Bullypulpit
Senior Member
no1tovote4 said:I have seen no such seizing of oil. Where exactly has that happened? The context must be put in place... Show me evidence of a seizure of oil! Not SuperConspiracy Central either. Give me real evidence of that.
The books of the Coalition Provisional Authority under Proconsul Bremmer have been closed and sealed. The oil sold during that time was estimated to be between $10 billion and $12 billion in value, but nobody is certain as to exactly how much as the oil was unmetered. Seizure? No. Theft? Likely.
As for oil being the justification for the invasion and occupation of Iraq...Oil was the driving force, but not in the way you might think. Everything else was, incidentaly, gravy, so to speak. Originally, the Iraqi oil-fields were to have been sold off piecemeal to any who could bid. The goal here was to have these produces pumping oil as fast as they could in order to drive down oil prices and break the back of OPEC once and for all. THis plan was scotched by US oil interests which did not want ot be beggared by declining oil prices. As a result we have oil at between $70 and $75 per barrel. This has given OPEC members, particularly Saudi Arabia enough of a cash cushion to pump oil all out for more than a year, driving down prices to the point where anyone trying to break OPEC's back will be driven into the ground and bankrupted.
There are also the geopolitical issues of oil production in Russia and consumption in China. Control of Iraq's oil fields can be used to leverage Russian oil production and serve as a barrier to Chinese oil consumption and economic growth.
Control of the oil, rather than the oil itself was, and remains, the reason for the continued US presence in Iraq.