From the NY Times:
The Baiji refinery, with its distillation towers rising against the Hamrin Mountains, may be the most important industrial site in the Sunni Arab-dominated regions of Iraq. On a good day, 500 tanker trucks will leave the refinery filled with fuel with a street value of $10 million.
The sea of oil under Iraq is supposed to rebuild the nation, then make it prosper. But at least one-third, and possibly much more, of the fuel from Iraq’s largest refinery here is diverted to the black market, according to American military officials. Tankers are hijacked, drivers are bribed, papers are forged and meters are manipulated — and some of the earnings go to insurgents who are still killing more than 100 Iraqis a week.
“It’s the money pit of the insurgency,” said Capt. Joe Da Silva, who commands several platoons stationed at the refinery.
They did say the war would pay for itself.
tballou
And why shouldn’t this oil go to the de facto goverments of Iraq? It’s their oil, it’s their civil war – let them have it out on their terms. Just get our troops the hell out ASAP!
jake
Never fear John. Despite the fact that no one could have possibly foreseen wide scale crime and graft in a war zone, despite America haters like Capt. Da Silva, McCane is on the case. After he’s finished taking pictures of the naked virgins carrying bags of gold that wander the length and breadth of the land unmolested; he’ll hop on his power mobility device and run down those bad old oil pirates.
ThymeZone
Welp, a few years ago, all of this money (from the same oil sale traffic) was going into the wallets of Saddam and his cronies. We knew this, knew every truckload of oil and every dollar’s track. Somehow, though, we couldn’t figure out where the WMDs were.
Anyway, fast forward, same business going on, new destination for the money.
All this for just 4000 American lives and a few trillion dollars. Great investment.
The Grand Panjandrum
I still remember watching W’s debates against Gore. After that second debate it dawned on me that this was the dumbest motherfucker to EVAH to get a major party nomination. But even I never dreamed that nearly everything this administration touched would turn to pure, unadulterated shit.
More than seven years of ineffective governance most noted for misbegotten foreign policy, politically motivated law enforcement at the DOJ, and no oversight of the Executive Branch has this country swerving dangerously close to the event horizon of this black hole created by the war criminals in the White House.
But, no worries, we’ll always have shopping.
gypsy howell
Front page on Yahoo right now:
“Was the Iraq War for Oil? Find out if the conspiracy theories about the Iraq War could be true. ”
(Gee, ya think?)
Points to a Wapo article which seems to be pathetically trying to make the case that it can’t really have been about the oil, because they fucked it all up.
Wilfred
For the thousandth time – it was not about the oil but about the revenue from the oil, fulfilling the economic aspect of imperialism that Hobson described as:
Putting oil revenue in Iraqi pockets and leaving them without an industrial base other than that of pulling oil out of the ground means they have to assume the surplus production of the West.
John Burns, the only decent reporter on Iraq has a nice 5 year summary in the NYT today:
Dennis - SGMM
It’s wonderful the way that all of that Iraqi oil has kept gas prices down. Here in California it won’t hit $4.00 a gallon for at least a month or two.
In the 2000 campaign debates Bush criticized Gore for being part of an administration that was in charge while gas prices went up and up. He chided the Clinton administration for not jawboning OPEC into lowering oil prices. Gas, at that time averaged $1.46 a gallon.
The Bush of today prefers holding hands with the Saudis while we get boned.
gypsy howell
Well no shit. It’s always ultimately about the money to be made, not the underlying commodity or asset itself.
In this case, the commodity was oil. And the money to be made from it.
Luke
ah, the curse of resources. never get into a land war in (southwest) asia.
Dennis - SGMM
Not to mention the win-win of paying their BFF’s boatloads of our money for security, logistics, etc., in pursuit of the commodity.
Remember when Bushco’s Word of the Week was “fungible”? Now they’re finding out just how fungible that oil is.
Bill Arnold
It’s wonderful the way that all of that Iraqi oil has kept gas prices down. Here in California it won’t hit $4.00 a gallon for at least a month or two.
Uhm. We fought a war for expensive oil. And “we” won!
ThymeZone
According to the local paper, the Iraq war is now draining our wallets at the rate of $3b a week. $12b a month, $144b a year.
Can you imagine the good work that could be done with that amount of money? Lives saved, resources built?
Just a little less, in a year, than the cost of the so-called “stimulus package.”
Bush says that the stimulus money is enough to turn around a sagging economy. Imagine what ten years’ worth of that kind of money could do if not poured down the Iraqi rathole?
If you need numbers to see a clear picture of how the Washington power machine sees its priorities, look no further.
Bubblegum Tate
I read a great story about this in The New Yorker several months ago…basically, the pipelines are in horrendous condition, anybody with a truck can come along and steal a tanker or crude, the pumping stations are falling apart, and for every barrel that is successfully pumped, another barrel is rendered unusable.
Victory!
Zifnab
If Gore was in the White House, we could have conducted thousands of blow-job inquiries with that money. We could have handed back some $48 million / taxpayer in tax cuts to the wealthiest 1% of Americans. We could have created an Office of Faith Based Initiatives and handed out almost $3 billion / state to wingnut GOP money laundering “charities”. We could have launched a completely different war against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, because he called us names and looked at us funny.
Look at all the missed opportunities!
Wilfred
The point is the role that the Iraqis assume as imperial subjects, possessed of oil revenue but denied their own means of production. The non-Islamic based rhetoric of the insurgency revolves around a sense of colonial history, a great deal of which involved Western efforts to make subject colonies the recipients of their surplus production and surplus capital while denying them any chance to develop their own industrial base; Egypt is the best example of this process. The distinction is vital to understanding what is going to happen over the next few years.
Stupid catchphrases like “It’s all about the oil” without some historical contextualizing are what made the occupation a fiasco to begin with.
alphie
I doubt the refinery would stay open (not blowed up) if it wasn’t a source of money for everyone.
Welcome to barter town.
Dennis - SGMM
Another Mission Accomplished moment:
The falling US Dollar has now made the Eurozone the world’s biggest economy.
The dollar’s fall against the Euro has pushed the Eurozone past the US in terms of economic output. Thanks to idiot cokehead frat boy Bush, America can now chant: “We’re Number Two! We’re Number Two!”
Moreover its exports of quality machinery, automobiles and aircraft leaves it poised to stay in first place. The U.K. is the only part of the Eurozone with the exposure to the kind of mortgage problems being experienced in the US.
No one could have anticipated that making and exporting things people want, rather than offshoring jobs and selling each other sub-prime mortgages, haircuts and frozen lattes, would lead to a strong economy.
D-Chance.
How much was the S-CHIP bill expansion that Bush vetoed as “too expensive”… $35 billion over 5 years? $7b a year? Two weeks’ worth of the freaking war to provide health insurance for kids for a full year. All a matter of priorities.
Martin
It was about the currency the asset was bought with. The US economy is dependent on petrodollars. The UN gave permission for Iraqi oil to be bought in euros in Nov. 2000, and the first order of business for Cheney was to try and reverse that. Iran started suggesting in 2005 that it would switch to Euros as well – and the sabre rattling began again. It doesn’t matter what Saudi Arabia does, they are loyal to the dollar and we sell them weapons and do them favors in exchange for that loyalty – true of many other nations as well.
Our debt is backed by that oil (and natural gas and other commodities that are exclusively traded in dollars). We need countries to buy and hold dollars to buy that oil. When they switch to Euros, they no longer need dollar reserves, and the value of the dollar drops.
Look where we are now.
Dennis - SGMM
Future administrations would do well to seek the advice and counsel of George W. Bush. Just ask him what he’d recommend on any legislation, policy, practice, or initiative and then do the exact opposite. This place will be the new Eden in less than twenty years.
Asti
All hail the Cheney!
Tsulagi
Nothing new here to see, just move along. No scoop from the America-hating commie NYT. Some “think tanks” on the right have been pointing out some potential problems from irregularities for some time. Even The Middle East Forum in 06…
Well, to be fair, like keeping track of billions of dollars in cash bricks, CPA had other priorities. Like padding the resumes of 90-day wonders. CPA was a more secular version of Liberty University in the ME.
Thank God, or praise Allah, your choice, oil is now around $100 a barrel. Better rate of return on their hard work now.
Look at the positive. The Sunni insurgents who used to blow us up that we’re now arming and training as Iraq’s freedom fighters have pocket money for their fun stuff.
Ahh, free trade.
Thank Jesus that after 9/11 the Party of Nation Builders was in charge. Iraq gets turned into a huge dog and pony show to entertain its patriot warriors; Iran is happier than a
piggoat in shit. Win/win. Yep, Mission Accomplished.jcricket
Someone estimated that just $500 billion invested nationally in infrastructure would have plugged nearly every hole we have (sewer/water pipes failing, bridges with issues, roadway repair, etc.) for quite some time. And another $500 billion could have built a complete national rail infrastructure, or funded national healthcare, etc.
But that’s all non-discussable, since it would help people in the US. Oh wait, that’s not the reason? What’s the reason again?
Dennis - SGMM
The value of the dollar also drops when we meet our needs by simply printing more of them. So what are we doing to stimulate the economy, bail out Bear Stearns, finance the war? Why we’re printing more dollars of course!
jake
I suggest a slight tweak of your otherwise fine plan. Set up the cameras, offer him a variety of solutions and pick the one that causes The Chimperor to throw the biggest tantrum. Charge people per download and apply the proceeds to various federal programs.
New Eden in less than 10 years.
Dennis - SGMM
Splendid! Adding reaction shots from Cheney might shave off a few more months.
El Cid
No one could have anticipated that the situation in Iraq would resemble all sorts of other areas around the world in which there is also a barely existing weak state and powerful rival forces acting in a situation of near lawlessness.
Wilfred
This smuggling of oil is a bit dodgy, no? I mean oil tankers are pretty easy to spot and since the entry points to Jordan, Turkey and Iran are all under constant observation it would be hard to pass through even one fucking oil truck, let alone the thousands needed to make smuggling worthwhile. What gives?
Maybe General Petraeus can shed some lies on the subject at his next briefing.
Asti
I am convinced the only reason we even looked at Iraq in the first place is because it is the location of that biblical bad place called Babylon!
Dennis - SGMM
I doff my hat to you, Wilfred. Either all of the spy sats, drones, reconnaissance flights, patrols, etc. are ineffective or someone is turning a blind eye to the smuggling. The invertible conclusion is that we either have little or no control of events on the ground in these areas or that we just don’t give a shit.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Not that it invalidates your larger point, but when I read this my first thought was: huh? Say again? When did Spain leave the Eurozone?
I have to say, the Spanish solution to an oversupply of housing inventory, namely to just bulldoze them already, strikes me as some real creative outside the box thinking that we might have to emulate here in the US of A. Perhaps W might be able to make himself useful after all, come 1-20-09. He does have some experience with heavy earth moving equipment…
Tsulagi
No.
Let’s see, from another hate-America source, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty…
And…
As Rummy might say, freedom is a little messy. Maybe oily for some.
El Cid
Anyone who has observed the “black” or “invisible” or “second” economy of, say, Nigeria, or Zaire / Congo, or any number of African oil-producing states which lose oil to smuggling would not be surprised that huge amounts of oil become part of illegal trade.
Since our administration officials simply don’t care, that’s irrelevant, because no matter how bad they screw things up, they can always just label any ‘critic’ as pro-terrorist for noticing.
Tsulagi
Oops, link for that Radio Liberty article
jake
Well. But. Ya see. Thing is. Saddam was able to smuggle all his super giant killer WMDs over the border without a single intelligence gathering agency seeing what he was up to.
And. Um. He did it by summoning a bunch of djinn to create a sand storm so no one could see. No. No, he sacrificed 12… hundred Christian virgins and got the djinn to carry them to his pals in Iran. The WMD I mean. Not the virgins. Saddam ate them with his his BFF Bin Laden.
Yup. That’s what happened. And they’re doing it again with the oil. Our oil. So we gotta bomb Iran.
QED.
Dennis - SGMM
I omitted Spain in my haste to post. Thank you for correcting my oversight.
The Eurozone is neither utopia nor is it perfect. That its economy has surpassed that of the US while providing, among other things, universal healthcare and a living wage to its citizens puts the lie to the US Chamber of Commerce arguments against them.
Wilfred
Now I know that oil was ‘smuggled’ from Iraq into Turkey during the 1990’s because I saw with my own eyes lines of trucks lined up for kilometers at the border crossing. If you want to call that ‘smuggling’, go ahead. Kiser sounds like bullshit to me because a) he implies that Iran was allowing Saddam to receive oil revenue at a time when he was Iran’s biggest and worst enemy – highly implausible; b)Iran hardly needs oil – at truck stops they wash the trucks down with gasoline, and c)the Ali Baba insinuation of ‘smuggling routes’ through…where? The Marshes. Without anyone noticing or interdicting? Sorry, it just sounds like exaggerated nonsense.
El Cid
The major media, in particular the NYT, also speculated that just before Gulf War 1 that Saddam Hussein had giant underground air bases from which planes were going to zoom out and attack U.S. forces, just like in the sci-fi movies.
And, no, no one in Big Media laughed at them, it was all appreciated in very somber fashion, just like no one in Big Media laughed at the mention of “yellowcake uranium” from Niger when Saddam’s Iraq already possessed thousands and thousands of tons of low-grade uranium, and would benefit zilch from having more.
So do not be surprised that when it comes to building up the new enemy, Big Media will simultaneously emphasize that (a) OMG theez is the wurst enemy evarrr; and (b) it’ll all go real easy and none of you stupid anti-war types know anything about war anyway what with the new smart technology stuff it’ll be all like lickety-split and be done with afore your done burnin’ your flags.
Meanwhile, really obvious questions like “What will be the likely consequences of Iraq having no more effective central state?” get ignored just long enough so that Big Media can support the war as it’s forming but then pretend that they’re all, like, looking back in somber contemplation of “What Could Have Gone Wrong?”
Wilfred
Well, that’s pretty much constant. But the smuggled oil claim, breaks down with some simple arithmetic. A barrel of crude oil holds 42 gallons. The biggest tanker trucks carry 9,000 gallons. 300,000 barrels = 12,600,000 gallons, meaning that every day, 1,400 oil tanker trucks smuggle oil to Iran.
That’s 1,400 big-ass, lumbering, magombo oil trucks, chugging along at 50 km an hour through smuggling routes that, presumably, are not 6-lane asphalt highways. And this is every day, meaning a vast reserve of said trucks, hundreds of thousands actually, waiting to load up and leg it to Iran. At night, so no one can see.
McMartin
Parts of the Bay Area are already past it, though you can still find it at $3.50 if you’re willing to go a few more blocks.
El Cid
Wait — who is suggesting that every barrel of smuggled oil goes across the border?
Most oil which lands up in the 2nd / black market economy around the world is traded locally, either for under market prices or to avoid regulations or limits or is used for bartering and / or for power.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
This meme is a fun toy to play with, but in all fairness, isn’t the smuggling really a question of who receives the funds paid for receipt of this oil, rather than the physical delivery point? Wouldn’t the non-smuggled oil get trucked to the same spot anyway? I would imagine that the cash being paid on receipt is harder to spot from space than the actual tanker truck.
If that’s the case, then wouldn’t a small army of accounts-receivable clerks and money laundering experts be more effective than a spy satellite at spotting the smuggling? Seems like embezzlement might be a more accurate term than smuggling to describe what is really going on.
jake
Uh-huh and I think that’s Wilfred’s point. You can’t move that much of anything around without someone noticing (even at night unless we assume the smugglers have an infrared baffling device on all the trucks). So:
Yep. But we know forensic accountants hate America so we can’t let them into the records.
Wilfred
It’s a question of critical thinking. Imagine if someone from the left ran with the idea that 300,000 barrels of oil are being smuggled every day with the money used to fund the insurgency. The wingnuts would run down the absurdity of the claim and use that to defuse any facts on the subject, including the real probability that some smuggling actually does go on.
This sort of thing happens so much that I suspect they plant absurd things like this, wait for the typical reaction, shoot down the absurd claim and then smirk when no one dares raise the subject again.
Delia
No it won’t. We’ll be saddled with the Dolchstoss wingnuts who will scream bloody murder about surrender to terrorists at any hint of a sane foreign policy for decades to come. Any money spent on heathcare reform or infrastructure at the expense of wars or nifty new weaponry gadgets, however useless, is decried as socialism designed to lead the country down into the den of iniquity. You know the drill. The goopers have done their work all too well. Fixing this place will be virtually impossible for anyone, no matter how competent or well meaning.
spanielboy
The locals get a subsidized item from the government. What services does the US Government provide to us do you think the Iraqis kind of giggle over?
The thing that struck me is that the US Army is now taking resources and protecting this vital infrastructure node. Four years ago, it was a privatized security firm out of England providing security using Iraqi funds generated by oil. Now it is an American endeavour? I wonder what happened to have this to come true?
The article harps that most of money goes to insurgents, but it only gives a moment lip service of those entities who are looking to make a buck (ie, criminals). Even though the area is ‘swimming’ in petroleum, to take oil out of the pipeline and transform it to other products, is costing them in the long run. It cost money to take oil and use that fancy chemical engineering knowledge to get gas, desiel, asphalts, heavy oil, and so forth to enable other segements of society and infrastructure nodes to operate. Why take oil out of pipeline to be sold at $100+/barrel, when you can pay a little more from another source and still make a profit overvall? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar — the locals are business guys looking to make a buck (but not always).
srv
Well, that was the whole Oil-for-food thingy. Where the Kurdish heroes where working with Saddam to protect and “tax” trucks going from one “enemy” to another enemy.
Remember – Saddam and Kofi where evil, Talabani and Barzani are good.
spanielboy
Someone will correct me if I am wrong, but this BBC comment is surely not about oil transfering but rather other petroleum products?
Secondly, the transformation of oil to other petroleum products is not a one-to-one, and if it were, who really in their right mind would want asphalt and heavy oil?
Thirdly, why would anyone in their right mind hook-up a tanker to an valve on the refinery grounds to steal oil? That many trucks leaving the area would be suspicious – the Iraqis probably know their distribution system to know where to tap in to it without too much worries.
Fourthly, sorry but 1400 tankers is a freaking large number of tankers to be driving around the countryside without raising a few brows to what they were doing. To top it off, that is a daily number of trucks doing this?
Fifthly, the refinery at Bayji is a refinery — it isn’t an oil pick-up spot for vehicles. It will either send products through the pipeline or have it shipped by trucks to adjacent areas.
Sixthly, if there are problems with IEDs on the MSRs like there were a few years ago, there is no way trucks can make a full circle in one day to do this task all over again on the next day — it takes hours to unravel one of those charlie-foxtrots.
Seventhly, I doubt Iraq’s Ministry of Oil has 1400 tanker trucks in its fleet, let alone in the Salahdin province.
tBone
Those figures may seem large, but they’re more than offset by the cash value of the vast quantities of sweets and flowers that continue to be showered on our troops to this day. How “honest” of you to omit that point.
TenguPhule
They merely left out which side it was for.
TenguPhule
By December, we should be past Zimbabawe.
jcricket
Then can we start shouting “we’re #1, we’re #1!” again?