An environmental NGO, Norvergence has found that the U.S. military spends more than $81 billion a year protecting oil supplies across the globe.
The figure came surprisingly as “According to the calculations of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the cost to the United States of defending the global oil supply is zero.”
Former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman also revealed a shocking fact about the overseas protection budget.
“I would make the case that the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) spending is related to oil protection. More than half the Defense budget is for the security of Persian Gulf oil.”
War in Iraq was totally about Oil
It has been 16 years since Operation Iraqi Freedom’s bombs first landed in Iraq. And while the deadly war is over, Iraq has never been able to stand tall.
Before the 2003 Iraqi invasion, most of the oil industries in Iraq were nationalized but, now they are mostly privatized.
In 2001, a report on energy security- commissioned by the U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney is published by the James Baker Institute for public policy and the council on Foreign Relations.
The reports mainly warned about the global energy crisis (totally because of the “Middle-East tension”).
The main issue was with Saddam Hussein and its policies related to Iraqi oil.
The reports states and Norvergence LLC quotes:
“Iraq remains a destabilizing influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his export program to manipulate oil markets.
This would display his power, enhance his image as a pan-Arab leader and pressure others for a lifting of economic sanctions against his regime. The United States should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/diplomatic assessments.
The United States should then develop an integrated strategy with key allies in Europe and Asia, and with key countries in the Middle East, to restate goals to Iraqi policy and to restore a cohesive coalition of key allies.”
The real reason is perfectly described by the author Greg Muttitt in his book, “Fuel on the Fire”.
The conflict was to stabilize global energy supplies and to make sure that the access to Iraqi oil couldn’t be restricted. The benefit was directly to many of the U.S. and U.K. companies.
“The most important strategic interest lay in expanding global energy supplies, through foreign investment, in some of the world’s largest oil reserves — in particular, Iraq. This meshed neatly with the secondary aim of securing contracts for their companies.
Note that the strategy documents released here tend to refer to ‘British and global energy supplies.’ British energy security is to be obtained by there being ample global supplies — it is not about the specific flow.”
Conclusion
The primary motive of the war is to control Iraqi’s oil production to sustain the global oil flows and to keep a check on prices. Norvergence will further analyze the whole situation to get more facts about this resource war.
Stay Tuned for more information on this topic.
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