So. Is it about oil or NOT?

[billvon 3,120]

>Your replies are simplistic . . .

Wasn't it you who said:

" If it was about the oil, we would own the oil. QED. "

I think that's perhaps the biggest oversimplification I've seen on the Iraq oil issue.

[mnealtx 0]

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I think that's perhaps the biggest oversimplification I've seen on the Iraq oil issue.

Aren't you the one that keeps mentioning Occam's Razor?

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[StreetScooby 5]

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I think that's perhaps the biggest oversimplification I've seen on the Iraq oil issue.

How so? Where am I wrong?

We are all engines of karma

[StreetScooby 5]

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How about this for an argument; if it was not about the oil, Bush wouldn't have just said that it was.

It's not about the oil, as it sits in the ground. The issue is the free flow of oil, in a free market. Our nation's standard of living depends greatly on that. If we wanted to flat out own the oil, we could.

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The point about oil isn't what the going wholesale price is going to be at any given time, but rather who gets to be the middle-men (read profit makers) and who gets to control the oil in such an arrangement.

You are discounting the free market system that is well established in the upstream area. Not only do middle men make profit, everyone in the chain makes profit. They have to. Otherwise, they couldn't run their business and hope to feed their kids.

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who all get to take a fat cut of the profits

Do you know how capital intensive the oil business is? Upstream costs are huge, as are downstream costs. Refining margins (downstream) are single digits, thanks in part to our Congress. Upstream processing takes a decade or more to bring a newly discovered field on line.

So, how are you defining profits? It's not revenue.

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Of course, these new custodians of Iraqi wealth insisted on doing so to line their own pockets,

So, do you expect these people to give it away?

You expect some Iraqi to walk out of the wood work and run a port facility so that it operates continuosly?

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To insist that we have to own the underlying oil for this to be anything about oil is laughably fallacious, as was calling another poster a student.

As I pointed out to kallend, the other poster was a student according to his profile at the time I read it.

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I was also amused (thanks Scoob) by your protest about another poster referring to something as nefarious as "data" to support his point of view. Do all the right-wing supermen around here get so upset when a non neo con shows up to the conversation with some factynite? Or am I too not in the real world?

The data presented by kallend have already been discounted elsewhere by financial instutions that know much more about the markets than I do.

To throw random data around is just that, throwing random data around. I chose not to take that data seriously because it's already been debunked.

We are all engines of karma

[kallend 2,151]

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"You're still a student" is what you wrote to jcd in an attempt to dismiss his views

Your analysis is simplistic.

He is a student. Read his profile.

Your replies are simplistic, and there is no analysis required to reach that conclusion.

kallend, I keep expecting more from you, and clearly that's my issue. Guess my expectations are too high.

If you are unable to comprehend that it is in the best interests of the USA to have world oil prices denominated in $US, then there's little point in having this discussion. Seems that the "student" learned better.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[billvon 3,120]

>How so? Where am I wrong?

Saying " If it was about the oil, we would own the oil" is about as simplistic (and as accurate) as saying "if we wanted canadian lumber, we would own canada." As I think you realize, it's a lot more complex than that.

We do not have government-owned industries, so no matter what happened, the US could not "own the oil." At most we could make Iraq a territory, and then apply US law to the extraction of the oil. I think we realize the world would not stand for it.

The current administration sees oil as a very important strategic resource, which it largely is. (Our military doesn't run on batteries.) The supply is running out, and both our economy and our military is thus at risk. Their solution has been (in part) to secure reliable supplies of oil. In a world growing increasingly hostile to the US, this is difficult. One way to help guarantee future supplies of oil is to ensure that countries that control it are friendly to the US. Installing a US-friendly democratic government in Iraq looked like one way to make that happen; indeed, such a strategy was called out in the PNAC's plan for the Middle East.

Thus, the oil strategy for Iraq was to conquer the country, install and foster a US-friendly government, and ensure that US oil companies have access to the oil. And that has happened; the Iraqi government is about to release its rules on Production Sharing Agreements, rules that have their basis in the "US State Department’s Future of Iraq Project’s Oil and Energy Working Group." Chevron and Exxon have been flying executives to Iraq regulary to help ensure the PSA's allow them access. They've already signed Memoranda of Understanding (MOU's) to help ensure their access to Iraq's oil.

This isn't making everyone happy, though. As oil analyst Greg Muttitt put it, if current plans are approved, Iraqi’s will "lose control of more than 85 percent of their oil resources to foreign multinationals." As one Iraqi refinery spokesman, Abdul Faisal Jaleel, put it "we reject foreign investment. We want to keep our own oil revenues and use them to develop our country with our own hands."

Somehow, though, I think those PSA's are going to get signed, and Exxon, Chevron, BP et al will get their access - which was our objective from the beginning.

So to reword your statement above - "if it was about the oil, we'd have the PSA's." We shall see.

[shropshire 0]

It's no simply about oil.. it's also about another 3 letter word - ego.

What it's certainly NOT about is making the world safer... because, clearly the world is a lot more dangerous now than it was a few years ago - And that can be attributed to the idots in power.

.

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[wmw999 2,589]

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It's no simply about oil.. it's also about another 3 letter word - ego

Now that's a nugget if I ever heard one

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[StreetScooby 5]

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If you are unable to comprehend that it is in the best interests of the USA to have world oil prices denominated in $US, then there's little point in having this discussion. Seems that the "student" learned better.

This is the best you can do? By continuing to say kallend knows more than StreetScooby, and kallen won't share it? You're as bad as Richard Nixon. All of your arguments are negative arguments. Clearly, it's the best you can do.

You made no counter argument to my statement regarding the depth of the world's financial markets (at least in the democratic countries). I guess you're unable to do that.

We are all engines of karma

[StreetScooby 5]

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So to reword your statement above - "if it was about the oil, we'd have the PSA's." We shall see.

I don't disagree with your statement.

We are all engines of karma

[shropshire 0]

Thanks -

Some says it's all about God... but actually it's about the Profit [sic]

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[StreetScooby 5]

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but actually it's about the Profit [sic]

We are a capitalistic society, in case you haven't noticed. It's why we have the standard of living that we do.

We are all engines of karma

[shropshire 0]

<> - not all of us!!.. Take a look around some of the 'other' boughs in your town.... and in shop door ways...

It's great that we're making the lives of people from other countries comfortable, whilst ignoring the needy in our own.... Glad to see our tax £/$/€/¥ etc... working so hard for our fellow citizens.

.

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[StreetScooby 5]

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not all of us!!.. Take a look around some of the 'other' boughs in your town.... and in shop door ways...

For this thread, your reply is a bit off topic. While worthy of disucssion, this particular thread is proving difficult enough to make progress in without introducing your observation for discussion in this thread.

We are all engines of karma

[Zipp0 1]

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How about this for an argument; if it was not about the oil, Bush wouldn't have just said that it was.

The point about oil isn't what the going wholesale price is going to be at any given time, but rather who gets to be the middle-men (read profit makers) and who gets to control the oil in such an arrangement. Under Saddam, the Iraqi oil system was entirely nationalized. Part of what was dictated to the Iraqis by the Paul Bremer provisional authority was a Saudi-style arrangement whereby the oilfields themselves remained Iraqi, but only under what were called "production sharing agreements" where everything was to be run by international oil companies (all the big names you've heard of) who all get to take a fat cut of the profits that used to stay with Iraq and their business partners. For those of you who never understood why Russia in particular, and also China, seemed to be so unthrilled with our invasion, it has a lot to do with the above.

This doesn't only extend to oil, which happens to be the biggest chunk of booty being looted by Bush and friends, but to virtually all Iraqi industries. The port facilities in Um Qasr initially went to a British corporation (at least until it was re-no-bidded to another corporate supporter of Bush), and some smaller bits and pieces went to some of our less involved coalition partners (part of their payoff for being amongst the "willing"). Of course, these new custodians of Iraqi wealth insisted on doing so to line their own pockets, which led to US-style "cost cutting" firings across the country which further added to the numbers of pissed-off Iraqis with nothing better to do than to learn the ways of the IED. I don't mean to blaspheme by suggesting that our being greedy bastards has anything to do with our current suffering, but all of these Iraqis trying to kill us once had jobs under Saddam whether you like hearing that or not.

Bush himself has repeatedly said that one of our main goals in the rebuilding of Iraq was to turn it into a "free-market" economy, which pretty much means corporations calling all the shots. If you don't believe this, look up CPA order #39. In violation of international and US law, it required the following: full privatization of all that which used to be owned/ran by the Iraqi government, 100% foreign ownership of virtually everything aside from the underlying mineral rights of Iraqi oil, that none of the profits made by these foreign corporations could be taxed (ie. at all shared with Iraq), AND that this arrangement would last for forty years unless these corporations decided to "renew" their interests. If you add it all together, it is nothing other than neo-colonial pillaging for the benefit of rich foreign corporations (mostly US supporters of Bush). Is this at all moral? Why does Bush think we have the right to do this?

To insist that we have to own the underlying oil for this to be anything about oil is laughably fallacious, as was calling another poster a student. To say "you're just a student" commits the logical fallacy of ad hominem circumstantial, which means to claim that a certain argument is either valid or not valid based upon who advances the argument. The validity of any argument entirely rests upon the premises and construction found within said argument, never who makes it. If only Bush had been a better student of Islam, Iraq, the limitations of military might, or really almost anything for that matter, we might not be so shit out of luck right now.

I was also amused (thanks Scoob) by your protest about another poster referring to something as nefarious as "data" to support his point of view. Do all the right-wing supermen around here get so upset when a non neo con shows up to the conversation with some factynite? Or am I too not in the real world?

Why is it that when someone takes the time to write such a thoughtful, concise post, nobody seems to respond. Was it hard to argue with? Seems to me, it was. Nice post.

--------------------------
Chuck Norris doesn't do push-ups, he pushes the Earth down.

[StreetScooby 5]

I did respond in detail. See above.

We are all engines of karma

[jcd11235 0]

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"You're still a student" is what you wrote to jcd in an attempt to dismiss his views

Your analysis is simplistic.

He is a student. Read his profile.

Your replies are simplistic, and there is no analysis required to reach that conclusion.

kallend, I keep expecting more from you, and clearly that's my issue. Guess my expectations are too high.

Yes, I am a student. That does not, however, make my argument any less legitimate. As Kallend pointed out, respected economists share viewpoint similar to mine.

If you want to try to refute my argument, please use facts, and not try to discredit me because I am in school. Remember, just because one is no longer in school doesn't imply he already knows everything.

Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

[StreetScooby 5]

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please use facts,

That's the issue here. Just because someone writes an article saying something doesn't make it a fact.

Saying that we're striving for an oil-based currency is not much different than saying we should have a gold-based currency. It's simply not the case. The Euro-based oil trading system argument is crock. We have a thriving FX (foreign exchange) market on this planet. It doesn't matter what currency you trade things in.

As I have elaborated in prior posts to this thread, the issue being discussed here involves the free flow of oil in a free market economy. America's standard of living relies upon that.

We are all engines of karma

[jcd11235 0]

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please use facts,

That's the issue here. Just because someone writes an article saying something doesn't make it a fact.

Saying that we're striving for an oil-based currency is not much different than saying we should have a gold-based currency. It's simply not the case. The Euro-based oil trading system argument is crock. We have a thriving FX (foreign exchange) market on this planet. It doesn't matter what currency you trade things in.

You don't seem to grasp the fact that a backed currency will have more demand than an unbacked currency. While backing the dollar with gold would be nice, the best we do right now is back it with oil. We use our military and political strength to make sure that oil is traded in dollars.

But don't take my word for it. Here is a Republican's thoughts on the subject, offered more recently, since you felt a two year old article was "old."

Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

[SkyDekker 1,465]

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We have a thriving FX (foreign exchange) market on this planet.

And when countries don't need US $ anymore to buy oil, the FX market gets flooded with them. What do you think happens to the value of the currency when that happens?

[akarunway 1]

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How about this for an argument; if it was not about the oil, Bush wouldn't have just said that it was.

It's not about the oil, as it sits in the ground. The issue is the free flow of oil, in a free market. Our nation's standard of living depends greatly on that. If we wanted to flat out own the oil, we could.

Quote

The point about oil isn't what the going wholesale price is going to be at any given time, but rather who gets to be the middle-men (read profit makers) and who gets to control the oil in such an arrangement.

You are discounting the free market system that is well established in the upstream area. Not only do middle men make profit, everyone in the chain makes profit. They have to. Otherwise, they couldn't run their business and hope to feed their kids.

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who all get to take a fat cut of the profits

Do you know how capital intensive the oil business is? Upstream costs are huge, as are downstream costs. Refining margins (downstream) are single digits, thanks in part to our Congress. Upstream processing takes a decade or more to bring a newly discovered field on line.

So, how are you defining profits? It's not revenue.

Quote

Of course, these new custodians of Iraqi wealth insisted on doing so to line their own pockets,

So, do you expect these people to give it away?

You expect some Iraqi to walk out of the wood work and run a port facility so that it operates continuosly?

Quote

To insist that we have to own the underlying oil for this to be anything about oil is laughably fallacious, as was calling another poster a student.

As I pointed out to kallend, the other poster was a student according to his profile at the time I read it.

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I was also amused (thanks Scoob) by your protest about another poster referring to something as nefarious as "data" to support his point of view. Do all the right-wing supermen around here get so upset when a non neo con shows up to the conversation with some factynite? Or am I too not in the real world?

The data presented by kallend have already been discounted elsewhere by financial instutions that know much more about the markets than I do.

To throw random data around is just that, throwing random data around. I chose not to take that data seriously because it's already been debunked.

IMF approves loan for Iraq; let the oil drilling begin
By Joshua Frank
Online Journal Contributing Writer


Dec 28, 2005, 00:50



The International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a $685 million loan for Iraq on December 24. Now the country's war torn economy will be fully integrated into the global economy -- indefinitely. The reconstruction of Iraq will soon be open to even more industrialized nations and interests.

Iraq will not be sovereign or independent in the near future, even if President Bush says so. The country's financial future will instead be dictated by a new colossal economic occupation, complete with ground forces, tanks, foreign military bases and the like -- all thanks to the United States, Britain and the IMF.

The new loans will soon be the focus of Iraq's future "economic stability." Of course, the desire to capitalize on war's misfortunes is at the heart of this occupation, as well as the IMF's gracious assistance. This is undoubtedly what the Bush administration and their allies have wished for all along.

"This arrangement will underpin economic stability and help lay the foundation for an open and prosperous economy in Iraq," Treasury Secretary John Snow announced shortly after the loan was approved. Translation: Iraq will soon be open for business.

Now the IMF will be able to dictate how best Iraq can pay back its ever-increasing debt, putting its recovery in the hands of others, while the US reaps the benefits. If it's to pump millions more barrels of oil every year, Iraq will be forced to do it. And, in fact, increased oil production is at the heart of the IMF's plan for Iraq.

In a statement released last week by the IMF, the institution reported that Iraq's new government planned to allocate resources next year to expanding oil production as part of a broad economic scheme put forward by the IMF, with the hope of putting Iraq's economy on an upward trajectory. In other words, Iraq will be forced to start drilling for more oil.

And of course democracy will never be truly attainable or even really wished for by the IMF and its wealthy investors. The country will just become another playing ground for imperial endeavors and capitalist greed. So much for independence, for no country is truly free and democratic when placed under the boot of the industrialized world. Markets consistently undermine democracy when motivated by self-interests, and Iraqi citizens are not likely to benefit in any real terms under the IMF's new loan package, which will be divvied out over the next 15 months.

Don't believe for a minute that Iraq will be able to shake off globalism's ravenous greed anytime soon -- even if US troops are redeployed. Capitalism's tentacles are now fully attached to Babylon, as if they weren't already, and the oil will be flowing shortly. Even if US troops are redeployed, or god forbid, brought home, the occupation of Iraq will nonetheless continue.

Imposing economic guidelines by the use of force may now be globalization's new motto. Iraqis have had no say in whether or not they wanted to be invaded, occupied, or forced to succumb to the IMF's every whim.

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

[WeakMindedFool 0]

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the free flow of oil in a free market economy. America's standard of living relies upon that.

You're absolutely right! We are in a single point failure situation if there ever was one. (The Spice Must Flow) I think the problem I'm having with your argument is that you see it as a justification for any atrocity we choose to inflict...I don't. The current powerstructure demands the oil, and the profits it creates, and is conscerned primarily with where those profits go. Short sighted but profitable. Where we need to be focused is getting ourselves out of the reliance on petroleum. It would take significant unpopular measures to change our society. One's that would negetively impact bussiness and standard of living(gotta get rid of that SUV, maybe even raise jump ticket prices)...in the short term. I think it's a better solution then conquest, it also has a better chance of working. The problems with petroleum are not just economic or political but probably most importantly ecological. So...what are we going to do?

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.
-Eric Hoffer -
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[billvon 3,120]

>the issue being discussed here involves the free flow of oil in a free
>market economy. America's standard of living relies upon that.

Well, as much as it relied upon slavery or the horse-and-carriage. We were smart enough to move away from those solutions - hopefully we will be smart enough to move away from oil as well.

[Pubwoof 0]

I'm glad that you finally responded, even if you never really answered any of the points I made. Just to get this part out of the way, why did you feel a need to mention that jcd was a student? If your reason in doing so was to imply that his argument is less true/valid, then you are straight up guilty of logical fallacy as I pointed out in my earlier post. If this wasn't your intent, then you're just wasting pixels, in which case you should really stop doing that.

In regards to your bleeding-heart concern for the starving children of oil company executives, I must say, I am deeply touched. Maybe we should have a telethon for these poor bastards since it's just a crying shame that their daddys' record quarterly profits (profits meaning what's leftover after costs are subtracted from revenues) since Q3 or Q4 (depending if we're talking calendar year or fiscal year) of '05 are only in the several billions of dollars and not into the trillions.

So, I argue that #39 is morally wrong because it takes from the poor and gives to rich profit-takers, and you respond by telling me that profits are not revenue? Believe me, had I meant to say revenue, I would have said revenue.

I presume all that condescending bullshit about upstream and downstream costs was meant to imply that these 100% foreign corporations have actually built the Iraqi oil industry. Unfortunately, if this is to be a fact-based discussion, then it pains me to point out that this isn't actually the case. The corporate world finds itself in ownership of Iraqi industry not because they bought it or even leased it for a while, but because it was given to them by the Bush administration.

I'll ask you again. Is it moral for us to rewrite the rules so that all the money ends up in the hands of outside corporations who have done nothing to earn it? If it is moral, what did the Iraqi people do to deserve the reality that they are verboten from having any substantial ownership in the industries that generate profits from their fellow citizens? Was it because they failed to welcome us as liberators as prophesied by the idiot star chamber running our government?

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So, do you expect these people to give it away?

Exactly. That's what is so wrong about #39. The Iraqis just don't agree that they should just give it away.

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I chose not to take that data seriously because it's already been debunked.

First of all, I didn't see you debunking anything. You just asserted that it was debunked. Disregarding facts because they don't fit into your pre-conceived notions is a fool's errand. The word for it is truthiness. If these financial institutions know more about the market than you do, how do you know enough to conclude that they've debunked anything. Believing things you don't understand is called superstition. Wisdom dictates that conclusions should flow from the facts, not the other way around. You're entitled to your own opinion, not your own facts (especially if you don't get it).

The glass isn't always half-full OR half-empty. Sometimes, the glass is just too damn big.

[idrankwhat 0]

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As StreetScooby indicated, the assertion that "it is about oil" implies that the US would own the oil, operate the wells, collect the revenue. I don't know of any countries where that is the case. So, in that sense, it is definitely not about the oil.

In the narrow definition posted above, no. Do you want me to send you Cheney's 2001 map of how the oil fields were going to be split up? Seriously. It's one of the few documents that made it out of the energy task force meeting.