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Friday February 24th 2006, 3:27 pm
 If you
trade oil futures, chances are you are jumping up and down right about
now. "Crude oil futures jumped nearly $2 a barrel Friday after a Saudi
official reported an explosion at a major oil refinery in eastern Saudi
Arabia," reports USA Today. "The Web site of MSNBC, citing a foreign
television report, said that Saudi forces had killed suicide bombers who
tried to attack the Abqaiq refinery using at least two vehicles," the Street added. "The targeted facility handles around
two-thirds of Saudi Arabias oil output. Saudi Arabia is the worlds top
oil exporter."
Although it is too early to blame "al-Qaeda" for the attack, the BBC nudged the story in that direction. "The al-Qaeda
network on the Arabian Peninsula has long called for attacks on Saudi oil
installations," it reported. Reuters and CNN International felt compelled
to mention the phantom terrorist organization as well. No doubt, by this
time tomorrow, the corporate media will take it as fact "al-Qaeda" and the
dead Osama bin Laden are responsible for the botched attack at the Abqaiq
facility, described by Strategic Forecasting as "among Saudi Arabias most
critical energy facilities, serving as a processing facility that sees
some two-thirds of the countrys 10 million barrels per day (bpd) of daily
output."
Stratfor also reminds us "of a call from al Qaeda second-in-command
Ayman al-Zawahiri that the war against the Saudi government had failed and
attacks against oil infrastructure should commence
. If the explosion was
in fact linked to militants in the kingdom [and it will be in the next day
or so], it is an indication that although the militancy has been largely
contained for more than a yearsince the Dec. 27, 2004, attempted attack
against the Saudi Interior Ministry Building in Riyadh, the militant
infrastructure and ideology has not been entirely destroyed. Further, the
attack indicates that the militants have shifted their target set from the
government itself to the governments sources of funding and power" and of
course a critical source of oil to a world in need of repeated reminding
how dangerous "al-Qaeda" is now that the "war on terrorism" has gained new
momentum in preparation for an attack against Iran, Syria, elements in
Lebanon (Hezbollah) and occupied Palestine (the Israeli created Hamas).
It is no mistake this attack follows directly on the heels of the
mosque bombing in Samarra, Iraq, and the Prophet Mohammed cartoon
provocation with its emotional and sensational response by outraged
Muslims around the world. The idea here is to barrage Americans and
Europeans with incessant and scary imagery of crazy and violent Muslims
and Arabs and, specifically with the botched Abqaiq oil refinery
bombingkeep in mind that we shouldnt actually expect "al-Qaeda" to bomb
an installation so critical to the neoliberal profiteering
schemethreatening the oil umbilical cord.
"The memory of the 1973 oil embargo made the oil markets oversensitive
to the ebb and flow of the Israeli-Palestinian issue, despite the fact
that the neither Israelis nor the Palestinians consume, produce or transit
major amounts of crude. Al Qaeda has now presented something much more
concrete to worry about," Stratfor continues. "No significant oil asset
has found itself under militant attack since the Sept. 11 attacks; Abqaiq
is one of the worlds most critical pieces of energy infrastructure.
Simply that it was selected for targeting by al Qaeda should be reason
enoughand a sound reason at thatfor some panic."
In fact, the 1973 "oil embargo" was a scheme devised by the Bilderberg
Group"a bunch of rich guys who happen to get together once a year for a
bit of harmless fun," as Jack Robertson sarcastically describes them, but in fact
a cabal of elite globalists involved in the Council on Foreign Relations,
the Pilgrims Society, and the Trilateral Commission. This astronomically
profitable scheme was documented by F. William Engdahl in 1992 (A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New
World Order).
"In 1973, the powerful men grouped around Bilderberg decided to launch
a colossal assault against industrial growth in the world, in order to
tilt the balance of power back to the advantage of Anglo-American
financial interests. In order to do this, they determined to use their
most prized weaponcontrol of the worlds oil flows. Bilderberg policy was
to trigger a global oil embargo in order to force a dramatic increase in
world oil prices. Since 1945, world oil trade had, by international
custom, been priced in dollars. American oil companies dominated the
postwar market. A sharp sudden increase in the world price of oil,
therefore, meant an equally dramatic increase in world demand for US
dollars to pay for that necessary oil" (see Pepe Escobar, Asia Times May 10, 2005).
In short, the "the ebb and flow of the Israeli-Palestinian issue" has
little to do with the price of oiland if it did, the "issue" could be
easily solved by granting the Palestinians their own state, as initially
proposed, or at minimum allowing them full social and political rights as
Israeli citizens, something likely to happen when Hell freezes over.
In essence, the recent attack on the exposed Saudi oil infrastructure
by "al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia" (a covert black op similar to "al-Qaeda in
Iraq" or for that matter "al-Qaeda" in Toledo, Ohio) is an effort to convince us
"our" oil is at risk, as it will be at risk late next month when the
Iranian oil bourse is introduced as direct competition to New Yorks NYMEX
and Londons IPE (see William Clark, The Real Reasons Why Iran is the Next Target: The Emerging
Euro-denominated International Oil Marker).
"We cant rule out the possibility that secret cells are working on a
massive strike on Ras Tanura or Abqaiq," a Saudi oil industry consultant
told Reuters after a shooting "rampage" at a petrochemical
complex in Saudi Arabia in early 2004. "Hitting Abqaiq would be
catastrophic. It would bring the kingdom to its knees." According to
Reuters, the "most apocalyptic version would be a full scale hit in the
east of the kingdom on Ras Tanura, the worlds biggest offshore oil
loading facility, or Abqaiq center which handles some five million bpd of
oil pumped from the giant Ghawar field."
In addition to a possible neoliberal effort to more effectively control
and thus profit from oil, there is the antagonism of the Straussian
neocons, who hate everything Muslim. One need look no further than Laurent
Murawiec, who told the Straussian neocon infested Defense Policy Board at
the Pentagon precisely what they wanted to hear: Saudi Arabia is the
"kernel of evil" and "the strategic pivot" of the Middle East (see Gary
Leupp, "On Terrorism, Methodism, Saudi 'Wahhabism and the Censored
9-11 Report"). In a plan that probably warmed the cockles of
neoliberal hearts far and wide, Murawiec "declared Saudi Arabia an enemy
of the United States and advocated that the United States invade the
country, seize its oil fields, and confiscate its financial assets unless
the Saudis stop supporting the anti-Western terror network," as Jack Shafer of
Slate characterized it. Of course, the Straussian neocons are not
sincerely concerned about this last part since the CIA created what is now
called "al-Qaeda," with more than a bit of help from Pakistan and plenty
of money from Saudi Arabia.
Moreover, according to Leupp, the neocon "Hudson Institutes co-founder
Max Singer presented a paper to the Pentagons Office of Net Assessment,
in which (thinking outside the box as Rumsfeld likes to say), he urged
the dismemberment of Saudi Arabia, in the spirit of the post-World War I
reconfiguration of what had been Ottoman Arab territory. The Eastern
Province of Saudi Arabia could, Singer argued, constitute a new Muslim
Republic of East Arabia, peopled primarily by Shiite Muslims unsympathetic
to the dominant 'Wahhabi (more properly, Muwahhidun) school of Islam in
Saudi Arabia, leaving Mecca and Medina in the hands of the 'Wahhabis
while placing the oil fields [and the Abqaiq oil refinery], concentrated
in the east, in the hands of western oil companies."
British MP, George Galloway, according to Sasha Lilley ("A New Age of Empire"), in 2002 warned of "a plan for
the division of the Middle East is circulating in the corridors of power
on both sides of the Atlantic
. In a recent interview, Galloway asserted
that ministers and eminent figures in the British government are
deliberating the partition of the Middle East, harking back to the
colonial map-making in the first quarter of the 20th century that
established the modern nation-states of the region. An Anglo-American war
against Iraq, he tells me, could be the opening salvo in the break up of
the region."
In fact, a plan to "break up of the region," including Saudi Arabia has
existed for decades, as documented by the late Israeli author Israel
Shahak. "The plan operates on two essential premises," explains Khalil Nakhleh, a member of the Palestinian Ministry of
Education. "To survive, Israel must 1) become an imperial regional power,
and 2) must effect the division of the whole area into small states by the
dissolution of all existing Arab states. Small here will depend on the
ethnic or sectarian composition of each state," and, as well, the
"composition" of natural resources under the ground of states balkanized
through engineered ethnic and sectarian strife.
Of course, this plan may literally go up in smoke, if we are to believe
Gerald Posner. "Saudi Arabia, bracing for the possibility of an attack
either by an outside power or restive Shiite residents, implemented an
intricate doomsday plan in the 1980s giving officials the power to blow up
their own oil wells," writes Rick Shenkman in a review of Posners book (Secrets of
the Kingdom: The Inside Story of the Secret Saudi-U.S. Connection). "In
the event of an attack, says Posner, the Saudis would trigger a series of
'dirty bomb explosions designed to destroy use of the kingdoms oil
supplies for decades."
Posers thesis may seem outlandishuntil you consider in 1991, Saddam
Husseins retreating troops blew up and set ablaze many of Kuwaits oil
fields and spilled more than 30 million barrels of oil, creating an
immense environmental catastrophe. It is perfect natural to assume this
would happen again on a far larger scale if the Straussian neocons and
their pilfering neoliberal partners in crime attempt to divide up and loot
the oil-rich Middle East. It should be noted, according to Iraqi oil ministry sources, as of last July Iraq
suffered "around $11.35 billion in damages to oil sector infrastructure
and lost revenue since oil exports resumed" after the invasion and
occupation.
In short, an outraged and determined resistance is capable of
inflicting more damage on oil profits than "al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia" or
Iraq or wherever.
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