Tag: Oil

Crossposted from Antemedius

"Our current way of life is unsustainable. We are the first species that will have to self-consciously impose limits on ourselves if we are to survive." -- Robert Jensen

In 2010 we watched, aghast, as British Petroleum' s Macondo Well in the Gulf of Mexico blew it's top and leaked umpteen millions of gallons of raw crude oil into the Gulf, poisoning and killing much of the sealife, ruining gulf coast ecosystems, and destroying a way of life for millions of south coast people.

We watched, as business and political leaders and mainstream media went into paroxysms of delusional denial to cover up the sheer unabashed criminality of the event, and tried to create a reality built of smoke and mirrors in which something approaching "normalcy" would once again reign and we could all just jump into our cars and drive off into the sunset as if nothing important or even noteworthy had happened,  while those business and political "leaders" operate in the delusion that military might, invasions and occupations, and wholesale oppression and killing of millions of people in "other" parts of the world - as if there is more than "one" world - all done using a military that paradoxically is the single largest consumer of energy in the world - will somehow secure a never ending supply of the energy required to keep our "advanced civilization" operating forever.

Remind you of a hampster wheel? Faster and faster to nowhere.

Jensen's quote opening this essay is from his 2008 article The Delusion Revolution: We're on the Road to Extinction and in Denial:

British special forces are on the ground in Libya helping to spearhead the hunt for Col Muammar Gaddafi, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

As a £1 million bounty was placed on Gaddafi's head, soldiers from 22 SAS Regiment began guiding rebel soldiers after being ordered in by David Cameron.

For the first time, defence sources have confirmed that the SAS has been in Libya for several weeks, and played a key role in coordinating the fall of Tripoli.

With the majority of the capital now in rebel hands, the SAS soldiers, who have been dressed in Arab civilian clothing and carrying the same weapons as the rebels, have been ordered to switch their focus to the search for Gaddafi, who has been on the run since his fortified headquarters was captured on Tuesday.

-- The Telegraph, August 25, 2011, Libya: SAS leads hunt for Gaddafi

"When rebels ransacked Moammar Gadhafi's compound and paraded gleefully with his military hats and golf cart in Tripoli this week, the scenes sparked memories of the looting of Baghdad in 2003. It was a reminder that Libya could plunge into the same post-war anarchy that terrorized Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, when thousands of civilians were killed" is the opening paragraph of Geoffrey York's Globe and Mail article Wednesday afternoon.

But Ghahafi, or Gaddafi, or Quaddafi, or whatever his name is, is gone and Freedom and Democracy has been delivered to Libyans by western humanitarian bombers, without "boots on the ground" - except CIA spook boots that aren't really there, right? Hasn't it?

Well, almost, but things are never quite as clearcut and simple as they're made out to be.

York goes on to explain that, in order to assure that only true Humanitarian Brand(TM)Freedom and Democracy is delivered to Libyans, the coalition of opportunists, sorry I mean coalition of the willing, have decided that it ain't over until the Libyan population is pacified, I mean happy and secure with their newfound 'self-determination', and the only way to accomplish self-determination for them since they aren't really capable of self-determination themselves of course (but it sounded good when it was needed), is to is to send in the police to protect them from each other.

This is all part of the no-fly resolution of course - it's just the baggage that wouldn't fit in the luggage compartments of the bombers dropping freedom bombs - the fine print, as it were.

Call it "Mission Yet To Be Accomplished", for short.

Petrobras, Brazil's state-owned oil company has discovered a major  location of oil reserves 180 miles off the coast of Rio de Janeiro that, under ideal circumstances, could launch Brazil as a petroleum exporter. As the article notes, it appears to be light oil, which is easier and cheaper to refine than heavier oil found in Venezuela. While this oil is deep below the surface of the ocean, Petrobras is an innovator in deep water drilling:

TPM  reports that the Kurd's in Iraq have signed an oil agreement:

Texas' Hunt Oil Co. and Kurdistan's regional government said Saturday they've signed a production-sharing contract for petroleum exploration in northern Iraq, the first such deal since the Kurds passed their own oil and gas law in August.

Hunt has ties to the Bush administration:

"In October 2001 and again in January 2006, Mr. Hunt was appointed by President George W. Bush to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in Washington, D.C."

Welcome to the Bush administration's Middle East oil gambit...