-Caveat Lector-
nato moves through the balkans...through iraq...two
fronts moving in on the caspian...yeah...one needs an
attention span of more than a few days to notice it...
--- William Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> <A
>
HREF="http://www.davidicke.com/icke/index1c.html";>http://www.davidicke.com/icke/index1c.html</A>
>
>
>
> CHENEY AND BUSH
> WHEREVER YOU LOOK:
> THE OIL WARS IN THE BALKANS
> "...a gang of multinational corporations (including
> BP, Amoco, Exxon, Unocal,
> Caterpillar, Halliburton/Brown & Root [Dick Cheney],
> and Mitsubishi) are
> using all the military, political, and economic
> tools at their disposal to
> destroy and recreate the infrastructure and economy
> of southeastern Europe in
> their own image".
>
>
> Oil Wars: The Balkans
> by George Draffan
> www.endgame.org
>
> Wars are often blamed on political, ethnic, and
> religious animosities, but
> war is more often the inflamation of these conflicts
> -- and war is usually
> about resources: land, transport routes, and above
> all, resources. What's the
> most valuable resource in the modern world? Oil.
>
> The 1995 Dayton Accords led to a major NATO military
> operation to "pacificy"
> Bosnia-Herzegovina. For the multinational
> corporations working alongside
> NATO, one of the most important rewards will be the
> construction of a
> trans-Balkan pipeline to bring oil from the Caspian
> Sea region to Europe.
> William Ramsay, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of
> State for Energy,
> Sanctions And Commodities, claiming that that
> Caspian oil is "crucial to the
> world energy balance over the next 25 years," has
> revealed that "there
> already exists a kind of outline of a new Silk Road
> running through the
> Caucasus and beyond the Caspian. We think oil and
> gas pipelines, roads,
> railways and fiber optics can make this 21st century
> Silk Road a superhighway
> linking Europe and Central Asia."
>
> The European Union, the U.S. government, and a gang
> of multinational
> corporations (including BP, Amoco, Exxon, Unocal,
> Caterpillar,
> Halliburton/Brown & Root, and Mitsubishi) are using
> all the military,
> political, and economic tools at their disposal to
> destroy and recreate the
> infrastructure and economy of southeastern Europe in
> their own image. The
> conflicts of interest between government officials
> and corporate executives
> are blatant and revealing.
> Recent NATO military action in Yugoslavia is part of
> a long strategic
> (economic) battle to control the Balkans. The
> current focus is to secure oil
> and gas pipeline routes from the oilfields of the
> Caspian Sea to the
> consumers of Europe. Multinational oil corporations
> from the U.S., Britain
> and other European countries, and Russia are signing
> multibillion-dollar
> contracts with Kazakhstan,
>
> "The oil from this region played a major strategic
> role during this century's
> two world wars. Protecting the oilfields of the
> Caucasus was an Allied
> priority. During the second world war, oil from the
> Caucasus was an essential
> target of Hitler's expansionist policies. Following
> the 1939 German-Soviet
> pact, Soviet oil from the Caucasus accounted for a
> third of Germany's
> imports. In 1942, Germany repeatedly conducted
> military campaigns to gain
> control over the region's natural resources. Towards
> the end of the 19th
> century, cut-throat competition had already built up
> between the oil
> companies. Russia, fearing loss of control over its
> petroleum markets,
> sabotaged an agreement in 1895 between American
> Standard Oil, the Rothschilds
> and Nobels. Competition in the region was
> increasingly fuelled by ethnic
> conflict, administrative corruption and
> underdeveloped legal and trade
> practices. Natural resources have [again] become a
> major issue in the
> Caucasus and central Asia in recent years.
> Specialists reckon that the area
> might contain the world's third largest oil and
> natural gas reserves after
> the Gulf region and Siberia. Oil resources are
> estimated at 200 billion
> barrels. The most extensive fields have been located
> in Kazakhstan and
> Azerbaijan. Other lesser reserves and oil
> exploitation sites are to be found
> in Georgia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Armenia...
> The fall of the Soviet
> empire and its concomitant loss of influence in the
> region has turned the
> latter into a grey area where regional powers are
> pitted against one another,
> each seeking to ensure that their interests prevail
> within the new successor
> republics to the former USSR. These countries are
> seeking a balance between
> the interests of the regional power brokers and
> their own national interests
> and are hoping that their natural resources will
> offer them the means of
> developing their economies, thus generating the
> stability that is needed
> within the region. One of the major problems of
> these landlocked states is
> oil transport, for which they are dependent on
> cooperation with their
> neighbours. This is leading to the formation at
> regional and international
> levels of a series of alliances and counter
> alliances, the aim of which is to
> allow the countries involved to gain access to or
> influence over some of the
> world's most important natural reserves."
>
> "Two questions loom over the region's future: Who
> owns the bonanza? Who will
> transport it to market? The answers will help shape
> the global economy in the
> next century and the international order that
> governs it. The terms are now
> being set in some of the most intense corporate
> negotiations the world has
> ever seen -- and on a ring of battlefields that
> encircles the Caspian basin."
>
> In 1998, civil war in the Georgian province of
> Abkhazia was fueled by Russian
> weapons to both sides, perhaps to destabilize
> Georgia shortly before a
> decision was to be made whether to route the
> U.S.-backed Main Export Pipeline
> through Rusia rather than through Georgia. "Moscow
> wants Georgia to be
> unstable. It's in their interest," charges Vakhtang
> Kolbaia, deputy chairman
> of the Georgian parliament. "Western countries
> understandably require
> security for their investments."
>
> As reported by Project Underground in its journal
> Drillbits and Tailings,
> "Less than a decade after the final diplomatic
> skirmishes of the Cold War,
> the men who led the battle on both sides have joined
> forces to exploit the
> oil reserves of the Caspian Sea. The Caspian, which
> is the world's largest
> inland sea, is estimated to contain as much as 200
> billion barrels of oil
> alone plus another 100 billion barrels' worth of gas
> under the neighboring
> Kara Kum Desert and other sites. At average price
> levels for the 1990s, that
> adds up to a treasure chest of roughly US$5
> trillion. Today Amoco, British
> Petroleum, Chevron, Exxon, Mobil and Unocal are
> leading a multi-billion
> dollar frenzy to extract these reserves from
> Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and
> Turkmenistan, the three countries that surround the
> Caspian together with
> Russia and Iran."
>
> The U.S.-based oil multinational Chevron is leading
> a Caspian Pipeline
> Consortium which is developing Caspian-Kazakhstan
> oil deposits. "Kazakhstan
> has begun exporting its oil to Europe without using
> the old Russian network.
> In late 1996, Tengizchevroil (a joint venture
> between Kazakhstan and the
> American company Chevron) exported oil to Europe by
> road, rail and ship.
> Existing pipelines today all run through Russia and
> Kazakhstan is thus
> dependent on Russia's goodwill. However, Kazakhstan
> signed an agreement with
> China on 28 September 1997 providing, inter alia,
> for joint construction of
> two oil pipelines, to be operational by the year
> 2002. Under the
> Tengizchevroil joint venture, Kazakhstan's Tengiz
> oilfield began operations
> in April 1993. Chevron's investment in this contract
> is probably one of the
> largest made by an American company on the territory
> of the former Soviet
> Union."
>
> In 1992 and 1995, Kazakhstan signed agreements with
> British Gas and Agip to
> restore its Karachaganak field.
>
> Atlantic Richfield (ARCO) has a contract with Turkey
> to develop oil and gas
> from the Black Sea.
>
> In 1991, Azerbaijan began negotiating with Amoco,
> BP, McDermott, Pennzoil,
> Ramco, Unocal, TPAO, Statoil and other corporations
> on a deal to develop the
> Azeri, Chirag and Gunashli fields in the Azeri
> sector of the Caspian Sea.
> Azerbaijan's State Oil Company (SOCAR) is to have a
> 20 percent share in the
> project and the Russian company Lukoil will take a
> 10 percent holding. The
> deal was signed in September 1994, and in December
> the consortium had formed
> as the Azerbaijan International Operating Company
> (AIOC), with Terry D. Adams
> as chairman. American corporations (Amoco, Pennzoil,
> Unocal, Exxon) have a 40
> percent interest in the $8 billion AIOC. British
> corporations (BP, Ramco
> Khazar) have a 19 percent interest. SOCAR
> (Azerbaijan), Lukoil (Russia), Den
> Norske Stats Olieselscap (Norway), Turkie Petrollari
> (Turkey), Itochu
> (Japan), and Delta Nimir Khazar (Saudi Arabia) are
> also involved.
>
> The AIOC consortium's plan to build a pipeline from
> Baku to Ceylon, Turkey,
> has gotten lobbying assistance from former British
> Energy Minister Tim Eggar
> (now CEO of the British corporation Monument Oil),
> former British Foreign
> Minister Malcolm Rifkind (now a director of the
> British oil corporation
> Ramco), two former U.S. National Security Advisors,
> Zbigniew Brzezinski and
> Brent Scowcroft (now a director of AIOC), as well as
> former U.S. Secretary of
> State James Baker (oil corporation attorney), former
> U.S. Secretary of the
> Treasury Lloyd Bentsen, former U.S. Defense
> Secretary Dick Cheney (then CEO
> of oil services corporation Halliburton, now
> candidate for U.S. Vice
> President), and former Whie House chief of staff
> John Sununu. Iran-Contra
> figure and former U.S. Air Force major general
> Richard Secord has been
> helping to train the Azerbaijani army.
>
> In November 1995, the Azeri government signed a
> contract with the CIPCO
> (Caspian International Petroleum Company) made up of
> Lukoil (Russia), Agip
> (Italy), and Pennzoil (U.S.) to develop the the
> Karabakh oil and gas field
> (no connection with the Nagorno-Karabakh region) 120
> kilometers off the coast
> of Baku, with reserves estimated at between 450
> million and 1.26 billion
> barrels of crude oil and natural gas.
>
> By 1997, Exxon, Pennzoil, Amoco and Unocal had
> invested $5 billion in
> Azerbaijan.
>
> In October 1997, Turkmenistan signed a $2 billion
> contract with an
> international consortium led by Unocal company to
> build a pipeline from
> Turkmenistan to Pakistan via a route that crosses
> 750 kilometers of
> Afghanistan. Turkmenistan President Niyazov
> confirmed that he had the promise
> of support for the pipeline from the both the ruling
> Taliban and from
> anti-Taliban factions.
>
> "Chevron, as a partner in the Caspian Pipeline
> Consortium with Kazakhstan,
> supports a $2 billion Russian route from Kazakhstan
> to Novorossiysk that is
> already under construction -- a step that puts the
> San Francisco firm at odds
> with Washington. The United States government and a
> majority of American oil
> firms have thrown their weight behind the longest
> and most expensive proposed
> pipeline, a 1,030-mile, $3 billion conduit across
> Azerbaijan, Georgia and
> Turkey, from Baku on the Caspian Sea to the Turkish
> port of Ceyhan on the
> Mediterranean. Azerbaijan is also publicly committed
> to the Ceyhan MEP
> system, which would tentatively be joined to a
> proposed $2 billion pipeline
> under the Caspian carrying oil from Turkmenistan and
> Kazakhstan. The Ceyhan
> MEP is expected to cost 50 percent more than the
> proposed new Russian system.
> But advocates point out that it would avoid the
> narrow and crowded shipping
> lanes on the Bosporus strait between the Black Sea
> and the Mediterranean,
> where oil spills would bring disaster to the most
> heavily populated area of
> Turkey. In May [1998], Washington formally launched
> its "Caspian Sea
> Initiative," authorizing the U.S. Export-Import Bank
> and two other federal
> agencies to support 65 energy projects in the
> region. All are tied to the
> Baku-Ceyhan route. [In 1999], the new Western
> Pipeline from Baku to the
> Georgian Black Sea port of Supsa goes into
> operation. Like the proposed
> Ceyhan route, it bypasses Russia entirely, for
> reasons that that have as much
> to do with international gamesmanship as they do
> with money or technical
> feasibility.... The only existing pipeline courses
> through Russia, a country
> whose dependence on volatile energy revenues is as
> dangerously high as that
> of its tiny, resource-rich former satellites. A
> quarter of all Russian tax
> receipts now comes from oil industry levies and
> fees. Both the country's
> young prime minister, Sergei Kiriyenko, and his
> predecessor, Viktor
> Chernomyrdin, are former gas or oil company
> presidents. The Kiriyenko
> government hopes to revive a deeply ailing economy
> by drawing the bulk of
> Caspian basin oil to a much larger new pipeline to
> Novorossiysk. Rival
> pipelines through their own countries are also being
> pushed by Ukraine,
> Romania, Greece, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan,
> Turkmenistan, China and
> Armenia. But the primary contenders are the routes
> to Novorossiysk and Ceyhan
> -- each of which plunges into a battle zone. Support
> for a Ceyhan pipeline
> will drag the American government and U.S.
> corporations ever deeper into the
> Turkish campaign against Kurdish insurgents, which
> is already being fought
> with American F-16s serviced by U.S. Air Force
> maintenance crews.
>
> In April 1999, the government of Azerbaijan signed
> contracts with Exxon and
> Mobil to develop offshore oilfields in the Caspian
> Sea. The signing ceremony
> took place at the U.S. White House, and was presided
> over by U.S. Secretary
> of Commerce William M. Daley.
>
> "If we're going to have a strong relationship that
> includes our ability to
> sell around the world, Europe has got to be a
> key....That's what this Kosovo
> thing is all about." -- U.S. President Clinton
>
> Meanwhile, the Azerbaijan government is selling off
> ports, railroads, the
> national airline, airports and other state-run
> enterprises to foreign
> investors.
>
> The U.S. Exim Bank, U.S. OPIC, and the World Bank
> are interested in financing
> and insuring a Balkans pipeline. In 1998, U.S.
> President Clinton created an
> Office of the Special Advisor to the President and
> the Secretary of State for
> Caspian Basin Energy Diplomacy.
>
> In April 1998, U.S. President Clinton and Vice
> President Gore gave a $750,000
> grant to Turkmenistan President Saparmurat Niyazov
> to pay for a study of a
> gas pipeline that would circumvent Iran by going
> through Turkey. It was also
> an enticement for doing further business with
> Western oil corporations; while
> Turkmenistan had signed deals with Mobil and
> Monument Oil, the country
> refused to privatize its economy. Unocal has been
> planning a pipeline to send
> Turkmen gas to Pakistan via Afghanistan, but
> fighting between the ruling
> Taliban government and opposition in the north had
> delayed that project. In
> May 1998, U.S. Export-Import Bank president James
> Harmon was sent to
> Turkmenistan to help finance the export of American
> goods.
>
> "With Russia to the north, Iran to the south, and
> the multiethnic Caucasus
> Mountains strewn across its middle, Azerbaijan is in
> one of the world's most
> war-prone neighborhoods... Besides Russia and Iran,
> there are the rebellious
> Chechens, who control the main pipeline route from
> Azerbaijan to the west,
> and the Georgians and Turks, who are lobbying
> furiously to have the oil
> rerouted through their territories instead. And to
> the west is Armenia, which
> has occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory
> since it seized the enclave
> of Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 1990s, and has
> vowed to block any oil
> pipeline in its vicinity. Yet, U.S. officials in
> Baku say they hope that
> Azerbaijan's oil will salve the region's ethnic
> animosities, rather than
> aggravate them. Because pipelines will have to be
> built across several
> countries, the thinking goes, everyone stands to
> benefit. President Clinton
> has personally telephoned the Azeri leader, Aliyev,
> to recommend that oil be
> pumped out through two pipelines, one traversing
> southern Russia and one
> through Georgia, and then perhaps continuing on to
> Turkey as the oil flows
> increase... President Aliyev, a canny former
> Politburo boss who rules
> Azerbaijan with only token political opposition, is
> well aware of his
> country's importance to the United States and the
> West, and he is trying to
> make the most of it. When he handed out exploration
> contracts, he made sure
> that oil giants from every major Western country
> were in on the deal,
> including Exxon, Pennzoil, Amoco, Unocal, British
> Petroleum, and even
> Russia's Lukoil. By crafting such an elaborate
> network of friendships, Aliyev
> hopes to balance all the forces who greedily eye his
> country's wealth.
> Azerbaijan is the only former Soviet republic
> outside the Baltic states that
> has not been forced to accept Russian military
> bases. It is unabashedly
> pro-American, and has even petitioned to join NATO."
>
> In June 1999 the U.S. Trade and Development Agency
> awarded a $588,000 grant
> to Bulgaria to explore building a pipeline across
> Bulgaria, Macedonia and
> Albania to pump Caspian Sea oil European
> consumers-just before NATO and
> Russia reached agreement on action in Kosovo.
>
> "The U.S. government has given Bulgaria a
> half-million dollar grant to
> explore building a pipeline across the Balkans to
> pump Caspian Sea oil to the
> West, sending shock waves through Turkey, a key U.S.
> ally that wants the
> potentially lucrative pipeline for itself .... The
> decision has raised
> speculation among regional experts that it may be
> part of a larger economic
> development plan envisioned by the Clinton
> administration to stabilize the
> southern Balkans after the massive dislocations and
> infrastructure damage
> caused by the Serbian repression in Kosovo and the
> US -led NATO bombing of
> Serbia." -- UPI
>
> "How absurd it is to refer to the oil in the Caspian
> Sea region as having
> anything to do with the NATO operation. The Caspian
> Sea is over a thousand
> miles from Yugoslavia." - commentator in The
> Guardian newspaper
>
> "Stated U.S. policy goals regarding energy resources
> in this region include
> fostering the independence of the new states and
> their ties to the West,
> breaking Russia's monopoly over oil and gas
> transport routes, encouraging the
> construction of East/West pipelines that do not
> transit Iran and denying Iran
> dangerous leverage over the central Asian
> economies." -- chairman of U.S.
> House Committee on International Relations
>
> "The key tactical objective of the [NATO] air war
> seems to be the
> deindustrialization of Serbia and Vojvodina, by the
> destruction of key
> national refinery, communication and transportation
> assets in day and night
> bombardment. John Broder has recently quoted Clinton
> as saying that
> "Europeans would...pay most of the cost of
> rebuilding Yugoslavia" after the
> war. It is more likely that this help will come in
> the form of IMF arranged
> privatization of these economic sectors of Serbia by
> transnational
> corporations at fire sale prices. The control of oil
> fields in Vojvodina,
> approximately five billion in mineral deposits and
> the second largest
> European deposit of lignite coal (17 billion tons)
> in Kosmet, are just
> secondary prizes."
>
> Reconstructing Yugoslavia after the war will cost
> $30 to $100 billion. In
> July 1999, a Balkan Assistance and Reconstruction
> Conference in Washington DC
> was organized Equity International to provide a
> venue for government
> officials to meet with corporate executives from
> Caterpillar,
> Halliburton/Brown & Root ((see profile of NATO),
> International Paper,
> Mitsubishi, and other corporations to plan the
> financial and political needs
> for the occupation and operation of the Balkans.
>
> While Dick Cheney was U.S. Secretary of Defense,
> U.S. construction giant
> Brown & Root was awarded hundreds of millions of
> dollars worth of
> construction contracts in war zones from Bosnia to
> Somalia to Haiti. Soon
> after, Cheney quit the Pentagon and was hired as the
> CEO of Halliburton, the
> corporate parent of Brown & Root.
>
> NATO provides the military strength, and under a
> June 1999 "Stability Pact"
> drawn up by the U.S., UK, Germany, France, Italy,
> Canada, Japan and Russia,
> Balkan reconstruction will be coordinated by the
> European Union in
> conjunction with the World Bank and the United
> Nations. "A determined push is
> being made by Europe to dominate the Balkans in the
> aftermath of the war.
> Yesterday the Blair government organised a second
> meeting to encourage and
> organise bids by British construction firms and
> consultants for the
> rebuilding of Kosovo, worth an estimated �3 billion.
> Contracts for the entire
> Balkan region are estimated to be worth �30 billion.
> The pattern is being
> repeated throughout Europe. To the same end in
> Germany, the Schr�der
> government is setting up a task force involving
> ministries and private
> firms." As a condition for membership in the EU,
> there will be a permanent
> armed presence and the EU would have overall control
> of "customs services and
> policing powers to control all port and frontier
> crossings, as a condition of
> New Associate Membership." Bosnian economic policy
> will be controlled by a
> Western central bank governor from New Zealand,
> designated by the IMF.
>
> One of the gems of Yugoslavian privatization is the
> state-owned Trepca mining
> complex which has reserves of lead, zinc, cadmium,
> gold, silver, and billions
> of tons of coal, being processed by smelting plants,
> metal treatment sites,
> freight yards, railroad lines, and a power plant.
>
> "Major NATO efforts will also be required in Turkey
> to control a part of
> Kurdistan's 65 Gbo of oil reserves and the oil
> pipeline from the northern
> Iraqi city of Kirkuk to Turkey's Mediterranean port
> of Ceyhan. The planned
> major oil and gas pipelines between Azerbaijan to
> the port of Ceyhan will
> require additional security. There are also plans to
> extend this gas pipeline
> to Israel, which may explain recent joint Turkey and
> Israel military
> exercises. The need to protect this new pipeline
> will eventually be used to
> justify an aggressive new NATO pacification action
> against the Kurdish
> people. The new 30 billion-five year agreement to
> modernization of Turkey's
> military by US arms merchants seems to bear out this
> possibility. Turkey has
> already killed thousands of Kurds, destroyed some
> 3,000 villages, and created
> about two million refugees in the last 14 years!
> What will happen when Turkey
> really gets serious about pipeline security!"
>
>
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