Iraq Is The First Peak Oil War

Juan Cole with another terrific must read post - Oil Peak or Peak Oil?

What is clear is that Dick Cheney's desperate bid to grab Iraq for US petroleum corporations and for proprietary contracts to supply the US is backfiring big time. Instead of reducing the importance of Saudi Arabia, Cheney and the Neocons have magnified it. Instead of bringing online a big new supplier (Iraq) they have actually reduced the average production from Iraq as compared to the days of the UN sanctions on Saddam! Instead of assuring the US position as a superpower by assuring it special access to Gulf petroleum through military means, Cheney and his friends have destabilized the key energy-producing regions of the world and are driving some producers to deliberately seek proprietary contracts with China s so as to avoid over-dependence on an overbearing US that openly announces it would like to overthrow their governments. (I'm thinking of Venezuela here; with tweaking the same thing could be said of Iran).

Cheney's militarism is too blunt an instrument for the delicate job of assuring US energy security. Nearly $90 a barrel is not security for us-- it is a threat to our economy. Prices may not stay this high all that long in the short term, since primary commodity markets to fluctuate. But as the peak oil people point out, no new big fields have been found or exploited for a very long time, and demand from China, India and elsewhere is growing rapidly. It is going to be an expensive or cold winter for a lot of Americans. It likely won't be the last. Courtesy in some part, the short-sighted and counter-productive policies of one of the country's most notorious traitors, Richard Bruce Cheney.