Pat, UNOCAL is the name of gas company that would have transported gas across AFGHANISTAN.
Here is an article about it. Looks like it relinquished its rights to another company.
War & Terrorism A tangled web: Big Oil, defense, and policy-making fuel the war
machine
Posted on Wednesday, December 12 @ 10:32:01 EST
By Pascale Ghazaleh, Al-Ahram Weekly Online
Outside the oil industry, not many people would have exclaimed over the
news, in January 1998, that the Taliban had signed an agreement allowing a 1,272km,
$2-billion, 1.9-billion-cubic- feet-per-day natural gas pipeline project to proceed. The
proposed pipeline, according to the US government's Energy Information Administration
(EIA), would have transported natural gas from Turkmenistan's Dauletabad natural gas field to
Pakistan, and was projected to run from Dauletabad south to the Afghan border, through Herat
and Kandahar, to Quetta in Pakistan before linking up with Pakistan's natural gas grid at Sui.
By March, however, Unocal , the company leading the project, had announced that details
would not be finalised immediately due to the civil war in Afghanistan. In August, the company
announced it was suspending its role in the pipeline because of the military action the US
government was taking in Afghanistan, as well as fighting between the Taliban and the
opposition. By the end of the year, according to an EIA Country Analysis Brief, Unocal was
announcing its withdrawal from Centgas (the Central Asian Gas Pipeline Ltd.) -- the consortium
responsible for building the pipeline -- "citing low oil prices and turmoil in Afghanistan as
making the pipeline project uneconomical and too risky."
It had previously stated that the pipeline project would not proceed until an "internationally
recognised government" was in place in Afghanistan. Unocal, however, was no stranger to
unpopular governments: it was, after all, part of the consortium building a pipeline in Burma
that human rights groups slammed for using forced labour and cooperating with a military
dictatorship. Among the other members of that consortium, incidentally, was an oil company
named Halliburton -- of which the CEO was none other than current Vice- President Richard
Cheney. Unocal and Halliburton share other affinities, however: at the Collateral Damage
Conference of the Cato Institute on 23 June 1998, Cheney himself made some of these clear,
noting that "70 to 75 per cent of [Halliburton's] business is energy related, serving customers
like Unocal, Exxon, Shell, Chevron and many other oil companies around the world."
But back to Afghanistan. Until Unocal relinquished its shares in Centgas, it had held an 85 per
cent stake in conjunction with the Saudi Arabian company Delta Oil (which became the leader
of the consortium following Unocal's withdrawal). Other holders included Pakistan's Crescent
Group, Russia's Gazprom, South Korea's Hyundai Engineering & Construction Company, and
two Japanese firms, Inpex and Itochu. When the consortium was formed, Marty Miller, Unocal
Corporation vice-president responsible for new ventures in Central Asia and Pakistan, had
explained that "no other import project can provide such volumes of natural gas to [the
markets of India and Pakistan] at a lower price. Market analyses, according to a Unocal press
release dated 27 October 1997, "indicate that Pakistan's electric power generation market will
be the main consumer of the imported gas."
To any amateur conspiracy theorist, that information seems almost too good to be true.
Removing the Taliban from Afghanistan and installing an "internationally recognised
government" would eliminate the main obstacle to Unocal's investment in the pipeline project.
In this perspective, a side effect of the US-led attacks -- while they may have been triggered by
the 11 September disaster and the subsequent decision to "root out terrorism" -- would benefit
Big Oil, at least in the long run. Nor is such speculation restricted to conspiracy theorists. Nina
Burleigh, one of the first reporters to enter Iraq after the Gulf War, observed recently: "So many
business deals, so much oil, all those big players with powerful connections to the Bush
administration. It doesn't add up to a conspiracy theory. But it does mean there is a significant
money subtext that the American public ought to know about as 'Operation Enduring Freedom'
blasts new holes where pipelines might someday be buried."
And amid the fanfare of America's "war on terror," it is easy to miss one disturbing note: it
would seem that the decision to attack Afghanistan was taken months ago -- long before 11
September. On 26 June, India Reacts reported: "India and Iran will 'facilitate' US and Russian
plans for 'limited military action' against the Taliban if the contemplated tough new economic
sanctions don't bend Afghanistan's fundamentalist regime." As early as mid-March, there were
reports that India, Russia and Iran were heading an anti-Taliban campaign on the ground, while
Washington provided the Northern Alliance with information and logistical support. Military
sources, according to Jane's Intelligence Review, indicated that Russia and India were using
Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as bases to launch anti-Taliban operations. In the wake of the 11
September attack, former Pakistani Foreign Minister Niaz Naik revealed that, in mid- July,
"senior American officials" had told him military action against Afghanistan would take place
before the snows -- "by the middle of October at the latest." Speaking to the BBC, Naik quoted
these officials as having said "that unless Bin Laden was handed over swiftly America would take
military action to kill or capture both Bin Laden and the Taleban leader, Mullah Omar." And in a
puzzling aside, Naik observed it was "doubtful that Washington would drop its plan even if Bin
Laden were to be surrendered immediately by the Taleban."
Let us assume, for the moment, that the US government was planning to attack Afghanistan,
and that 11 September merely provided an opportunity to make such plans public. Why would
it have wanted to? The answer seems simple enough: oil, and weapons. Afghanistan's principal
selling point is not the breathtakingly rugged landscape or the rustic lifestyle: it is its strategic
position, in uncomfortable proximity to any pipeline channeling oil and gas out of Central Asia
to India and Pakistan, or west, to Europe and eventually the US.
Larry Klayman, chairman and general counsel of Judicial Watch, a Washington public-interest
law firm, recently discovered that Bush and Bin Laden are united by more than just a shared
belief in the battle of good vs evil. Bush Sr, it turns out, is a paid senior adviser to the Carlyle
Group, a private Washington equity firm described by the New York Times as the US's 11th
largest defence contractor. Carlyle's investors include -- no surprises here -- the Bin Laden
family, as well as Bush Sr and former Secretary of State James Baker; and Judicial Watch,
according to an 11 October article in the Village Voice, "says all involved stand to benefit from
any increase in U.S. defense spending." Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for
Public Integrity, spelled it out: "George Bush is getting money from private interests that have
business before the government, while his son is president. And, in a really peculiar way,
George W. Bush could, some day, benefit financially from his own administration's decisions,
through his father's investments."
Such a confluence between "private" and "public" interests is not new to US politics; last year,
according to a Chicago Tribune article dated 10 August 2000, questions were raised over work
that Dresser Industries, Inc., had been doing to keep Iraqi oil production up. Dresser, it so
happens, had been purchased for $8.5 billion in 1998 by Halliburton. We may remember
Halliburton from its activities in Burma, mentioned earlier. We may also remember that
Richard Cheney was the company's CEO from 1995 to 2000. As defence secretary in 1991,
Cheney had helped wage war against Iraq; less than a decade on, he was helping Saddam
Hussein bypass sanctions imposed by his administration and enforced under its successor.
During Cheney's stewardship of Halliburton, as an 11 October Center for Public Integrity
investigative report by Knut Royce and Nathaniel Heller reveals, the oil giant also benefited
from almost $4 billion in federal contracts and taxpayer-insured loans. Under Cheney's
guidance, Halliburton "garnered $2.3 billion in U.S. government contracts... Most of the
contracts have been with the U.S. Army for engineering work in a variety of hot spots, including
Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo and Haiti." In return, the firm made substantial lobbying expenditures,
with contributions amounting to over a million dollars "in soft and hard money to candidates
and parties" -- largely Republicans. Cheney left Halliburton to run for the vice-presidency; but
the New York Times reported on 12 August 2000 that he had received a retirement package
worth $20 million. Late that same month, he sold 660,000 of his shares for a $18.3 million
profit, promising on 1 September that if elected, he would forfeit 233,333 options that could
not be vested until 2001 or later, according to AP. Strangely, however, there has been no
mention of that forfeit since. Meanwhile, global conflict and oil prospecting continue apace.
It is true that war has generally been good to Halliburton; in 1999, according to the Tribune, its
Brown and Root division won substantial portions of Pentagon contracts worth over $1 billion
"for support services for U.S. troops in the Balkans and at the Incirlik air base in Turkey" --
where the US planes that patrol the northern no- fly zone over Iraq are stationed. The firm,
interestingly, also won a $100 million contract to improve security at US embassies worldwide.
There is more. LYNNE CHENEY, otherwise known as Mrs Richard Cheney, served until recently
on the board of Lockheed Martin, the world's biggest weapons manufacturer and a major Star
Wars contractor along with TRW -- another arms maker, of which the board included none
other than Dick Cheney himself. That is hardly a secret; nor is the fact that National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice was a member of the board of Chevron, and helped that corporation
get into Kazakhstan, as Ian Bremmer, president of research and consulting firm Eurasia Group
and senior fellow at the World Policy Institute, told Al-Ahram Weekly. Zalmay Khalilzad, who
served in Reagan's State Department and Bush Sr's Pentagon, was once chief consultant for
Unocal. It gets better: on 23 May, Khalilzad was appointed special assistant to Bush Jr, and
senior director for Gulf, Southwest Asia and other regional issues on the National Security
Council. The links between administration figures, Big Oil and defence are numerous: one need
only look to James Baker and John Sununu for further evidence.
Oil, then, greases the palm of war; and war opens the door to oil. Now Congress has whipped
itself into a veritable frenzy of defence spending, and the Pentagon stands to nab fully half of a
$40 billion emergency package approved in the days immediately following the 11 September
attack. On 28 September, William D Hartung noted in Mother Jones that "Lockheed Martin's
F-22, which at more than $200 million each is the most expensive fighter plane ever built, will
be in a much stronger position to stave off future budget cuts if Congress continues to ramp up
Pentagon spending." And that's just for starters. "The Bush administration," explains Hartung, "is
poised to accelerate weapons sales to the Middle East and South Asia, including pending deals
to transfer Lockheed Martin F-16s to Oman and the United Arab Emirates; a sale of the
Lockheed Martin Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) to Egypt; and possible exports to
Pakistan of spare parts for its F-16s, C-130 transport planes, and P-3 surveillance aircraft (all
Lockheed Martin products)." All in the name of the war on terror. Hartung concludes: "Just as
his father did in the run-up to the 1991 Persian Gulf War, President Bush plans to swap arms
sales for political and military support for his war on terrorism" -- for Lockheed Martin is only
one of the beneficiaries from the budget increase.
All this is not to say that evil individuals with insalubrious oil and defence interests are working
behind the scenes to manipulate US foreign policy. It does seem, however, that gaining a secure
foothold in Central Asia will benefit a few members of the present administration, as well as
their former employers, not to mention the military-industrial complex as a whole. In other
words, the defence industry will make money off waging war, and the oil industry will benefit
from a US military presence in or around Afghanistan. If one happens to be active in both --
well, sounds like a textbook win-win situation.
Oil, defence and politics, in other words, are not mutually exclusive interests. Indeed, US
foreign policy is intimately entwined with US businesses abroad, as a Washington Post article
(26 October 2000) demonstrates. According to AP writer Katherine Pfleger, "U.S. diplomats
lobbied foreign governments, banks and state-run companies to assist two business deals" for
Halliburton. Specifically, officials "helped arrange financing" from the Export-Import Bank,
which provides credits and loan guarantees for U.S. businesses investing overseas; as a result of
these efforts, Angola obtained a $68 million loan package allowing it to sign an oil services
contract with Halliburton.
The same Export-Import Bank has been involved in other oil deals; most recently, it
guaranteed $489 million in credits to a Russian oil company "whose roots are imbedded in a
legacy of KGB and Communist Party corruption, as well as drug trafficking and organized crime
funds," according to Royce and Heller's report. The Russian company, Tyumen Oil Co., is
represented by the blue- chip Washington law firm Akin, Gump; its lead attorney, write Royce
and Heller, is James C Langdon Jr, who also happens to be one of George W Bush's "Pioneers" --
one of the elite fundraisers who brought in at least $100,000 for W's presidential campaign.
Bremmer, however, argued that, while "both Cheney and Rice have had strong interests in
developing Western investment into the Caspian Basin, I don't think this has played a
meaningful role in the present war in Afghanistan." Conceding that "Central Asia's importance
has clearly increased for the United States" because of the war, he warned nonetheless: "There
are no illusions about the greater strategic role [the Central Asian states] play for the Russian
Federation, and the significance of Russian cooperation to maintain their support for the long
term." Yet a 1998 report prepared by Rajan Menon, professor of international relations at
Lehigh University and adjunct professor at Columbia University's Harriman Institute, for the
National Bureau of Asian Research, a nonprofit, nonpartisan institution, attributed the Unocal
project in part to the Caspian Sea energy-producing nations' desire to build pipelines that
bypass Russia. And with the signing on 29 September of the deal between Azerbaijan and
Georgia, which provides alternative fuel sources for those countries as well as Turkey (all of
which rely on Russia for gas), it would seem that Russian influence in the Caspian area has
already been dealt quite a blow.
By juggling Big Oil, defence, and government, at any rate, senior members of the US
administration have ensured that they have a finger in every possible pie. The picture, though,
is not completely crystal clear. Royce, co-author of the investigative report cited above, told
the Weekly: "If anything, the decision to send US troops to the region and to launch raids inside
a Muslim country could have the effect of destabilising neighbouring countries, including large
oil producers, notably Saudi Arabia." And in that arid kingdom, too, the temperature is rising.
© copyright al-ahram weekly.
Reprinted from Al-Ahram Weekly Online:
ahram.org.eg
weekly/2001/556/5war.htm |
