| |
The
oil that drives the
US military
By Michael T
Klare
In the first US combat operation of the
war in Iraq, navy commandos stormed an offshore
oil-loading platform. "Swooping silently out of the
Persian Gulf night," an overexcited reporter for the New
York Times wrote on March 22, 2003, "Navy Seals [Sea,
Air and Land special forces] seized two Iraqi oil
terminals in bold raids that ended early this morning,
overwhelming lightly armed Iraqi guards and claiming a
bloodless victory in the battle for Iraq's vast oil
empire."
A year and a half later, American
soldiers are still struggling to maintain control over
these vital petroleum facilities - and the fighting is
no longer bloodless. On April 24, two American sailors
and a coastguardsman were killed when a boat they sought
to intercept, presumably carrying suicide bombers,
exploded near the Khor al-Amaya loading platform. Other
Americans have come under fire while protecting some of
the many installations in Iraq's "oil empire".
Indeed, Iraq has developed into a two-front war:
the battles for control over Iraq's cities and the
constant struggle to protect its far-flung petroleum
infrastructure against sabotage and attack. The first
contest has been widely reported in the US press; the
second has received far less attention. Yet the fate of
Iraq's oil infrastructure could prove no less
significant than that of its embattled cities. A failure
to prevail in this contest would eliminate the economic
basis upon which a stable Iraqi government could someday
emerge. "In the grand scheme of things," a senior
officer told the New York Times, "there may be no other
place where our armed forces are deployed that has a
greater strategic importance." In recognition of this,
significant numbers of US soldiers have been assigned to
oil-security functions.
Top officials insist
that these duties will eventually be taken over by Iraqi
forces, but day by day this glorious moment seems to
recede ever further into the distance. So long as US
forces remain in Iraq, a significant number of them will
undoubtedly spend their time guarding highly vulnerable
pipelines, refineries, loading facilities and other
petroleum installations. With thousands of kilometers of
pipeline and hundreds of major facilities at risk, this
task will prove endlessly demanding - and unrelievedly
hazardous. At the moment, the guerrillas seem capable of
striking the country's oil lines at times and places of
their choosing, their attacks often sparking massive
explosions and fires.
Guarding the
pipelines
It has been argued that America's
oil-protection role is a peculiar feature of the war in
Iraq, where petroleum installations are strewn about and
the national economy is largely dependent on oil
revenues. But Iraq is hardly the only country where US
troops are risking their lives on a daily basis to
protect the flow of petroleum. In Colombia, Saudi Arabia
and the Republic of Georgia, US personnel are also
spending their days and nights protecting pipelines and
refineries, or supervising the local forces assigned to
this mission. American sailors are now on oil-protection
patrol in the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, the South
China Sea, and along other sea routes that deliver oil
to the United States and its allies. In fact, the US
military is increasingly being converted into a global
oil-protection service.
The situation in Georgia
is a perfect example of this trend. Ever since the
Soviet Union broke apart in 1992, US oil companies and
government officials have sought to gain access to the
huge oil and natural-gas reserves of the Caspian Sea
basin - especially in Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan and
Turkmenistan. Some experts believe that as many as 200
billion barrels of untapped oil lie ready to be
discovered in the Caspian area, about seven times the
amount left in the United States. But the Caspian itself
is landlocked and so the only way to transport its oil
to market in the West is by pipelines crossing the
Caucasus region - the area encompassing Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Georgia and the war-torn Russian republics
of Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia and North Ossetia.
US firms are now building a major pipeline
through this volatile area. Stretching a perilous 1,600
kilometers from Baku in Azerbaijan through Tbilisi in
Georgia to Ceyhan in Turkey, it is eventually slated to
carry a million barrels of oil a day to the West, but
will face the constant threat of sabotage by Islamic
militants and ethnic separatists along its entire
length. The United States has already assumed
significant responsibility for its protection, providing
millions of dollars in arms and equipment to the
Georgian military and deploying military specialists in
Tbilisi to train and advise the Georgian troops assigned
to protect this vital conduit. This US presence is only
likely to expand in 2005 or 2006 when the pipeline
begins to transport oil and fighting in the area
intensifies.
Or take embattled Colombia, where
US forces are increasingly assuming responsibility for
the protection of that country's vulnerable oil
pipelines. These vital conduits carry crude petroleum
from fields in the interior, where a guerrilla war
boils, to ports on the Caribbean coast from which it can
be shipped to buyers in the United States and elsewhere.
For years, left-wing guerrillas have sabotaged the
pipelines - portraying them as concrete expressions of
foreign exploitation and elitist rule in Bogota, the
capital - to deprive the Colombian government of
desperately needed income. Seeking to prop up the
government and enhance its capacity to fight the
guerrillas, Washington is already spending hundreds of
millions of dollars to enhance oil-infrastructure
security, beginning with the Cano-Limon pipeline, the
sole conduit connecting Occidental Petroleum's prolific
fields in Arauca province with the Caribbean coast. As
part of this effort, US Army Special Forces personnel
from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, are now helping to
train, equip, and guide a new contingent of Colombian
forces whose sole mission will be to guard the pipeline
and fight the guerrillas along its 770km route.
Oil and instability
The use of US
military personnel to help protect vulnerable oil
installations in conflict-prone, chronically unstable
countries is certain to expand given three critical
factors: America's ever-increasing dependence on
imported petroleum, a global shift in oil production
from the developed to the developing world, and the
growing militarization of US foreign energy policy.
America's dependence on imported petroleum has
been growing steadily since 1972, when domestic output
reached its maximum (or "peak") output of 11.6 million
barrels per day (mb/d). Domestic production is now
running at about 9mb/d and is expected to continue to
decline as older fields are depleted. (Even if some oil
is eventually extracted from the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, as the administration of
President George W Bush desires, this downward trend
will not be reversed.) Yet America's total oil
consumption remains on an upward course; now
approximating 20mb/d, it's projected to reach 29mb/d by
2025. This means ever more of the nation's total
petroleum supply will have to be imported - 11mb/d today
(about 55% of total US consumption) but 20mb/d in 2025
(69% of consumption).
More significant than this
growing reliance on foreign oil, an increasing share of
that oil will come from hostile, war-torn countries in
the developing world, not from friendly, stable
countries such as Canada or Norway. This is the case
because the older industrialized countries have already
consumed a large share of their oil inheritance, while
many producers in the developing world still possess
vast reserves of untapped petroleum. As a result, we are
seeing a historic shift in the center of gravity for
world oil production - from the industrialized countries
of the global North to the developing nations of the
global South, which are often politically unstable, torn
by ethnic and religious conflicts, home to extremist
organizations, or some combination of all three.
Whatever deeply rooted historical antagonisms
exist in these countries, oil production itself usually
acts as a further destabilizing influence. Sudden
infusions of petroleum wealth in otherwise poor and
underdeveloped countries tend to deepen divides between
rich and poor that often fall along ethnic or religious
lines, leading to persistent conflict over the
distribution of petroleum revenues. To prevent such
turbulence, ruling elites such as the royal family in
Saudi Arabia or the new oil potentates of Azerbaijan and
Kazakhstan restrict or prohibit public expressions of
dissent and rely on the repressive machinery of state
security forces to crush opposition movements. With
legal, peaceful expressions of dissent foreclosed in
this manner, opposition forces soon see no options but
to engage in armed rebellion or terrorism.
There
is another aspect of this situation that bears
examination. Many of the emerging oil producers in the
developing world were once colonies of and harbor deep
hostility toward the former imperial powers of Europe.
The United States is seen by many in these countries as
the modern inheritor of this imperial tradition. Growing
resentment over social and economic traumas induced by
globalization is aimed at the United States. Because oil
is viewed as the primary motive for US involvement in
these areas, and because the giant US oil corporations
are seen as the very embodiment of US power, anything to
do with oil - pipelines, wells, refineries, loading
platforms - is seen by insurgents as a legitimate and
attractive target for attack; hence the raids on
pipelines in Iraq, on oil-company offices in Saudi
Arabia, and on oil tankers in Yemen.
Militarizing energy policy
US leaders
have responded to this systemic challenge to stability
in oil-producing areas in a consistent fashion: by
employing military means to guarantee the unhindered
flow of petroleum. This approach was first adopted by
the administrations of Harry Truman and Dwight
Eisenhower after World War II, when Soviet adventurism
in Iran and pan-Arab upheavals in the Middle East seemed
to threaten the safety of Persian Gulf oil deliveries.
It was given formal expression by president Jimmy Carter
in January 1980 when, in response to the Soviet
occupation of Afghanistan and the Islamic revolution in
Iran, he announced that the secure flow of Persian Gulf
oil was in "the vital interests of the United States of
America", and that in protecting this interest the
United States would use "any means necessary, including
military force". Carter's principle of using force to
protect the flow of oil was later cited by president
George H W Bush to justify US intervention in the Gulf
War of 1990-91, and it provided the underlying strategic
rationale for America's recent invasion of Iraq.
Originally, this policy was largely confined to
the world's most important oil-producing region, the
Persian Gulf. But given America's ever-growing
requirement for imported petroleum, US officials have
begun to extend it to other major producing zones,
including the Caspian Sea basin, Africa and Latin
America. The initial step in this direction was taken by
president Bill Clinton, who sought to exploit the energy
potential of the Caspian basin and, worrying about
instability in the area, established military ties with
future suppliers, including Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan,
and with the pivotal transit state of Georgia. It was
Clinton who first championed the construction of a
pipeline from Baku to Ceyhan and who initially took
steps to protect that conduit by boosting the military
capabilities of the countries involved. President George
W Bush has built on this effort, increasing military aid
to these states and deploying US combat advisers in
Georgia; Bush is also considering the establishment of
permanent US military bases in the Caspian region.
Typically, such moves are justified as being
crucial to the "war on terror". A close reading of
Pentagon and State Department documents shows, however,
that anti-terrorism and the protection of oil supplies
are closely related in administration thinking. When
requesting funds in 2004 to establish a "rapid-reaction
brigade" in Kazakhstan, for example, the State
Department told Congress that such a force is needed to
"enhance Kazakhstan's capability to respond to major
terrorist threats to oil platforms" in the Caspian Sea.
As noted, a very similar trajectory is now under
way in Colombia. The US military presence in
oil-producing areas of Africa, though less conspicuous,
is growing rapidly. The Department of Defense has
stepped up its arms deliveries to military forces in
Angola and Nigeria, and is helping to train their
officers and enlisted personnel; meanwhile, Pentagon
officials have begun to look for permanent US bases in
the area, focusing on Senegal, Ghana, Mali, Uganda and
Kenya. Although these officials tend to talk only about
terrorism when explaining the need for such facilities,
one officer told Greg Jaffe of the Wall Street Journal
in June 2003 that "a key mission for US forces [in
Africa] would be to ensure that Nigeria's oilfields,
which in the future could account for as much as 25% of
all US oil imports, are secure".
An increasing
share of US naval forces is also being committed to the
protection of foreign oil shipments. The navy's 5th
Fleet, based at the island state of Bahrain, now spends
much of its time patrolling the vital tanker lanes of
the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz - the narrow
waterway connecting the Gulf to the Arabian Sea and the
larger oceans beyond. The navy has also beefed up its
ability to protect vital sea lanes in the South China
Sea - the site of promising oilfields claimed by China,
Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia - and in the
Strait of Malacca, the critical sea-link between the
Persian Gulf and America's allies in East Asia. Even
Africa has come in for increased attention from the
navy. To increase the US naval presence in waters
adjoining Nigeria and other key producers, carrier
battle groups assigned to the European Command (which
controls the South Atlantic) will shorten their future
visits to the Mediterranean "and spend half the time
going down the west coast of Africa", the command's top
officer, General James Jones, announced in May 2003.
This, then, is the future of US military
involvement abroad. While anti-terrorism and traditional
national-security rhetoric will be employed to explain
risky deployments abroad, a growing number of American
soldiers and sailors will be committed to the protection
of overseas oilfields, pipelines, refineries and tanker
routes. And because these facilities are likely to come
under increasing attack from guerrillas and terrorists,
the risk to American lives will grow accordingly.
Inevitably, Americans will pay a higher price in blood
for every additional liter of oil they obtain from
abroad.
Michael T Klare is a professor
of peace and world security studies at Hampshire
College. This article is based on his new book,
Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's
Growing Petroleum Dependency (Metropolitan/Henry
Holt). This article appeared on Tomdispatch and is used here by
permission.
(Copyright 2004 Michael Klare.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
