Feb 28 2013
Thursday, Feb 28, 2013
By Hassan Hafidh
Special to DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
AMMAN--Oil-rich Iraq has started technical work on a planned $18 billion oil-export pipeline from Basra in southern Iraq to the Jordanian port of Aqaba on the Red Sea, bypassing the Strait of Hormuz, senior Iraqi oil officials said Thursday.
If realized, the pipeline would deliver a significant export outlet for Iraq's growing crude-oil production, which rose by 15% last year as the country focused on rejuvenating its energy sector. It could also provide an alternative to seaborne transport of oil through the Strait of Hormuz after Iranian officials threatened last year that they could block the potential chokepoint if the West didn't ease pressure on the country over its nuclear program.
Iraq has signed some 11 post-war oil deals, three gas agreements, and four oil and gas exploration contracts with international energy companies.
The first phase of the 1,680-kilometer oil pipeline will export some 1 million barrels a day from Basra, which pumps around 2.3 million barrels a day, or about 70% of Iraq's total oil production, Basra Governor Khalid Abdul Samad Khalaf said at an Iraqi conference in Amman.
The second phase will export a further 1.25 million barrels a day to the Syrian Banias port in the Mediterranean, said Jamal Faleh Hassan, head of designs section at the State Company for Oil Projects, an affiliate of the Iraqi oil ministry.
"Our priority now is to set up the part of the pipeline which goes to Aqaba in Jordan, while the part to Syria has been delayed because of the [security] situation there," he said.
Pipeline developers from the U.S., Canada, Germany, Japan and China attended the Amman conference, organizers said.
The Iraqi oil ministry has already awarded Canadian consultant SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. (SNC.T) a contract worth between $13 million and $14 million to carry out front-end engineering designs, said Mr. Hassan. The company is expected to finish the FEED work in the next three months, he said.
The 680-kilometer section of the pipeline located inside Iraq--which would extend from Basra to Haditha, northwest of Baghdad in the western Anbar province near the Jordan border--will be financed by the Iraqi government, said Sabah Abdul Kadhim al-Saedi, deputy head of the contracts office at the Iraqi oil ministry.
The Iraqi and Jordanian governments will choose investors to fund, build and operate the remaining 1,000 kilometers inside Jordan.
A gas pipeline will be built parallel to the oil pipeline to supply gas to power stations that will be constructed along the route. Some three pumping stations and three power stations will be built in Iraq to operate the pipeline. In the Jordan section, there will also be three pumping stations, Mr. Hassan said.
The project will also build storage facilities near Basra and Haditha with a total capacity of 28 million barrels, he said.
The gas-pipeline section inside Iraq will have a transport capacity of 350 million cubic feet a day to feed power stations operating the pipeline in Iraq.
The Jordan section will handle some 258 million cubic feet a day. About 100 million cubic feet a day of that gas will go to Jordan for domestic use while the remainder will be used to operate the pipeline inside Jordan.
Out of the 1 million barrels a day of oil exports, about 150,000 barrels a day will go to Jordan for domestic use as the Jordanian government has requested, Mr. Hassan said.
Jordan is dependent on imported oil and gas, as 96% of its needs come from other markets. The pipeline, if built, could easily meet all of Jordan's needs.
Last year, the Paris-based International Energy Agency estimated that Iraq would be able to pump up to 6.1 million barrels a day in 2020 and 8.3 million barrels a day in 2035. Iraq said it would be able to reach 8 million to 9 million barrels a day in 2020.
The bulk of Iraqi crude oil exports are handled by the southern oil terminals in the Gulf, where Iraq is pumping between 2.1 million and 2.2 million barrels a day while 350,000 to 400,000 barrels a day are handled by the Iraq-Turkey pipeline to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.
Write to Hassan Hafidh at hassan.hafidh@dowjones.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
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Protesters outside the South Oil Company headquarters in Basra. (ALI ABU IRAQ/Iraq Oil Report)
By Ali Abu Iraq and Staff of Iraq Oil Report
Published February 28, 2013 BASRA - As Iraqi oil workers continue to protest in Basra, their persistence and growing numbers have helped win support from high-profile Iraqi leaders.
Up to 700 employees are estimated to have thronged at the gates of the state-run South Oil Company (SOC) headquarters in the latest round of demonstrations. Staff there are rallying for improved pay and contractual conditions, and threatening to stop cooperating with foreign oil companies if their demands are not met.
"There is a real push to res...
towersight Woh Iraq :Ammar al-Hakim announces initial agreement with Kurdistan alliance to resolve oil disputes ekurd.net/mismas/article…
Iran pipeline work to begin March 11: officials
The pipeline on the Iranian side has almost been completed.
By AFP Published: March 1, 2013 Islamabad has said it will pursue the gas pipeline project regardless, calling it vital towards overcoming debilitating blackouts. PHOTO: FILE
ISLAMABAD: An Iranian-Pakistani consortium will start work next week on a much delayed $7.5 billion gas pipeline from Pakistan to Iran that has aroused strong US opposition, Pakistani officials said Friday.
The date was announced after Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari held talks in Tehran with Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who urged Islamabad to press ahead with the project.
“The groundbreaking is going to be performed on March 11 on the Pakistani side of border and we hope that the presidents of the two countries will be present on the occasion,” a senior Pakistani official told AFP, requesting anonymity.
He said the ceremony would mark the start of work by an Iranian-Pakistani consortium on the 780-kilometre (485-mile) pipeline earmarked on the Pakistani side of the border, which is said to cost some $1.5 billion.
A second Pakistani official also confirmed March 11 as the start date.
The pipeline on the Iranian side has almost been completed.
But Pakistan has run into repeated difficulties over the project, in finding the money and over US opposition and the threat of possible sanctions due to Iran’s controversial nuclear activities.
The United States says it is providing Pakistan with alternative means to help overcome its crushing energy crisis and to avoid sanctions.
“It’s in their best interests to avoid any sanctionable activity, and we think that we provide and are providing… a better way to meet their energy needs,” State Department deputy acting spokesman Patrick Ventrell said Wednesday.
Islamabad has said it will pursue the gas pipeline project regardless, calling it vital towards overcoming debilitating blackouts and suffocated industry.
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Main | ‘Education, Not Racist Experimentation!’ »
Thursday
Feb282013
War Looms over U.S.-China-Iraq Battle for Oil
Thursday, February 28, 2013 at 10:35PM
The sharpening rivalry between U.S. imperialism and China threatens armed conflict across the globe. From Iraq to Africa, as profit-seeking bosses go to war over oil, gas, uranium and other natural resources, more masses of workers worldwide will be killed. Millions of others will be driven deeper into poverty by the bosses’ super-exploitation in extracting these resources. For the international working class, the only answer to these horrors is a communist revolution to destroy their source — capitalism.
Late last month, Barack Obama sent 100 U.S. troops to Niger in Western Africa to establish a drone base. Aimed allegedly at al Qaeda, the unmanned assassination tools will menace China’s growing uranium operations there. (Niger is the world’s fourth largest uranium producer.) Meanwhile, Iraqi rulers are pressuring Exxon Mobil to sell its stake in a vast oil field to a Chinese firm. Exxon has countered with deals with the Kurds in northern Iraq, a move that could unleash a civil war.
U.S. Air Force personnel in Niger belong to the Pentagon’s Africa Command. Created in 2007, AFRICOM’s main mission is to combat the Islamic terrorists who pose a real problem for U.S. and allied rulers, as shown by a February attack on a British Petroleum gas plant in Algeria. According to J. Peter Pham, a lecturer at the U.S. Army War College, AFRICOM’s second mission is “protecting access to...strategic resources which Africa has in abundance” and “ensuring that no other interested third parties, including China, India, Japan, and Russia, obtain monopolies or preferential treatment” (World Defense Review, 10/2/08).
While Obama’s Niger move helps France’s efforts to stave off al Qaeda and recolonize neighboring Mali (see box), it also serves the U.S. strategy to dominate China’s energy sources. As the Washington Post noted, “The drones will be based at first in the capital, Niamey. But military officials eventually want to move them north to the city of Agadez” (2/22/13). It’s no coincidence that the Sonima uranium mine, where China is the biggest shareholder, lies in the Agadez region.
Exxon Confronts Iraq’s Premier over Oil
An even hotter U.S.-China confrontation is brewing in Iraq. For two years, Exxon Mobil has battled Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki — who is pro-China and a favorite of Iran — over oil profits. Out of the U.S.-led slaughter of more than a million Iraqis, Exxon won the right to exploit the West Qurna-1 oilfield, Iraq’s biggest. But because U.S. rulers are divided and strapped for cash, they were unable to impose control with an effective military occupation.
Seizing on U.S. rulers’ weaknesses, Maliki put the screws on Exxon, which now gets less than two dollars per barrel as a service fee. The Iraqi bosses, the legal owners of the crude, then sell the oil for forty times Exxon’s fee.
Exxon’s temporary possession of the oil, and its ability to dictate West Qurna-1’s pumping rate, played to the advantage of U.S. capitalism. But Exxon requires profits as well as access. It wanted the same deal with Maliki that it made with the Kurds. In 2011, the U.S. empire struck back.
Exxon began cutting a more lucrative oil-drilling deal with Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government. Maliki went ballistic, demanding that Exxon sell its West Qurna stake and signaling that he would “favor bids by China National Petroleum Company and [Russian] Lukoil” (Reuters, 12/20/12).
Condoleezza Rice Threatens Maliki with Saddam’s Fate
To warn Maliki that he could end up like Saddam Hussein, Exxon hired three of the bloodiest mass murderers from the second Iraq war as advisors. They are ex-Secretary of State (and Chevron director) Condoleezza Rice, ex-national security advisor Stephen Hadley, and James Jeffrey, the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq (National Journal, 2/15/13). All hail from the George H.W. Bush regime, further proof that the first Gulf War was also waged for oil. They are acting without reproach from either Obama or the liberal media, a clear sign of approval from the dominant finance capital wing of U.S. capitalists that controls Exxon.
To make the message even clearer, Exxon-allied bosses formed the United States-Kurdistan Business Council. In 2012, the group made ex-Marine commandant and Obama advisor General James Jones its CEO. Jones told the Iraq Oil Report, “It’s not a good sign for the global community when companies like Exxon and Chevron both kind of say, ‘It’s easier to do business in Kurdistan than it is with Baghdad.’ That has a chilling effect, you know, globally. And I think Baghdad’s gonna have to learn from that” (12/26/12).
The harsh lesson Jones and his Exxon handlers want to teach Maliki would amount to a fourth round of genocide against Iraqi workers. First came George H.W. Bush’s massive 1991 invasion to retake Kuwaiti oil, protect U.S. access to Saudi resources and put both Iraq and Iran on notice. Next came Clinton’s no-fly operation over Iraq’s skies, which enforced sanctions on food and medicine and wiped out at least a million Iraqis, including 500,000 children. In 2003, George W. Bush unleashed his “shock and awe” fiasco, which used a limited number of troops to kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. But none of these imperialist assaults permanently subjugated Iraq, an essential goal for U.S. rulers. The solution? U.S. bosses now envision an Iraqi civil war to confront China by local proxy:
If Exxon Mobil starts drilling operations [in Kurdistan], Baghdad will have no option but to try and stop them,” the Middle East Economic Digest quoted a source in [Kurd capital] Erbil as saying. “But they’ll have the KRG [Kurdish Regional Government] and the Peshmerga behind them.” The Peshmerga, which means “those who face death,” are the Kurds’ battle-seasoned fighters who for decades fought a separatist war against Baghdad until Saddam Hussein was toppled.... Both sides have heavily armed forces confronting each other along Kurdistan’s southern border. Oil could well be the spark to ignite a war. (UPI, 2/15/13)
The Final Conflict: International Working Class vs. World’s Imperialists
The international working class has no stake in any of these ruling-class rivalries. The bosses use workers from northern Africa, Iraq and the U.S., as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan, as cannon fodder in their battle over energy resources. Masses of workers need to understand that capitalism is the source of their misery — and that it must be and can be destroyed. That is the goal of the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party. We fight for the overthrow of the profit system, the cause of mass unemployment, racism, sexism, poverty and imperialist wars. We need a mass party to get there. We need you to join us and help lead this revolution for a society run by our class, for our class interests.
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