments across Europe which could be wiped out by an adverse EU decision. It is in the process of doubling its underground storage capacities for gas. It already operates gas storage facilities in Austria and leases facilities in Britain, France and Germany to handle the planned new flow from Nord Stream and South Stream. As well, Gazprom has built a joint venture storage facility with Serbia to serve gas exports to Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Hungary. Feasibility studies are being done for similar joint storage projects in the Czech Republic, France, Romania, Belgium, Britain, Slovakia, Turkey and Greece. This, in addition to the major investment in the pipelines, makes it clear the EU raids are aimed at Moscow’s energy jugular.[15]
Were Moscow to succeed in completing South Stream and retain its integral control over the delivery pipeline infrastructure, it would represent nothing less than a major geopolitical defeat for Washington. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s, Washington energy geopolitics in the Caspian region and across Eurasia into Russia have attempted to weaken if not permanently cripple the one major remaining geopolitical lever Moscow holds to counter Washington’s NATO encirclement strategy. Not letting itself be totally dependent on EU gas or oil revenues, Moscow has recently indicated it is greatly increasing its focus on building long-term energy partnerships with its eastern neighbors of Eurasia, most notably with China. The geopolitical implications for Washington of that shift will be examined in a subsequent article.
F. William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics in the New World Order. He may be contacted through his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net
Notes:
[1] News Wires, Russian Output Hits Post-Soviet Highs, 2 November 2011, accessed in http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article286798.ece .
[2] F. William Engdahl, Ukraine Geopolitics and the US-NATO Military Agenda: Tectonic Shift in Heartland Power--Part I, accessed in http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18128 .
[3] Friedbert Pflüger, Russia and Europe: Time to bury the hatchet-and embrace the market, 20 October, 2011, European Energy Review.
[4] RIA Novosti, Ukraine lost reputation of reliable gas transit country – Yanukovych, 19 October, 2011, accessed in http://en.ria.ru/world/20111019/167874442.html
[5] ABC.AZ, Nabucco project cost to exceed value of South Stream and make it world’s most expensive gas pipeline, 24 October 2011, http://abc.az/eng/news/main/58939.html
[6] ENI, Gazprom CEOs discuss South Stream Development, October 17, 2011, accessed in www.offshoreenergy.com
[7] Newswires, Turkey gives offshore permit to Gazprom for South Stream project, 11 April, 2011.
[8] UPI, Wintershall joins South Stream consortium, September 16, 2011, accessed in
[9] Moscow Times, Europe still wants to go around South Stream, September 30, 2011, accessed in http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/09/30/57380344.html .
[10] M K Bhadrakumar, Russia redrawing Europe energy map, Asia Times Online, May 12, 2011, accessed in http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/ME12Ag02.html .
[11] Reuters, EU raids Gazprom offices in anti-trust probe, 29 September 2011, accessed in http://www.euractiv.com/energy/eu-raids-gazprom-offices-anti-trust-probe-news-508007 .
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] F. William Engdahl, More on the real reason behind high oil prices: Part II, Global Research, May 21, 2008, accessed in http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9042 .
[15] M K Bhadrakumar, op. cit.
Saturday, 22 October 2011
Obama, The Son of Africa, Claims a Continent’s Crown Jewels
By John Pilger
Global Research
On 14 October, President Barack Obama announced he was sending United States special forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In the next few months, US combat troops will be sent to South Sudan, Congo and Central African Republic. They will only "engage" for "self-defence", says Obama, satirically. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent is under way.
Obama’s decision is described in the press as "highly unusual" and "surprising", even "weird". It is none of these things. It is the logic of American foreign policy since 1945. Take Vietnam. The priority was to halt the influence of China, an imperial rival, and "protect" Indonesia, which President Nixon called "the region’s richest hoard of natural resources …the greatest prize". Vietnam merely got in the way; and the slaughter of more than three million Vietnamese and the devastation and poisoning of their land was the price of America achieving its goal. Like all America’s subsequent invasions, a trail of blood from Latin America to Afghanistan and Iraq, the rationale was usually "self defence" or "humanitarian", words long emptied of their dictionary meaning.
In Africa, says Obama, the "humanitarian mission" is to assist the government of Uganda defeat the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which "has murdered, raped and kidnapped tens of thousands of men, women and children in central Africa". This is an accurate description of the LRA, evoking multiple atrocities administered by the United States, such as the bloodbath in the 1960s following the CIA-arranged murder of Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese independence leader and first legally elected prime minister, and the CIA coup that installed Mobutu Sese Seko, regarded as Africa’s most venal tyrant.
Obama’s other justification also invites satire. This is the "national security of the United States". The LRA has been doing its nasty work for 24 years, of minimal interest to the United States. Today, it has fewer than 400 fighters and has never been weaker. However, US "national security" usually means buying a corrupt and thuggish regime that has something Washington wants. Uganda’s "president-for-life" Yoweri Museveni already receives the larger part of $45 million in US military "aid" – including Obama’s favourite drones. This is his bribe to fight a proxy war against America’s latest phantom Islamic enemy, the rag-tag al Shabaab group based in Somalia. The RTA will play a public relations role, distracting western journalists with its perennial horror stories.
However, the main reason the US is invading Africa is no different from that which ignited the Vietnam war. It is China. In the world of self-serving, institutionalised paranoia that justifies what General David Petraeus, the former US commander and now CIA director, implies is a state of perpetual war, China is replacing al-Qaeda as the official American "threat". When I interviewed Bryan Whitman, an assistant secretary of defence at the Pentagon last year, I asked him to describe the current danger to America. Struggling visibly, he repeated, "Asymmetric threats … asymmetric threats". These justify the money-laundering state-sponsored arms conglomerates and the biggest military and war budget in history. With Osama bin Laden airbrushed, China takes the mantle.
Africa is China’s success story. Where the Americans bring drones and destabilisation, the Chinese bring roads, bridges and dams. What they want is resources, especially fossil fuels. With Africa’s greatest oil reserves, Libya under Muammar Gaddafi was one of China’s most important sources of fuel. When the civil war broke out and NATO backed the "rebels" with a fabricated story about Gaddafi planning "genocide" in Benghazi, China evacuated its 30,000 workers in Libya. The subsequent UN security council resolution that allowed the west’s "humanitarian intervention" was explained succinctly in a proposal to the French government by the "rebel" National Transitional Council, disclosed last month in the newspaper Liberation, in which France was offered 35 per cent of Libya’s gross national oil production "in exchange" (the term used) for "total and permanent" French support for the NTC. Running up the Stars and Stripes in "liberated" Tripoli last month, US ambassador Gene Cretz blurted out: "We know that oil is the jewel in the crown of Libyan natural resources!"
The de facto conquest of Libya by the US and its imperial partners heralds a modern version of the "scramble for Africa" at the end of the 19th century.
Like the "victory" in Iraq, journalists have played a critical role in dividing Libyans into worthy and unworthy victims. A recent Guardian front page carried a photograph of a terrified "pro-Gaddafi" fighter and his wild-eyed captors who, says the caption, "celebrate". According to General Petraeus, there is now a war "of perception … conducted continuously through the news media".
For more than a decade the US has tried to establish a command on the continent of Africa, AFRICOM, but has been rebuffed by governments, fearful of the regional tensions this would cause. Libya, and now Uganda, South Sudan and Congo, provide the main chance. As WikiLeaks cables and the US National Strategy for Counter-terrorism reveal, American plans for Africa are part of a global design in which 60,000 special forces, including death squads, already operate in 75 countries, soon to be 120. As Dick Cheney pointed out in his 1990s "defence strategy" plan, America simply wishes to rule the world.
That this is now the gift of Barack Obama, the "Son of Africa", is supremely ironic. Or is it? As Frantz Fanon explained in Black Skin, White Masks, what matters is not so much the colour of your skin as the power you serve and the millions you betray.
For more information on John Pilger, visit his website at www.johnpilger.com
John Pilger is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by John Pilger
Wednesday, 24 August 2011
As Fighting Continues in Tripoli, A Look at Role of the U.S., NATO and Oil Firms in Libya Uprising
By Democracy Now!
Fighting continues in parts of Tripoli, the capital of Libya, where rebels are reportedly battling with Muammar Gaddafi’s forces outside his heavily fortified compound. Reports by the Libyan Rebel Council that Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, had been captured were contradicted late Monday when he emerged amongst supporters in front of foreign journalists in Tripoli. The International Criminal Court had claimed he had been in the custody of anti-Gaddafi fighters for the past 24 hours. The rebels have also claimed that two of Gaddafi’s other sons were detained but have provided no evidence. Meanwhile, details have emerged that U.S. andNATO forces played a key role in the Libyan rebel push into Tripoli, carrying out 17 Predator drone strikes and 38 air strikes since August 10. Overall, the U.S. has carried out 1,210 air strikes and 101 Predator drone strikes in Libya since April 1. NATO says it will keep up pressure on Gaddafi and that its "mission is not over yet." We are joined by Phyllis Bennis, who is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Over 160 Arrested in Ongoing Civil Disobedience Against Keystone XL Tar Sands Oil Pipeline
Fifty-two environmental activists were arrested Monday in front of the White House as part of an ongoing protest calling on the Obama administration to reject a permit for the 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline project, which would deliver Canada tar sands oil to refineries in Texas, and rather focus on developing clean energy. An estimated 2,000 people have signed up to hold sit-ins and commit other acts of civil disobedience outside the White House every day for the next two weeks — 162 have already been arrested since Saturday. Also joining the protest are indigenous First Nations communities in Canada and landowners along the Keystone XL pipeline’s planned route. An editorial in Sunday’s New York Times joined in calling on the State Department to reject the pipeline, noting that the extraction of petroleum from the tar sands creates far more greenhouse emissions than conventional production. Meanwhile, oil industry backers of the project emphasize what they say are the economic benefits of the $7 billion proposal. As the Obama administration remains undecided whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, we speak with Bill McKibben, who joins us from Washington, D.C., where he was released Monday after spending two nights in jail. He is part of Tar Sands Action, a group of environmentalists, indigenous communities, labor unions and scientific experts calling for action to stop the project. "This is the first real civil disobedience of this scale in the environmental movement in ages," McKibben says.
Tuesday, 23 August 2011
Monday, 11 July 2011
Monday, 23 May 2011
Libya: it's not about oil, it's about currency and loans
By John Perkins
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- World Bank President Robert Zoellick Thursday said he hopes the institution will have a role rebuilding Libya as it emerges from current unrest.
Zoellick at a panel discussion noted the bank’s early role in the reconstruction of France, Japan and other nations after World War II.
“Reconstruction now means (Ivory Coast), it means southern Sudan, it means Liberia, it means Sri Lanka, I hope it will mean Libya,” Zoellick said.
On Ivory Coast, Zoellick said he hoped that within “a couple weeks” the bank would move forward with “some hundred millions of dollars of emergency support.”( By Jeffrey Sparshott, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES –full article here – http://tinyurl.com/3hj8yyp .)
We listen to U.S. spokespeople try to explain why we’re suddenly now entangled in another Middle East war. Many of us find ourselves questioning the official justifications. We are aware that the true causes of our engagement are rarely discussed in the media or by our government.
While many of the rationalizations describe resources, especially oil, as the reasons why we should be in that country, there are also an increasing number of dissenting voices. For the most part, these revolve around Libya’s financial relationship with the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), and multinational corporations.
According to the IMF, Libya’s Central Bank is 100% state owned. The IMF estimates that the bank has nearly 144 tons of gold in its vaults. It is significant that in the months running up to the UN resolution that allowed the US and its allies to send troops into Libya, Muammar al-Qaddafi was openly advocating the creation of a new currency that would rival the dollar and the euro. In fact, he called upon African and Muslim nations to join an alliance that would make this new currency, the gold dinar, their primary form of money and foreign exchange. They would sell oil and other resources to the US and the rest of the world only for gold dinars.
The US, the other G-8 countries, the World Bank, IMF, BIS, and multinational corporations do not look kindly on leaders who threaten their dominance over world currency markets or who appear to be moving away from the international banking system that favors the corporatocracy. Saddam Hussein had advocated policies similar to those expressed by Qaddafi shortly before the US sent troops into Iraq.
In my talks, I often find it necessary to remind audiences of a point that seems obvious to me but is misunderstood by so many: that the World Bank is not really a world bank at all; it is, rather a U. S. bank. Ditto, its closest sibling, the IMF. In fact, if one looks at the World Bank and IMF executive boards and the votes each member of the board has, one sees that the United States controls about 16 percent of the votes in the World Bank – (Compared with Japan at about 7%, the second largest member, China at 4.5%, Germany with 4.00%, and the United Kingdom and France with about 3.8% each), nearly 17% of the IMFvotes (Compared with Japan and Germany at about 6% and UK and France at nearly 5%), and the US holds veto power over all major decisions. Furthermore, the United States President appoints the World Bank President.
So, we might ask ourselves: What happens when a “rogue” country threatens to bring the banking system that benefits the corporatocracy to its knees? What happens to an “empire” when it can no longer effectively be overtly imperialistic?
One definition of “Empire” (per my book The Secret History of the American Empire) states that an empire is a nation that dominates other nations by imposing its own currency on the lands under its control. The empire maintains a large standing military that is ready to protect the currency and the entire economic system that depends on it through extreme violence, if necessary. The ancient Romans did this. So did the Spanish and the British during their days of empire-building. Now, the US or, more to the point, the corporatocracy, is doing it and is determined to punish any individual who tries to stop them. Qaddafi is but the latest example.
Understanding the war against Quaddafi as a war in defense of empire is another step in the direction of helping us ask ourselves whether we want to continue along this path of empire-building. Or do we instead want to honor the democratic principles we are taught to believe are the foundations of our country?
History teaches that empires do not endure; they collapse or are overthrown. Wars ensue and another empire fills the vacuum. The past sends a compelling message. We must change. We cannot afford to watch history repeat itself.
Let us not allow this empire to collapse and be replaced by another. Instead, let us all vow to create a new consciousness. Let the grass-roots movements in the Middle East – fostered by the young who must live with the future and are fueled through social networks – inspire us to demand that our country, our financial institutions and the corporations that depend on us to buy their goods and services commit themselves to fashioning a world that is sustainable, just, peaceful, and prosperous for all.
We stand at the threshold. It is time for you and me to step across that threshold, to move out of the dark void of brutal exploitation and greed into the light of compassion and cooperation.
John Perkins
Twitter: @economic_hitman
Friday, 6 May 2011
Killing clean energy laws: Tar sands lobby does Washington
By Geoff Dembicki
Tom Corcoran watched incredulously late last February as political turmoil in Libya shot global oil prices skyward. The situation was “intolerable,” he said at the time, sipping coffee at a member's only club for Republican legislators and their supporters in Washington, DC.
Corcoran, a former Congressman from Illinois turned oil industry lobbyist, refused to accept that the “lifeblood” of the U.S. could be so vulnerable - that panicked international investors, speculating on civil war in North Africa, were driving up the cost of crude oil.
“I think that's a dangerous situation and one which the United States should address,” the 71-year-old Corcoran explained in a slow, gentlemanly drawl.
The multinational oil companies he helps represent on Capitol Hill include descendants of the most powerful corporations in global history. Over the past few decades they, too, have been forced to reckon with events far beyond their control including depleting oil fields and state-led power grabs that now push them ever deeper into the frigid petroleum reserves of the Canadian province of Alberta.
Oil sands - or tar sands - from this western province have enabled Canada to become the largest supplier of crude oil to the U.S., shipping roughly one million more barrels per day than Saudi Arabia. Yet even as concern mounts that fossil fuels are damaging the climate, this rapidly growing industry is producing some of the most emissions-heavy gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel on the planet.
“Significantly higher than ... conventional fuels,” is how a recent European Union-commissioned study explained oil sands' carbon footprint.
Corcoran, head of a lobbying and legal services firm, insists that the U.S. economy simply couldn't function without rapid development of oil sands and other high-carbon fuel sources. But some policymakers, worried about a rapidly warming planet, find that an alarming proposition.
“The development and expanded use of these fuels could significantly exacerbate global warming, with highly dangerous effects,” Henry Waxman, a Democratic congressman from California, wrote in 2008. He and others in Congress have supported major clean energy laws that target Alberta's oil sands industry.
Corcoran's job is to kill those laws, and he is financed “by all the major oil and pipeline companies,” he says. They are willing to spend tens of millions of dollars each year lobbying Capitol Hill alongside their high-ranking allies in the Canadian and Alberta governments.
With many clean energy laws now blocked, deleted, or delayed, Corcoran radiates a cool confidence. “We've been successful,” he says, leaning far back in his chair at one of the most exclusive Republican social clubs in the U.S.
Thick as Thieves
Barely a decade ago, most industry experts considered Alberta's oil sands a promising but marginal energy source. It was too costly to be developed on any major scale, and profits were too low to draw many of the big oil companies. Now, rapidly rising oil prices are causing the industry to explode virtually overnight, hurling Alberta into the upper ranks of global petroleum suppliers.
The crude oil produced from the sands is not the smooth-flowing kind that bursts from the ground with the hit of a pick-axe. It comes instead in the form of bitumen, a sludgy mixture of clay, sand, water and oil.
Some producers bulldoze miles and miles of boreal forest, mining the substance with industrial-scale shovels and dump-trucks the size of small buildings. Others melt it out of place by pumping high-pressure steam and toxic chemicals deep underground.
Even then the hockey puck-like gunk won't flow through pipelines until it's been heated to extremely high temperatures or diluted with natural gas condensate, a volatile hydrocarbon that contains cancer-causing benzene.
There is high heat, too, in the debate about the environmental impact of tar sands extraction. “The total picture,” University of Alberta water ecologist David Schindler wrote in 2008, “reveals that we have the Guinness World Record for environmental disaster on our hands.” Greenpeace Canada's website agrees: “Rapid development of the tar sands could tip the scales toward dangerous and uncontrollable climate change.”
While oil sands supporters admit that bitumen requires more energy to extract than higher quality crude oil from places like Texas or Saudi Arabia, they disagree about the numbers.
The Alberta government claims that a recent European Union study concluding that greenhouse gas emissions are a full 23 percent more per barrel used out-of-date figures. Alberta puts bitumen's carbon footprint at only 5 to 15 percent higher than conventional oil. “Frankly, we just feel on the surface it's just unfair,” Alberta energy minister Ron Liepert told Canadian media.
For the U.S., with its notoriously fossil fuel-dependent economy, this brand new source of energy has created a complex dilemma. Environmentalists fear that cranking open the taps could wash away any chance of meaningful action against climate change. Some politicians, however, counter by pointing to the political and military risk of relying on oil from the Middle East and other prickly or unstable areas. They see salvation in privileged access to the planet's second biggest oil reserves -- in friendly Canada.
Deep Inside Republican Territory
With a large painted portrait of George W. Bush hanging in the lobby and two wood-carved elephants flanking the entrance, there was no mistaking Washington's Capitol Hill Club for anything other than a Republican stronghold. (The Repuplican party mascot is an elephant) Fresh from last December's midterm election gains, two key architects of the Tea Party movement -- Koch Industries' David Koch and Americans for Prosperity's Tim Phillips -- invited new Republican legislators to a welcome party here.
A few months later, on a crisp, bright morning late last February, Corcoran and I took the elevator downstairs to the Auchincloss Grill: Imagine a cross between a sports bar, Royal Canadian Legion hall, and a rich friend's dad's basement. During a lengthy interview over coffee at this members-only enclave, Corcoran outlined victories and defeats spanning years of lobbying campaigns, explaining in precise detail his role “as catalyst” in ensuring that the U.S. stays reliant on Albertan oil.
The oil industry lobbyist, who heads a fossil fuel advocacy firm funded by such energy heavyweights as Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips, is a little-known but key player in this debate. Born in 1939 in the rural community of Ottawa, Illinois, he rode a yellow school bus each day past farmers' fields. As he tells it, there's little distinction between U.S. national security, personal freedom, and an abundance of fossil fuels. Oil helped “people do what they want.”
Corcoran hasn't served in politics since 1984, the year he resigned after four terms as Illinois congressman, but his Republican allegiances still run deep. It was under President Bush after all, that the U.S. enacted the 2005 Energy Policy Act, a piece of legislation designed to “reduce the growing dependence of the United States on politically and economically unstable sources of foreign oil imports.” With the nation's conventional oil fields running closer to dry each year, the act contained a directive encouraging the full-bore development of oil sands, oil shale, and heavy oil reserves.
These “unconventional” resources lie in vast quantities across North America, yet are largely untouched owing to cost, complexity, and environmental impact. For Corcoran, a true believer in the legislation, here was the answer to U.S. energy needs, a clear alternative to “dangerous” Middle Eastern oil.
Frustrated by years of political inaction, Corcoran joined forces with the American Petroleum Institute - the nation's most powerful fossil fuel lobby group - and other oil industry players in 2007 to form the Center for Unconventional Fuels, renamed more blandly the next year as the Center for North American Energy Security (CNAES).
Three years later, the group's website has yet to be activated. “Nothing against the internet, it just didn't fit our needs,” Corcoran explained. “We're not doing public outreach, we leave that to others.”
Instead CNAES concentrates on its mandate: keeping the goals of the Energy Policy Act alive, said Corcoran. And its goal, according to a CNAES document under Corcoran's email address, “was to create a single organization to coalesce unconventional fuels advocates in all of the affected private and governmental sectors around a unified program to advance the development and use of … Heavy Oil, Tar Sands, Shale Oil, Coal-to-Liquids and Enhanced Oil Recovery.”
“It ought to be a matter of national policy to develop these fuel sources,” he said.
By early 2008, the center would declare war on the first clean energy law standing in its way.
But before that happened, Corcoran would make an important realization: fossil fuel deliverance for the U.S. lay just 620 miles north of the Montana border.
Battle of the Bitumen
Alberta's oil sands are an experiment in motion: the largest unconventional oil development in human history. The industry pumps roughly one million barrels of crude a day through trans-border pipelines to the U.S., an amount which could more than quadruple in the next 20 years.
All that energy security comes at a cost. The strip-mined panoramas and duck-killing toxic lakes north of Fort McMurray were compared by one United Nations official to the grim devastation of Tolkien's Mordor. Despite some advances in energy efficiency, the industry is still Canada's fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions. By 2020, estimated the Calgary-based Pembina Institute, it could be emitting double the carbon now released by New York City.
But if emissions are large, so too are investment opportunities. An industry report, released last January by Peters & Co., projected roughly $180 billion in new investments during that same period. That kind of rapid expansion can be explained by several factors: depleting conventional oil fields, insatiable U.S. demand, relatively low royalty rates.
Yet a less obvious geopolitical revolution is also driving investment. For much of the 20th century, the global oil market was dominated by an informal oligopoly of energy firms known as the “Seven Sisters.”
Until the 1970s, these private corporations - with headquarters in the U.S. and Europe - controlled 85 percent of global oil reserves. They grew to be some of the wealthiest and most powerful companies ever created, all but dictating their terms to foreign governments. Until the early 1960s, when, led by Venezuela and Iran, oil producing countries began seizing control of their energy resources - and kicking out the Western corporations.
Current Sisters-descendants Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and Chevron - alongside fellow heavyweights ConocoPhillips and Total - now have unrestricted access to only 7 percent of the world's remaining oil fields.
Though still among the richest companies on the planet, they've grappled for years with stagnating shareholder returns, an indication their growth has plateaued. These companies are now shovelling billions of dollars into Alberta's oil sands, one of the few major deposits where they are still welcome.
“[They] just don't have all that many options,” said Alexandros Petersen, research director for the London-based Henry Jackson Society, a global studies think tank. "And so if you get boxed out of places like Venezuela -- or Angola by the Chinese -- you go after whatever you can get. The oil sands are one of those 'whatever-you-can-get' places.”
So when Democratic members of Congress, worried about the growing reliance of the U.S. on climate-damaging fuel sources, began targeting the industry in December 2007, they met a fierce opposition. One of the first attacks on the oil sands came from Waxman. Working in conjunction with the Natural Resources Defense Council - a major U.S. environmental group - the Democrat inserted a contentious clean energy provision into the 2007 Energy Security and Independence Act. Known simply as Section 526, it forbade the U.S. government from buying fuel with high carbon footprints.
“This provision ensures that federal agencies are not spending taxpayer dollars on new fuel sources that will exacerbate global warming,” Waxman wrote in May 2008, making clear mention of the oil sands.
Since Canada has an enormous stake in the success of Alberta's energy resources, its U.S. embassy sounded a warning call in early 2008, flagging Section 526 to the American Petroleum Institute, Exxon Mobil, BP, Chevron and others, according to internal government emails.
“As yours is a company involved in the production of oil sands in Canada,” then-energy counselor Paul Connors wrote to an Exxon Mobil lobbyist, “I wanted to bring this issue to your attention.”
It wasn't long before Corcoran, too, learned of the threat to unhindered oil sands exploitation. Now, the lobby group he'd help found the year before - the Center for North American Energy Security - had a clear mandate: Kill Section 526.
With the support of members such as Exxon Mobil - spender of $29 million in 2008 to lobby Capitol Hill - Corcoran's group soon launched an intensive lobbying campaign, working closely alongside the American Petroleum Institute and Canadian embassy. The former Republican congressmember identified key policymakers, committees and congressional staffers potentially unsympathetic to Section 526.
“Then we talked to those people to a) alert them it exists; b) explain why it was a mistake; c) try to get support to repeal it,” Corcoran tells me. “That was the process we embarked on in 2008.”
He began to see results. That spring, two Republican congressmembers from Texas proposed a repeal of the law. “[Section 526] has powerful and harmful implications and needs to be repealed immediately,” wrote Jeb Hensarling and Mike Conaway.
Identical legislation appeared the next month in the Senate, courtesy of Republican James Inhofe.
Despite non-stop attacks ever since - including a current repeal attempt introduced by Republican congressman Devin Nunes - Section 526 still stands. (Though an ongoing lawsuit launched by the Sierra Club and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy may yet decide its fate).
Corcoran had better luck defeating another clean energy law proposed in 2009.
For years, Washington policymakers had attempted to enact something called a low carbon fuel standard.
First adopted by California in 2007, the law discourages suppliers from selling fuel with high carbon footprints, a clear incentive, proponents hope, for broad clean energy investments. If ever enacted on a national level, it could be equivalent to taking 30 million cars off the road by 2020, according to research cited by then-Senator Barack Obama in 2007.
And it might also wipe out the market for Alberta's high-carbon road fuels, dealing the industry a huge financial blow.
In 2009, as House legislators considered including a low-carbon standard in a major climate change package, the Waxman-Markey bill, Corcoran's lobby group issued briefing notes targeting legislators from oil-rich states such as Texas and Oklahoma. In them, the Center for North American Energy Security warned that the standard would be “a severe self-inflicted wound to our national security and economic recovery.” CNAES also talked to local constituents and got them to add to the pressure.
Soon enough, proponents of the Waxman-Markey bill realized their legislation wouldn't have enough votes to make it past the committee stage. “So they deleted the low-carbon fuel standard,” Corcoran explained, “and then the legislation moved out of committee.” The Senate, too, dropped a proposed low-carbon fuel standard after comparable pressure.
All the while, Corcoran noted, the Canadian and Alberta governments were following the process closely.
“They were aware of what we were doing and supportive of it,” he said, adding: “I'm not suggesting it was only the Center for North American Energy Security [that killed both fuel standards]. But I would say that we were a big part of it.”
Pipeline Standoff Rages
For all its victories, the oil sands industry still faces what may be its biggest hurdle yet. Anticipating the massive growth rates projected by oil sands producers, Calgary-based TransCanada is pressuring the U.S. State Department to approve Keystone XL, a proposed pipeline stretching 1,980 miles south to Gulf Coast refineries.
Environmentalists and sympathetic members of congress - including Waxman - tout a lengthy list of concerns. Some fear a pipeline rupture could contaminate the Ogalalla aquifer, source of drinking water for millions in the midwestern states of the U.S.
At an ongoing 45-day public comment period ending in early June, expect green observers to argue against increasing U.S. reliance on high-carbon Alberta crude. Expect also to see Corcoran's group downplaying those concerns, framing the pipeline as a vital piece of U.S. energy security.
Whether or not Keystone is approved, there are already enough trans-border pipelines to satisfy growing U.S. demand for oil sands until at least 2020, according to a recent Department of Energy report.
But the not-so-hidden subtext is that Keystone XL represents a proxy war over the oil sands industry itself.
“If the U.S. government says 'yes' to Keystone XL, they're basically saying 'sure' to continued industry expansions,” said Danielle Droistch, U.S. representative for the Calgary-based Pembina Institute, a Canadian environmental group.
Whatever Secretary of State Hillary Clinton decides by the end of 2011 -- when her decision is due -- the oil sands industry still has plenty to celebrate.
The collapse of the U.S. Senate's climate change legislation last summer lessened pressure on the Canadian government to impose its own greenhouse gas restrictions. Then the US midterm elections in December installed a wave of Republican legislators arguably more sympathetic to Albertan oil.
Current instability in the Middle East and North Africa (added to BP's Deepwater drilling disaster and the Fukushima nuclear debacle) have only made the extraction of Canadian energy more attractive.
But Corcoran's work is far from done. His group is currently suing the California government to repeal its low carbon fuel standard. And the Center for North American Energy Security continues to intervene in the U.S. northeast, where 11 states are considering similar legislation.
Unlike the civil war rocking Libya thousands of miles away, these are battles Corcoran can hope to influence, and even win. Of course, success often depends on how you define it.
“It's wrong to think of this in war metaphors as though you have different sides,” said Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, international director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “If we can't fight climate change, we all lose. Corcoran loses too.”
Geoff Dembicki reports extensively on the growing political influence of Alberta's oil sands industry and other climate change-related issues for TheTyee.ca, an award-winning online newspaper based in Vancouver, Canada.
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