I took my translation - "the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time" - from the indefatigable Professor Juan Cole's website where it has been for several weeks.
But it seems to be mainly thanks to the Guardian giving it prominence that the New York Times, which was one of the first papers to misquote Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, came out on Sunday with a defensive piece attempting to justify its reporter's original "wiped off the map" translation. (By the way, for Farsi speakers the original version is available here.)
Joining the "off the map" crowd is David Aaronovitch, a columnist on the Times (of London), who attacked my analysis yesterday. I won't waste time on him since his knowledge of Farsi is as minimal as that of his Latin. The poor man thinks the plural of casus belli is casi belli, unaware that casus is fourth declension with the plural casus (long u).
Friday, November 27, 2009
Dabhol power project
November 1993: The Indian government gives approval for Enron's Dabhol power plant, located near Bombay on the west coast of India. Enron has invested $3 billion, the largest single foreign investment in India's history. Enron owns 65 percent of Dabhol. This liquefied natural gas powered plant is supposed to provide one-fifth of India's energy needs by 1997 [Asia Times, 1/81/01, Indian Express, 2/27/00] It is the largest gas-fired power plant in the world. Earlier in the year, the World Bank concludes that the plant is "not economically viable" and refuses to invest in it. [New York Times, 3/20/01] Enron apparently tries to make the plant financially viable by investing in gas fields in nearby Uzbekistan (see June 24, 1996), but it cannot get that gas to Dabhol without a gas pipeline through Afghanistan (see June 24, 1996 and June 1998 (B)). Construction of the plant is abandoned just before completion (see June 2001 (J)).
June 24, 1996: Uzbekistan signs a deal with Enron "that could lead to joint development of the Central Asian nation's potentially rich natural gas fields." [Houston Chronicle, 6/25/96] The $1.3 billion venture teams Enron with the state companies of Russian and Uzbekistan. [Houston Chronicle, 6/30/96] On July 8, 1996, the US government agrees to give $400 million to help Enron and an Uzbeki state company develop these natural gas fields. [Oil and Gas Journal, 7/8/96] However, the deal is later canceled when it becomes apparent a gas pipeline will not be built across Afghanistan, and there is no easy way to get the gas out of the region (see November 1993 and June 1998 (B)).
June 1998 (B): Enron's agreement to develop natural gas with the government of Uzbekistan is not renewed (see June 24, 1996). Enron closes its office there. The reason for the "failure of Enron's flagship project" is an inability to get the natural gas out of the region. Uzbekistan's production is "well below capacity" and only 10 percent of its production is being exported, all to other countries in the region. The hope was to use a pipeline through Afghanistan, but "Uzbekistan is extremely concerned at the growing strength of the Taliban and its potential impact on stability in Uzbekistan, making any future cooperation on a pipeline project which benefits the Taliban unlikely." A $12 billion pipeline through China is being considered as one solution, but that wouldn't be completed until the end of the next decade at the earliest. [Alexander's Gas and Oil Connections, 10/12/98]
June 2001 (J): Enron's power plant in Dabhol, India, is shut down. The failure of the $3 billion plant, Enron's largest investment, contributes to Enron's bankruptcy later in the year (see December 2, 2001). Earlier in the year, India stopped paying its bill for the energy from the plant, because energy from the plant cost three times the usual rates. [New York Times, 3/20/01] Enron had hoped to feed the plant with cheap Central Asian gas, but this hope was dashed when a gas pipeline through Afghanistan was not completed (see June 1998 (B)). The larger part of the plant is still only 90 percent complete when construction stops at about this time. [New York Times, 3/20/01] It is known that Vice President Cheney lobbies the leader of India's main opposition party about the plant this month. [New York Times, 2/21/02] A lawsuit is in motion to get additional government documents released that could reveal what else the US did to support this plant (see October 17, 2002 and February 7, 2003 (B)). Enron may eventually restart the plant (see October 18, 2002).
Central Asian oil, Enron and the Afghanistan pipelines. For a separate page of these entries only, click here.
Dabhol Power Company
http://www.atimes.com/reports/CA13Ai01.html#top6
BRAZIL, BOLIVIA, IRAN
the first Iranian leader to visit Brazil since pro-U.S. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi came in 1965
Iran's leader got a welcoming bear hug from the Brazilian president, who urged Western nations to drop threats of punishment over the Iranian nuclear program and instead negotiate a fair solution.
Iran's leader got a welcoming bear hug from the Brazilian president, who urged Western nations to drop threats of punishment over the Iranian nuclear program and instead negotiate a fair solution.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who also called for diplomacy to push for peace in the Middle East and ease tensions between Iran, the U.S. and other nations, again defended Iran's right to have a peaceful nuclear program.
Ahmadinejad's visit with Silva was condemned by U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat who is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. He said Silva made a "serious error" in meeting with the Iranian leader.
The session was significant because Silva is a center-leftist viewed by Washington as a counterweight to more strident leftists in South America, such as the leaders of Bolivia and Venezuela who have been firm supporters of Iran.
In addition to having a private lunch with Bolivian President Evo Morales, he was scheduled to inaugurate a hospital and, via video conference, open two milk-processing plants that Iran donated to the poor country.Iran has also donated equipment for a state-run TV station, sold Bolivia 700 tractors made in Venezuela and provided financing for two state-run cement plants. In addition, Iran approved a $280 million low-interest loan for Bolivia that Morales can use as he sees fit,Sin Patron: Stories From Argentina’s Worker-Run Factories
The book includes a number of illuminating interviews and chapters by Lavaca, a journalism collective based in Buenos Aires that continues to produce some of the best analysis and stories on social movements in the country
The timing couldn’t be better for the release of this book in English. Readers in the US seeking creative solutions to the current economic crisis may find some helpful suggestions in Sin Patron.
Workers in Argentina during that country’s crash figured out they needed to go beyond the law to survive. “For workers in Argentina there is no law. It only exists for the powerful,” said Eduardo Murua, President of the National Movement of Reclaimed Companies. “If we were stuck outside [of the factory] asking the judge to keep it open, we would get nowhere. If we were to ask politicians, we’d get even less. Only through occupation could we recover the jobs.”
key message
these failed factories and businesses should belong to the people, not the wealthy bosses who mistreated workers and then abandoned ship
Such challenges to classic ideas of private property and workplace hierarchy course through every page in Sin Patron
These examples
defy the bankrupt logic of capitalism
BRAZIL VERSUS USA
Brazilian diplomats denied Thursday that there is a crisis in relations with the U.S.,
such as Iran's nuclear ambitions and relations with post-coup Honduras.
Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said he spoke more than an hour by telephone with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
"We believe that no one should recognize Sunday's election as legitimate because we believe it is an attempt to erase the coup," Garcia said.
Amorim and Garcia cited another area of disagreement — the deal between Washington and Colombia allowing U.S. troops access to Colombian military bases.
"Having foreign bases in the region, whether from the United States, China, Russia, Iran or whoever, is not something we see as positive," Amorim said.
such as Iran's nuclear ambitions and relations with post-coup Honduras.
Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said he spoke more than an hour by telephone with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
"We believe that no one should recognize Sunday's election as legitimate because we believe it is an attempt to erase the coup," Garcia said.
Amorim and Garcia cited another area of disagreement — the deal between Washington and Colombia allowing U.S. troops access to Colombian military bases.
"Having foreign bases in the region, whether from the United States, China, Russia, Iran or whoever, is not something we see as positive," Amorim said.
BDS
The spirit of the Hampshire College conference on Boycott Divestment and Sanctions
a sense that the left in America can no longer seek to divorce itself from the cause of Palestinian self-determination.
and my value journalistically here is to report on the BDS movement as it touches on a few questions: 1, Are they young? 2, Are they Jewish? 3, Is it a radical movement? 4. What does it mean to power politics, the world of American foreign policy and Jewish attitudes?
You have given us 62 years of Palestinian statelessness and war against Muslims; meanwhile you cheer a black man for president here and Jim Crow and the charade of the “peace process” there.
These young Jews are completely comfortable being anti-Zionist, or pro-Palestinian, or critical of Israel, and don’t need to put the Jewish asterisk on every statement they make.
I heard an organizer speak of the statement the conference will issue, and I remembered the Port Huron statement by the SDS in– wow– 1962.
a sense that the left in America can no longer seek to divorce itself from the cause of Palestinian self-determination.
and my value journalistically here is to report on the BDS movement as it touches on a few questions: 1, Are they young? 2, Are they Jewish? 3, Is it a radical movement? 4. What does it mean to power politics, the world of American foreign policy and Jewish attitudes?
You have given us 62 years of Palestinian statelessness and war against Muslims; meanwhile you cheer a black man for president here and Jim Crow and the charade of the “peace process” there.
These young Jews are completely comfortable being anti-Zionist, or pro-Palestinian, or critical of Israel, and don’t need to put the Jewish asterisk on every statement they make.
I heard an organizer speak of the statement the conference will issue, and I remembered the Port Huron statement by the SDS in– wow– 1962.
Brazil will not recognize Honduren elections
"A coup is not acceptable as a means for political change," Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said on Thursday on the sidelines of a climate summit between Amazon basin countries and France, reported Xinhua.
Brazil has called for Zelaya's return to power. The ousted president is still holed up in the Brazilian embassy in Honduran capital Tegucigalpa.
Brazil has called for Zelaya's return to power. The ousted president is still holed up in the Brazilian embassy in Honduran capital Tegucigalpa.
DR EVIL, MINI-ME AND LEBANON
"It is the right of the Lebanese people, Army and the (Hezbollah led—ed.)Resistance to liberate the Shebaa Farms, the Kfar Shuba Hills and the northern part of the village of Ghajar as well as to defend Lebanon and its territorial waters in the face of any enemy by all available and legal means.”
So reads the Policy Declaration of the new Government of the Republic of Lebanon, issued on November 26,2009, four days after the celebration of Lebanon’s 66 years of independence from the French colonial power, achieved in 1943.
Legally, constitutionally, and politically, Lebanon’s new National Unity Government policy legitimizes, embraces, and incorporates by reference, the National Lebanese Resistance.
clipped from: www.counterpunch.com
For the US-Israel axis, the 52 words signal that Hezbollah - which since 2006 has enjoyed majority popular support - and the State of Lebanon are inseparable and indivisible with respect to defending this country from foreign interference and occupation. It affixes the governmental imprimatur for liberating Lebanese lands still occupied by Israeli forces.
According to some international lawyers, it also fulfills UN Security Council Resolution 1559 regarding disarming militias because Lebanon has in effect declared that the arms of the Hezbollah led Resistance are part of the defense of Lebanon itself and not a particular movement or political party. This Policy statement satisfies UNSCR 1701 for the same reason.
the issue of Hezbollah’s arms has been essentially settled.
Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri stressed that “Hezbollah’s arms belong to all Lebanese and their existence is linked to Israel’s withdrawal from all Lebanese territory.”
clipped from: www.counterpunch.com
“Hezbollah’s arms will remain as long as there is conflict between the Arabs and Israel. When the world tells us how the naturalization of Palestinians issue will be resolved, then we will give details on how to deal with the arms of our national resistance. They now belong to all of Lebanon.”
Hezbollah is Lebanon and Lebanon is Hezbollah.
Many people in Lebanon and the region who support Hezbollah
because they have experienced six decades of Israeli aggression and six wars funded and armed by a US Congress that puts Israel before its own country and way before any Arab country including Lebanon. They realize that 18 years of a fake ‘peace process’ has brought nothing but misery to the Palestinians and Lebanon whereas 18 years of Resistance has freed most of Israel occupied Lebanese territory.
Ehud Barak that “all of Lebanon will pay the huge price for giving Hezbollah its Government.” More than ever Lebanon’s population believes that Israel will also pay a huge price if it launches a 7th war against Lebanon or attacks Iran or Syria.
Privately, the reaction to legitimizing Hezbollah’s deterrence to Israeli aggressions is causing a strong reaction on Capitol Hill. AIPAC has another Congressional Resolution ready to condemn Lebanon for capitulating to ‘terrorism’. Hard to believe as it is, some members of Congress are actually tiring of all the Israel Lobby’s resolutions and the pressure tactics AIPAC uses to get them passed irrespective of what they say or whether they are read.
Barak warns here, here,
Press TV here,
Al Manar here,
From Al Jazeera, here,
Lebanon's prime minister-designate
Saad al-Hariri submitted a list of ministers to Michel Sleiman, the president
Shia Muslim Hezbollah,
will get two ministers in the cabinet under the deal.
"In this cabinet they will have two, but more importantly they will have a policy statement, issued by the government, which will indirectly endorse, as they say, their right to resist and to have weapons."
The group, which is designated as a terrorist organisation by Washington, is the only Lebanese faction that has openly refused to disarm since the end of the 1975-90 civil war.
It says its fighters need to keep their weapons in order to protect Lebanon from a possible attack by neighbouring Israel.
Lebanon has been without a functioning government since Hariri
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Naomi Klein And Joseph Stiglitz Discuss The Cause And Effect Of The Financial Crisis
Alan Greenspan's economic legacy is slowly but surely deteriorating from that of one created by a "Maestro", to the deranged hungover flashbacks of the most inept monetarst dilettante and plutocrat puppet in the history of fiat capitalism...the man who took the mundane task of building bubbles and converted it into rocket science so complex that only a few people at Goldman Sachs figured out how to benefit from it.
A statement written by John Grey in the Observer. Geo political shift, the era of USA is over. Free market creed has self destructed, while countries who retained control of markets have been vindicated. As far reaching as the fall of the Soviet Union
Distinction between the rhetoric and the reality. Mkt fundamentalism is dead. Those ideas are flawed.
US as corporatism, corporate welfarism under the guise of free market economics. That mixture was flawed and been shown not to work. Consequences.
Political, the way this admin has mgt this bailout, if I were at the World Bank, no loans to the country, corrupt, bail outs are non transparent, no oversite, or judicial review. We should make sure we dont pour money out to the shareholders.
The neoliberal economic revolution, driven by power, a revolt of the elite, ideology comes in when the bubble is being created. Leveling of Glass Stegall, no regul of direvatives. The ideology is useful and people believe it but then they throw the ideology out the window and want intervention. After creating a bubble they have to nationalize the debt.
Trust each other. what is written on paper does reflect reality.a crisis is a divorce between the paper and the underlying assets.
Bankruptcy. Debtor prisons, no more. Revised our bankruptcy laws. We will have a bunkruptcy law where peopl will suffer a little more.
The same banks are paying the lobbyist to fight the mortgage holders. There is law for the client, but no law for the banks.
The ownership idea is the market will fix the problem, but the mkt doesnt solve everthing'
A financial coup against the peole. the terms of the first document written by GS, why would anybody who would do that. Maybe we are seeing where power lies.
The bailout is a massive redistrubution of wealth to the financial sector. right after the bailout share prices went out. massive transfer of wealth but very little commentary about what this all means.
How did this crisis come about. No one realized how bad this was. by the way, when we gave billions to aig, we are only covering eight percent, the whole amount of paper is 600 trillion, 55 trillion dollars, gdp world wide for the whole year. what causes the panic is that nobody trusts the paper, call it what ecver you want to, your paper no longer reflects what is going on, you lack information.
Ther is a whole bunch of new mkts, which didnt exist in the nineties. 600 trillion circulating in the markets and there is onlty 55 trillion world gdp
Who had the power to create these mkts and how did they extract wealth from it.
Natual eveolutin of a property based system without regulation. two individuals make a bet about what is going to happen to a share. we stop at a dollar that one thing, but make a billion dollar bet, these are gambling mkts. you can gamble on anytghing now and not just horses. in modern america yoy study companies, we bet a trillion on bear sterns going bankrupt. the guys who says its not going bankrupt goes bankrupt and the us government comes in abails him out. No regulation.
Greeenspan created the mkts. what were the key decisions. why arent we regulationg the derivitives. these are deals between pros abnd we should trust them, they are too complex for the government. trust matters in banks, it doesnt. golden parachutes trumps reputation.
We now what a truly de regulated mkt looks like.
The decision makers were ceo's. ther has been a fundamental change in captilism, individual bear the burdens.
Modern cap is not that way, it seperates ownership and control. The guys in control are interested in max their own well being. not anyothr stakeholder, it's not just bad regulation of the banking system, its bad corportate goverance which is pervative,
Stock options encourate reporting earnigns high, you do this by bad accounting, get it off the balance sheet, enron. we tried to change that, rueban opposed it, no one wanted to be a party pooper.
what has already been thrown at the banks is a drop in the bucket, there is no end to it. the bankruptcy of countries, iceland, this is a very urgent moment.
we dont want another wall streeter to be the next treasury sec, we need Stiglitz. it is impossible to figure out where GS ends and the Fed begins, look at the figure of henry paulson he personnly took GS risk from twenty billion in 1999 to 100billion in 2005. he is bailing out his own debt.
where a the politial movements, people shoudl be angry, the government is being privatized, they are contracting out the b ailout. they want say how much the vcontract is for, the business of valuing and buying the debt and the bank itself is a carrier of this debt.
its a good moment to really angry at wall street, they are people who created this.
A statement written by John Grey in the Observer. Geo political shift, the era of USA is over. Free market creed has self destructed, while countries who retained control of markets have been vindicated. As far reaching as the fall of the Soviet Union
Distinction between the rhetoric and the reality. Mkt fundamentalism is dead. Those ideas are flawed.
US as corporatism, corporate welfarism under the guise of free market economics. That mixture was flawed and been shown not to work. Consequences.
Political, the way this admin has mgt this bailout, if I were at the World Bank, no loans to the country, corrupt, bail outs are non transparent, no oversite, or judicial review. We should make sure we dont pour money out to the shareholders.
The neoliberal economic revolution, driven by power, a revolt of the elite, ideology comes in when the bubble is being created. Leveling of Glass Stegall, no regul of direvatives. The ideology is useful and people believe it but then they throw the ideology out the window and want intervention. After creating a bubble they have to nationalize the debt.
Trust each other. what is written on paper does reflect reality.a crisis is a divorce between the paper and the underlying assets.
Bankruptcy. Debtor prisons, no more. Revised our bankruptcy laws. We will have a bunkruptcy law where peopl will suffer a little more.
The same banks are paying the lobbyist to fight the mortgage holders. There is law for the client, but no law for the banks.
The ownership idea is the market will fix the problem, but the mkt doesnt solve everthing'
A financial coup against the peole. the terms of the first document written by GS, why would anybody who would do that. Maybe we are seeing where power lies.
The bailout is a massive redistrubution of wealth to the financial sector. right after the bailout share prices went out. massive transfer of wealth but very little commentary about what this all means.
How did this crisis come about. No one realized how bad this was. by the way, when we gave billions to aig, we are only covering eight percent, the whole amount of paper is 600 trillion, 55 trillion dollars, gdp world wide for the whole year. what causes the panic is that nobody trusts the paper, call it what ecver you want to, your paper no longer reflects what is going on, you lack information.
Ther is a whole bunch of new mkts, which didnt exist in the nineties. 600 trillion circulating in the markets and there is onlty 55 trillion world gdp
Who had the power to create these mkts and how did they extract wealth from it.
Natual eveolutin of a property based system without regulation. two individuals make a bet about what is going to happen to a share. we stop at a dollar that one thing, but make a billion dollar bet, these are gambling mkts. you can gamble on anytghing now and not just horses. in modern america yoy study companies, we bet a trillion on bear sterns going bankrupt. the guys who says its not going bankrupt goes bankrupt and the us government comes in abails him out. No regulation.
Greeenspan created the mkts. what were the key decisions. why arent we regulationg the derivitives. these are deals between pros abnd we should trust them, they are too complex for the government. trust matters in banks, it doesnt. golden parachutes trumps reputation.
We now what a truly de regulated mkt looks like.
The decision makers were ceo's. ther has been a fundamental change in captilism, individual bear the burdens.
Modern cap is not that way, it seperates ownership and control. The guys in control are interested in max their own well being. not anyothr stakeholder, it's not just bad regulation of the banking system, its bad corportate goverance which is pervative,
Stock options encourate reporting earnigns high, you do this by bad accounting, get it off the balance sheet, enron. we tried to change that, rueban opposed it, no one wanted to be a party pooper.
what has already been thrown at the banks is a drop in the bucket, there is no end to it. the bankruptcy of countries, iceland, this is a very urgent moment.
we dont want another wall streeter to be the next treasury sec, we need Stiglitz. it is impossible to figure out where GS ends and the Fed begins, look at the figure of henry paulson he personnly took GS risk from twenty billion in 1999 to 100billion in 2005. he is bailing out his own debt.
where a the politial movements, people shoudl be angry, the government is being privatized, they are contracting out the b ailout. they want say how much the vcontract is for, the business of valuing and buying the debt and the bank itself is a carrier of this debt.
its a good moment to really angry at wall street, they are people who created this.
Patrick Cockburn: Britain's ignorance of Iraq is already apparent
At no time, going by their evidence, did British officials in 2003 realise that the invasion of Iraq meant revolutionary change in the region. It would mean that the Sunni Arabs, who had traditionally ruled the country, would be displaced by the Shia and the Kurds. The Sunni were unlikely to go quietly.
The fall of Saddam Hussein was also going to start a political earthquake in the Gulf if it meant, as seemed likely, that the Sunni elite went with him. The main beneficiaries were going to be the Iranians, who had, after all, spent eight years of war trying to get rid of Saddam in the 1980s. Now the Americans and the British were doing it for them.
At no time, going by their evidence, did British officials in 2003 realise that the invasion of Iraq meant revolutionary change in the region. It would mean that the Sunni Arabs, who had traditionally ruled the country, would be displaced by the Shia and the Kurds. The Sunni were unlikely to go quietly.
The fall of Saddam Hussein was also going to start a political earthquake in the Gulf if it meant, as seemed likely, that the Sunni elite went with him. The main beneficiaries were going to be the Iranians, who had, after all, spent eight years of war trying to get rid of Saddam in the 1980s. Now the Americans and the British were doing it for them.
RETHINK AFGHANISTAN
Anti-American sentiment throughout the Muslim world will be inflamed by civilian bloodshed, facilitating recruitment by terrorist organizations. The war will cost billions of dollars when we can least afford it, and will stymie your domestic agenda. The cost of sustaining a military force in Afghanistan is $1 million per soldier per year – that’s close to $100 billion dollars annually with the troop increase. With the economy in shambles, the deficits generated by these enormous costs will compromise your domestic legislative agenda both fiscally and politically.
SHELL IN BEAUFORT
After years of controversy and delays, a federal agency has given the green light to Royal Dutch Shell to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic Ocean.
The decision on Monday by the Minerals Management Service clears one of the last big hurdles for the company to drill two exploration wells on two offshore lease areas in the Beaufort Sea. The company plans to do the drilling between July and October 2010 — the next open-water season when the sea-ice melts.
Shell, which does not produce on the North Slope, has bet heavily on Alaska’s offshore potential. In 2008, it paid $2.1 billion for leases in both the Beaufort and the Chukchi Sea, and now has about 200 offshore leases.
“The reality of offshore oil drilling is that accidents will happen,” he said. “And when oil spills in Arctic ice, there is no cleaning it up. A blow-out like the one that recently despoiled waters off the coast of Australia would leave oil in the waters off the coast of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for decades, killing whales, seals, fish and birds and turning irreplaceable spawning and feeding grounds into an ecological wasteland.”
CHUCKCHI SEA
Oil companies just spent a record $2.7 BILLION dollars for the "right" to drill exploratory wells in the Chuckchi Sea off the northwest coast of Alaska. This is a huge amount of money, in fact, the most ever spent in Alaska
the oil companies are very confident there is a lot of recoverable oil in rocks beneath the Chuckchi Sea. It also means they think they can find it, produce it, and move it to market.
SHELL LEASE CHUKCHI
WASHINGTON — With global warming melting the Arctic's eons-old ice at an alarming rate, shipping and oil companies are looking ahead at how to exploit the new open waters.
Scientists say the Arctic's seas could be essentially free of ice in the summertime by mid-century.
Already, shipping already has increased within the Arctic Circle to serve the oil and gas industry.
Oil companies have been looking at Alaska's arctic waters as a new frontier.
And in the past two years, the Bush administration has leased large parts of those waters — the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas.
Shell was the main buyer of the Chukchi leases in February, spending $2.1 billion.
"Shell, like many other national and international oil companies, is actively assessing Arctic opportunities," said Shell spokeswoman Darci Sinclair.
90 BILLION BARRELS
There’s oil in that thar Arctic, and lots of it; that’s what the U.S. Geological Survey has to say after conducting the most comprehensive survey of the Arctic’s energy resources to date. The USGS says the polar region contains one-fifth of the world’s undiscovered oil and natural gas resources, which amounts to 90 billion barrels of oil and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The report is bound to fuel calls for oil companies to increase drilling in the Arctic Ocean, and is also guaranteed to spark protests from environmentalists who advocate a shift away from fossil fuels.
Ironically, much of the new exploration is being made possible by global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels; melting ice caps have opened up prospects that were once considered too harsh to explore [The New York Times].
ARCTIC MELT
The ice lid on the Arctic Ocean continues to melt. At summer’s end, sea-ice coverage was one-third smaller than the average from 1979 to 2000.
The map has patches of color demarcating areas of the Arctic Ocean and seabed to which each of the five countries bordering the ocean—the United States, Canada, Russia, Denmark (Greenland), and Norway—might claim title. Bright, solid colors represent seafloor over which each country already has jurisdiction because it lies within its 200-nautical-mile offshore limit. Striped areas represent the maximum stretch of seafloor each is likely to claim as additional territory under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
OIL LAST FRONTIER
Last spring Canada Southern Petroleum, a company with significant reserves inside the Arctic Circle, received a takeover offer of $7.50 per share, nearly a 60 percent premium on its stock price. By the time the company was sold four months later to another Canadian firm, it went for $13.10 a share.
While there is drilling in the Arctic on or close to shore, the sea under the polar cap is unlikely to remain largely untapped for long - governments and corporations are racing to carve up the Arctic oil pie.
A new petroleum province will likely be needed if the world is going to both replace the output from current fields, many of which are declining, and keep up with worldwide oil demand that is expected to surge by more than 50 percent over the next 25 years. This underlay the tripling of oil prices since 2002.
BP (Charts), which operates the huge Prudhoe Bay field in Alaska, signed a $17 billion exploration agreement with Russia.
Statoil, Norway's state oil company, considered to have some of the best cold-weather expertise in the business from its North Sea operations, is well positioned to explore massive deposits believed to lie north of Norway in the Barents Sea.
Royal Dutch Shell (Charts), ExxonMobil (Charts), Chevron (Charts) and ConocoPhillips (Charts) have interests as well.
ARCTIC OIL RUSH
Back in 1982, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea went into effect, a treaty that defined ocean boundaries and set up regulations for ship traffic. The U.S. signed the treaty in 1994, but the Senate refused to ratify it, opposing the idea of UN sovereignty.
But what was then just a diplomatic absence is now seen as a lapse in judgment that could cost billions of dollars. Under Law of the Sea, countries are entitled to control any waters above landmasses that extend from their continental shelf.
Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan advisor and current president of the Center for Security Policy, has called the treaty the "most egregious transfer of American sovereignty, wealth, and power to the UN." Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) has said he'll use "whatever means it takes" to keep the U.S. from joining the treaty. That included leading the charge to kill a bill that surfaced for ratification in 2004.
An Arctic land grab is already well underway. In early June, Russian scientists claimed they found evidence of 70 billion barrels of oil and natural gas reserves on the Lomonosov Ridge, a huge rock formation that extends through the North Pole from Siberia to Greenland.
Russia has slapped a claim on nearly half the Arctic -- a territory of half a million square miles -- and granted a monopoly to its own companies to exploit it. Denmark is crying foul, saying it, too, has rights to the ridge.
"It makes exploration a lot more risky," says Paul Kelly, former general counsel at drilling firm Rowan Cos., since bankers, he says, won't put up the money for ventures in "murky waters."
Lobbyists representing companies including Exxon Mobil
Chevron
and ConocoPhillips
are allying with environmental groups, who want UN protection for Arctic wildlife and ecosystems
U.S. Navy, which says it won't be able to patrol the Arctic effectively without the rights the treaty provides to the territory.
An Arctic land grab is already well underway. In early June, Russian scientists claimed they found evidence of 70 billion barrels of oil and natural gas reserves on the Lomonosov Ridge, a huge rock formation that extends through the North Pole from Siberia to Greenland.
Russia has slapped a claim on nearly half the Arctic -- a territory of half a million square miles -- and granted a monopoly to its own companies to exploit it. Denmark is crying foul, saying it, too, has rights to the ridge.
"It makes exploration a lot more risky," says Paul Kelly, former general counsel at drilling firm Rowan Cos., since bankers, he says, won't put up the money for ventures in "murky waters."
Lobbyists representing companies including Exxon Mobil
Chevron
and ConocoPhillips
are allying with environmental groups, who want UN protection for Arctic wildlife and ecosystems
U.S. Navy, which says it won't be able to patrol the Arctic effectively without the rights the treaty provides to the territory.
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