In 1973, my magazine, Towards Survival, belied its name and folded up. The rapid increase in oil prices in the previous year had meant that anything associated with energy had jumped up in price. Within six months of Arab countries bumping up the price of oil four times, the costs of paper went up four times and mailing costs also.
I had started the magazine three years earlier. It was one of the first environmental journals in the world, being third only to The Ecologist in England and the Sierra Club Magazine in the US. I had worked it up from a two page newsheet to fellow environmentalists in Warwickshire to a 48-page monthly, printed on an offset litho machine which trundled away messily in my spare bedroom, and had subscribers in 14 countries. But there were also other international repercussions, it seems.
A great deal of my magazine was taken up with articles trying to describe how we were going to survive without oil. Most of my writers had been impressed with the predictions of the Club of Rome's Limits to growth report and envisaged oil lasting only another 30 years at the most. We were wrong. Plenty more oil was discovered in the following decades and, also, it was realised that the natural gas that the oil corporations were burning-off at the wellheads constituted yet another additional reserve -- and it turned out to be vast.
However, very gradually, as more oil and gas was being discovered, so did their consumption. Today, even though substantial energy conservation measures were put in place, the production of fossil fuels went up several-fold and, now, production and consumptions are just about balanced. In the next ten years, production will decline. Although there are extensive tar sands around the world from which huge quantities of oil and gas will be distilled -- probably for centuries -- it will be very expensive. This will totally alter the cost structure of our present sort of industrialisation and the nature of our cities and suburbs. Travel and commuting will not be anywhere near as cheap as now and it is likely that the whole trend towards metropolitanisation will steadily reverse in the coming decades.
Anyhow, in 1973, beside Towards Survival folding up, the US State Department was becoming seriously agitated, it seems. UK state papers of 1973, just released under the 30-year rule, show that America was seriously thinking about invading parts of the Middle East in order to control the oil supply. Clearly it decided not to at that time, but it proceeded with a policy of stationing troops very close to every major oilfield in the world, with particular emphasis at that time of troops in Saudi Arabia. It has maintained this policy since then with the exception of oilfields in Canada, Russia and China.
America's dependence on foreign oil supplies is now obviously far greater than then and, as expected, it is now more vigorous than ever in getting its troops closer to the wellheads wherever they are to be found. Although American troops had to leave Saudi Arabia lst year for fear of a Wahhabi-led insurrection it simply decamped nearby to Kuwait -- now stiff with American armour -- and it has placed Special Troops all round the promontary. And, in the course of the last year, it has invaded Iraq and has had a touching reconciliation with Libya which, similarly, was nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction, but with oilfields. American oil corporations, as I write are now rushing in to resume oil production. The only reason they are not doing in Iraq is that there is no legitimate government with which to negotiate contracts
Oil is still the unmentionable word that illuminates world politics. However, scientists with any pretensions to understanding the thermodynamic basics of transforming raw materials into consumer goods, and any economist worth his salt as regards the importance of production costs in our civilisation will, if taken quietly into a corner, whisper that America obviously knows on what side its future bread is buttered.
Keith Hudson
<<<< WAS AMERICA PREPARING A WAR FOR THE GULF OIL IN 1973?
Papers released under the 30-year rule show Britain worried about Middle East conflict
Cahal Milmo
The British government believed America was preparing for a lightning war in the Middle East to end the 1973 oil crisis, including an invasion of Kuwait, documents released today to the National Archives show.
The Joint Intelligence Committee, the body that acts as the link between the intelligence services and Downing Street, warned the Prime Minister, Edward Heath that Washington was planning to seize oil fields in Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Kuwait to secure the Western economies.
The global economy was in the grip of the crisis caused by the decision of the Arab world to hike the price of oil exports to the West and cut production in retaliation for American support of Israel in theYom Kippur war. The proposals, based on intelligence gathered by MI6 and described as "ominous" by No 10. Officials in Whitehall said the US, fearful that the Arab countries were rapidly realising the effectiveness of oil as a weapon, was ready to flex its military muscle in the Middle East without the agreement of its allies.
The plan would entail an airborne assault on strategic targets, the entire principality of Kuwait, the Saudi oilfields in Dhahran and the oil-rich emirate of Abu Dhabi, which had announced a total embargo against the US.
The 22-page JIC document, marked "Secret UK eyes only", said: "We believe the American preference would be for a rapid operation conducted by themselves to seize oilfields."
With what some critics of the American invasion of Iraq might consider uncanny prescience, the report added: "This might be executed without any prior consultation of allies. The objects would presumably be to teach the Arabs a lesson, to assure by physical control an adequate supplementary supply of oil for US domestic needs, with a good quantity over for the needs of selected friends and to enable the US to rid itself of restraints on its policies arising from the oil embargo."
The report, released under the 30-year rule at the National Archives in Kew, west London, said American forces would meet few obstacles in taking Dhahran since it was guarded by "lightly armed" Saudi forces. But Kuwait was thought to present greater problems for US paratroopers since there were 100 tanks stationed around the airport.
The intelligence services said all three assaults would have to be simultaneous to prevent damage to oilfields and attracting a counter-offensive, not least from Saddam Hussein, who had been president of Iraq since 1963: "As regards Kuwait in particular, they [the Americans] could hardly afford to wait long [to bring in reinforcements] because of the risks of Iraqi or other intervention."
British jitters about American intentions were caused by a conversation between the American Defence Secretary, James Schlesinger, and the UK ambassador to Washington, Lord Cromer in November 1973. In a dispatch to London, Lord Cromer wrote that at the end of a conversation about the Middle East crisis, Mr Schlesinger said it was "no longer obvious to him that the United States could not use force". The ambassador described this as "worrying".
In an analysis with further echoes of events 30 years later, the JIC warned that rapid American action was likely to be resisted by some of Washington's key European allies and threatened to split Nato.
The document warned that the timing of any invasion of an oil-producing country would be vital and Europe would argue for US policy to be focused elsewhere. "They would feel US pressures should be applied to Israel rather than the Arabs.
Since the US would probably claim to be acting for the benefit of the West and would expect the support of allies, deep US/European rifts could ensue," it said.
The JIC said war would result from a total breakdown in negotiations over the oil embargo, a possible resumption of fighting between the Arabs and Israel and intensified oil restrictions. Among the other options the US was thought to be considering were replacing the rulers of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi with "more amenable men" and using Iran, still under the control of the pro-Western Shah, to stage an in vasion by proxy.
The JIC warned that the Pentagon might ask Britain to stage its own mini-invasion by using military liaison teams in Saudi Arabia to sabotage any counter-offensive and send troops to seize airstrips and oil fields in Abu Dhabi and, "just possibly", Qatar and Bahrain.
But, in a further premonition, the intelligence chiefs warned that an invasion would set US troops at loggerheads with Iraq. "The situation following the US intervention in the Gulf would be highly volatile and difficult to predict. The greatest risk of such confrontation in the Gulf would probably arise in the Kuwait, where the Iraqis, with Soviet backing, might be tempted to intervene."
Independent -- 1 January 2004 >>>>
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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