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T. Boone Pickens Speaks the Ugly Truth
Press Action
Sunday, June 08, 2008
pressaction.com
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I assume most Canadians already understand what’s at stake in the oil sands (or tar sands) region of Alberta and how the U.S. government and Corporate America believe that they are entitled to the oil that’s being produced there. In case there are some Canadians who don’t understand who will ultimately control the oil produced in this region, T. Boone Pickens, the billionaire oil and gas man from Oklahoma, set the Canadians straight in a recent interview, explaining that Corporate America views this resource as its own.
Speaking on CleanSkies.tv, an online television network bankrolled by natural gas producer Chesapeake Energy Corp., Pickens said:
“There are two things that should be working very well for us. One, are the Canadian oil sands. That oil comes to the United States. We need to be sure that it’s not exported to some other country because there’s 250 billion barrels in the Canadian oil sands.”
Given the enormous amount of oil that is necessary to sustain economic growth in the United States (or at least to keep the U.S. economy from collapsing entirely), the U.S. government will need to ensure that it has access to oil reserves around the world, including in Canada. If a more nationalist government were to take power in Ottawa and then exert tighter control over which companies are allowed to operate in the oil sands region, the U.S. government would do whatever it could to ensure U.S. companies retain a major presense in the region.
But let’s say the Canadians decide to award China or other countries a larger piece of the oil sands action, there’s no doubt the U.S. government would take a harsh stance toward such a move. What if the Canadians decided to engage in trade for oil sands production almost exclusively with countries aside from the United States? The cordial relationship between the two countries would come to an immediate end and the U.S. government would likely take steps, through economic sanctions and possibly even military force, to seize control of the oil sands region.
In the same interview, Pickens, through his comments, provided insight into how U.S. governing elites and Corporate America view oil produced in another important outpost of the U.S. empire: Iraq.
“We should have a call on the Iraqi oil. We’ve paid a price over there in people and money and we should have a call. Call at what price? Call it market price. You’re not trying to buy it cheap. But we should have a call on that oil. And that would be very important to this country to have that.”
Once again, Pickens, unlike most observers in the United States, offers a candid assessment of Iraqi oil. When Pickens talks about a “call,” he is technically referring to the trading term that would give the U.S. government, and its corporate masters in the oil and gas industry, the right to purchase oil at a specified price for a specified delivery date.
But what Pickens is really saying is that the U.S. government and Corporate America control the oil reserves in Iraq and that they will do whatever it takes to make sure oil produced in Iraq gets delivered to U.S. corporations and U.S. interests because, as the billionaire tycoon and corporate raider says, it is “very important to this country to have that.” Doing whatever it takes, of course, includes keeping the U.S. military in Iraq for what presidential candidate John McCain says will be the next 100 years. |
