A tale of two pipelines
By
Bill Cecil
Published Jun 10, 2005 11:29 PM
President George W. Bush calls it a
“monumental achievement.”
The Wall Street Journal says
it’s “the project of the century.”
The State Department
hails it as a “magnificent achievement of engineering and international
cooperation.”
The object of their praise: the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan
Pipeline or BTC, which began operating May 25.
The thousand-mile-long, $4
billion project will bring 1 million barrels of oil a day from
Azerbaijan’s Caspian Sea oil fields across Georgia to the Mediterranean
port of Ceyhan in Turkey.
The opening ceremony was attended by British
Petroleum Chief Executive Officer John Browne, U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel
Bodman, and Presidents Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, Michel Saakashvili of
Georgia, Ahmet Necdet Sezer of Turkey and Nursultan Nazarbaev of Kazahkstan.
Azerbaijan, Georgia and Kazakhstan are all former republics of the Soviet
Union.
Bodman read a letter from Bush that said: “The United States
has consistently supported BTC because we believe in the project’s ability
to bolster global energy security, strengthen participating countries’
energy diversity, enhance regional cooperation and expand international
investment opportunities. We look forward to working closely with the people of
Azerbaijan to advance prosperity, justice, and peace.”
The Wall
Street Journal praised the pipeline for “providing an alternative to
Middle East oil.” The biggest stake in BTC belongs to British Petroleum,
the world’s biggest oil company. The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan holds
25 percent. Turkey’s State Oil Company holds 7 percent. U.S. firms Unocal
and Hess have 9 percent each.
Unocal was recently acquired by oil giant
ChevronTexaco, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s old employer.
Citigroup is among the underwriters of the project.
BP is the biggest
company in Britain. But much of its capital comes from the United States. The
Bush family and Karl Rove are minor stockholders. Major ones include Morgan
Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America, Fidelity Management and a Boston-based
hedge fund called State Street Corporation.
BP is the lead company in
Bush’s plan to drill in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.
ExxonMobil, the biggest U.S. oil firm, is not directly involved in BTC.
But it may use BTC to transport the output of its oil fields in
Kazakhstan.
Imperialist monopolies restrict
supply
Are “energy diversity” and “regional
cooperation” really priorities in the White House and in oil company
boardrooms?
The history of the energy industry is a history of
conspiracies to rig prices by restricting supply. That’s what monopoly is
all about.
That was true when Rockefeller Standard Oil agents dynamited
competitors’ refineries in the 1870s Pennsylvania oil wars. It’s
true in the oil wars in the Middle East today.
In the 1980s, Western
Europe tried to diversify its energy supply by buying natural gas from the
Soviet Union. The result was a stupendous feat of engineering called
“Urengoi 6,” a 3,600-mile pipeline across Eurasia. The Wall Street
Journal called it “the largest commercial transaction ever between East
and West.”
How did Washington react to this attempt at peaceful
cooperation in the field of energy? The Reagan-Bush regime worked night and day
to block the project.
Washington imposed sanctions on companies working
on the pipeline. According to some accounts, the CIA tried to destroy it by
sabotage. Former U.S. Air Force Secretary Thomas Reed and Reaganite Peter
Schweitzer bragged about this in their respective books “At the
Abyss” and “Victory.”
In spite of Reagan’s
efforts, some 120,000 Soviet and Eastern European workers completed the
pipeline. But the cost was many times higher than projected.
There are
clear differences between BTC and Urengoi 6. The Soviet state no longer exists.
The new pipeline’s revenues will not help provide the free health care,
housing and higher education the Soviet people once enjoyed. The money will not
go to aid struggling countries like Nicaragua, Vietnam, Cuba or Angola, or to
help freedom fighters in southern Africa or Palestine or El Salvador.
The
revenues will go into the pockets of Western bankers and investors. And, unlike
Urengoi 6, BTC will not loosen the U.S. and British oil monopolies’ grip
on Western Europe’s economy. It will strengthen that grip.
Next:
Cold War ends, Oil Wars continue
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