War-Crimes and their Victims
War Crimes Caught on Video
Abu Ghraib
Watch also:
Lifting the Hood – Iraq
on youtube (26 min)
The Road to Guantanamo (Trailer)
Ex-Guantanamo Muslim chaplain speaks out
Former Guantanamo detainee returns home – 15-Dec-07
Israeli War Crimes & Chemical Weapons
Former pilot of the Israel’s air force accuses Israel of war-crimes, using chemical weapons against the people of Gaza
Sanctioning Iran a Dangerous, Illegal Move
By Rep. Ron Paul, December 16, 2009
Before the United States House of Representatives, statement opposing the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act
I rise in strongest opposition to this new round of sanctions on Iran, which is another significant step toward a U.S. war on that country. I find it shocking that legislation this serious and consequential is brought up in such a cavalier manner. Suspending the normal rules of the House to pass legislation is a process generally reserved for “non-controversial” business such as the naming of post offices. Are we to believe that this House takes matters of war and peace as lightly as naming post offices?
This legislation seeks to bar from doing business in the United States any foreign entity that sells refined petroleum to Iran or otherwise enhances Iran’s ability to import refined petroleum such as financing, brokering, underwriting, or providing ships for such. Such sanctions also apply to any entity that provides goods or services that enhance Iran’s ability to maintain or expand its domestic production of refined petroleum. This casts the sanctions net worldwide, with enormous international economic implications. Recently, the Financial Times reported that, “[i]n recent months, Chinese companies have greatly expanded their presence in Iran’s oil sector. In the coming months, Sinopec, the state-owned Chinese oil company, is scheduled to complete the expansion of the Tabriz and Shazand refineries – adding 3.3 million gallons of gasoline per day.”
Are we to conclude, with this in mind, that China or its major state-owned corporations will be forbidden by this legislation from doing business with the United States? What of our other trading partners who currently do business in Iran’s petroleum sector or insure those who do so? Has anyone seen an estimate of how this sanctions act will affect the U.S. economy if it is actually enforced?
As we have learned with U.S. sanctions on Iraq, and indeed with U.S. sanctions on Cuba and elsewhere, it is citizens rather than governments who suffer most. The purpose of these sanctions is to change the regime in Iran, but past practice has demonstrated time and again that sanctions only strengthen regimes they target and marginalize any opposition. As would be the case were we in the U.S. targeted for regime change by a foreign government, people in Iran will tend to put aside political and other differences to oppose that threatening external force. Thus this legislation will likely serve to strengthen the popularity of the current Iranian government. Any opposition continuing to function in Iran would be seen as operating in concert with the foreign entity seeking to overthrow the regime.
This legislation seeks to bring Iran in line with international demands regarding its nuclear materials enrichment programs, but what is ironic is that Section 2 of HR 2194 itself violates the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to which both the United States and Iran are signatories. This section states that “[i]t shall be the policy of the United States … to prevent Iran from achieving the capability to make nuclear weapons, including by supporting international diplomatic efforts to halt Iran’s uranium enrichment program.” Article V of the NPT states clearly that, “[n]othing in this treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the parties to the treaty to develop research, production, and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with articles I and II of this treaty.” As Iran has never been found in violation of the NPT – has never been found to have diverted nuclear materials for non-peaceful purposes – this legislation seeking to deny Iran the right to enrichment even for peaceful purposes itself violates the NPT.
Mr. Speaker, I am concerned that many of my colleagues opposing war on Iran will vote in favor of this legislation, seeing it as a step short of war to bring Iran into line with U.S. demands. I would remind them that sanctions and the blockades that are required to enforce them are themselves acts of war according to international law. I urge my colleagues to reject this saber-rattling but ultimately counterproductive legislation.
Why the Promise of Biofuels is a Lie
Photo – Der Speigel
By ROBERT BRYCE
February 19, 2009
For years, the US has been inundated with claims that it should follow Brazil’s lead on biofuels. These arguments have largely been made by a small, but influential group of neoconservatives who claim that the US should quit using oil altogether. They claim that using more ethanol – produced from sugar cane, or corn, or some other substance – will impoverish OPEC and America will once again be returned to prosperity.
But these claims wither in the face of a story by Clemens Hoges in the January 22 issue of the German magazine Der Spiegel. Hoges writes that sugar cane “is considered an effective antidote to climate change, but hundreds of thousands of Brazilian plantation workers harvest the cane at slave wages.” The story is one of several published in recent years that have exposed the brutality of the Brazilian sugar cane fields. But before looking at Der Spiegel’s coverage, let’s do a quick review of the Brazilian ethanol boosters.
Thomas Friedman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times has frequently advocated the mirage of “energy independence.” And he has cited Brazil as a model. In an August 2005 column, he conflated the issues of oil and terrorism “we are financing both sides in the war on terrorism: our soldiers and the fascist terrorists,” he wrote. He went on to claim that many of the technologies needed for energy independence are “already here – from hybrid engines to ethanol.” He then quoted Gal Luft, the neoconservative who heads the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security and created Set America Free, a group that advocates “energy independence.” Luft claimed that Brazil’s success in cutting its oil imports was due to the fact that the South American country was “bringing hydrocarbons and carbohydrates to live happily together in the same fuel tank.” In Luft’s view, ethanol has brought “Brazil close to energy independence” and insulated it from higher oil prices.
(Luft’s claim completely ignores the fact that since 1980, Petrobras, Brazil’s national oil company, has been growing its oil production by an average of 9 percent per year thanks to its offshore drilling prowess. Since 1998, Brazil has doubled its oil production and is now producing about 2 million barrels of oil per day. Neither Friedman nor Luft bothered to mention that fact.)
In late 2005, in a speech to the National Press Club, Pennsylvania governor Edward Rendell said that “No longer is investing in alternative fuels a fringe idea….Brazil is perhaps the world’s greatest success story. Due to 30 years of hard work, research and investment, Brazil will not need one drop of imported oil this time next year. If anyone suggests to you that these ideas aren’t ready for prime time and cost too much, they are living in the past.”
Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and former Senate minority leader Tom Daschle have touted Brazil’s “energy independence miracle.” In a May 2006 opinion piece in the New York Times, they said that ethanol “could set America free from its dependence on foreign oil” and that Brazil proves that “an aggressive strategy of investing in petroleum substitutes like ethanol can end dependence on imported oil.”
In October 2006, former president Bill Clinton while in California stumping for Proposition 87 (an alternative energy initiative that later failed) declared that the initiative would “move California toward energy independence with cleaner fuels, with wind and solar power.” He continued, “There are people who don’t believe you can do it. I do. Look at Brazil. Don’t you think you can do it if they did it? They run their cars on ethanol.” Clinton later provided a sound bite for the pro-Proposition 87 forces in which he declared that “If Brazil can do it, so can California.”
The biofuels madness continued with a May 6, 2008 editorial in the Chicago Tribune, titled “Food vs. fuel, a global myth.” The piece, written by Set America Free’s Luft, and his fellow traveler, Robert Zubrin, a right-wing zealot who advocates colonizing Mars, claimed, incredibly, that “farm commodity prices have almost no effect on retail prices.” The two went on to declare that “rather than shut down biofuel programs, we need to radically augment them, to the point where we can take down” the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
A big reality check is in order.
First and foremost, over the past two years, 14 studies have found a direct link between the ethanol scam and higher food prices.
Second, Brazil is not the epicenter of ethanol production, the US is. In 2008, the US produced about 9.1 billion gallons of the fuel, all of it from corn. Brazil produced about 6.8 billion gallons. And while sugar cane may be a far better feedstock that corn, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and energy balance, the key issue is one of labor. While US corn is harvested mechanically, the Brazilian sugar cane is harvested almost exclusively by hand. And it is dangerous, back-breaking work.
In 2007, London’s The Guardian newspaper ran a story which quoted human rights activists who said that the men who harvest sugar cane for ethanol production “are effectively slaves” and that Brazil’s ethanol industry was “a shadowy world of middle men and human rights abuses.” It cited figures provided by a Catholic nun, Sister Ines Facioli, who runs a support network in a small town about 200 miles west of São Paolo. She claimed that between 2004 and 2006, 17 cane workers died due to overwork or exhaustion. One laborer, Pedro Castro, told the Guardian’s Tom Phillips, that the hot climate, combined with the heavy protective clothing needed to protect his body from the sharp machete blades used to cut the cane, was like working “inside a bread oven.”
For their work, the average cane worker gets paid about $1 for every ton of sugar cane they cut. They often work 12-hour shifts. Their housing, according to Phillips’ article, consists of “squalid, overcrowded ‘guest houses’ rented to them at extortionate prices by unscrupulous landlords.” The average cane cutter makes less than $200 per month. And some, it appears, make nothing at all.
In July 2007, the Brazilian government freed 1,100 laborers who were found working in horrendous conditions on a sugar cane plantation in the northeastern state of Para. A story by the Associated Press said that the workers were forced to work 13-hour days and that they had no choice but to pay “exorbitant prices for food and medicine.” It then cited a source in Brazil’s labor ministry who claimed that many of the workers were “sick from spoiled food or unsafe water, slept in cramped quarters on hammocks and did not have proper sanitation facilities.” The government-backed raid of the plantation lasted three days. The plantation in question is owned by Para Pastoril e Agricola SA, which produces about 13 million gallons of ethanol per year. The workers were caught up in a situation known as debt slavery in which poor workers are taken to remote farms where they then rack up large debts to the plantation owners who force the workers to pay high prices for everything from food to transportation.
According to Land Pastoral, a group affiliated with Brazil’s Roman Catholic Church, about 25,000 workers in Brazil are living in slavery-like conditions, most of them in the Amazon, and many of them working in the sugar cane business. The 2007 raid is not the first. In 2005, 1,000 workers were found living in debt slavery on a sugar cane plantation in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso.
The article in Der Spiegel makes it clear that little has changed over the past few years. Hoges reports that one worker he interviewed, Antonio da Silva, makes just $172 per month during the harvest season, which lasts about six months. During the rest of the year, he has to rely on charity to feed his family. Da Silva’s home in the village of Araçoiaba Nova, Hoges reports, is the same as it was five years ago. “They threw plastic tarps over a handful of branches to build the hut where they still live today. The door consists of scraps of cloth nailed to a board, and boards placed around a hole in the tarp form the window. The furniture, arranged on the bare earth floor, consists of the plank beds and a cabinet.”
The most compelling quote in the piece is from Father Tiago, a 66 year-old Scottish monk who has been working in Brazil for decades. The Scotsman makes clear what he thinks about the issue: “The promise of biofuel is a lie. Anyone who buys ethanol is pumping blood into his tank,” he said. “Ethanol is produced by slaves.”
The photos that accompany Hoges’ story should be viewed by everyone who retains the misguided belief that the US should emulate Brazil’s biofuels industry. Here’s the link.
Alas, it doesn’t appear the members of Congress are paying much attention. Last month, US Rep. Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat, announced that he would be pushing legislation aimed at eliminating the $0.54-per-gallon tariff on imported ethanol. Doing so, Engel said, “would enable U.S. refiners to purchase cheaper and more climate-friendly ethanol, no matter where it comes from. The result would be an overall increase in the supply of fuel, a decrease in its price, and a decrease in our dependency on petroleum from the Middle East.”
Sound bites like the one from Engel ignore basic arithmetic: Even if the US imported all of Brazil’s ethanol — all 6.8 billion gallons per year — that quantity would only provide the energy equivalent of about 1.4 percent of America’s total oil consumption.
Despite those numbers — despite the ongoing evidence of slavery in the Brazilian ethanol trade — the energy discussion in America remains stuck in an absurdist fantasy about energy independence and freedom from the sticky problems of the Persian Gulf. But given what has happened in the past few months with regard to rising food prices and the myriad other problems associated with biofuels, one thing is becoming perfectly clear: Ethanol isn’t the answer to our energy challenge. Ethanol makes it worse.
Edward G. Rendell, “An American Energy Harvest Plan: Jobs, Prosperity, Independence,” December 1, 2005.
Tom Daschle and Vinod Khosla, “Miles Per Cob,” New York Times, May 8, 2006.
California Progress Report, “President Clinton: Why I Support Proposition 87 and Why the Oil Companies are Wrong – The Complete Speech Delivered at UCLA,” October 14, 2006.
Shopfloor.org, “In California, A Bad Proposition,” November 3, 2006.
http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2008/may/06/food/chi-oped0506fuelmay06
http://www.ethanolrfa.org/industry/statistics/#B
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,602951,00.html
Tom Phillips, “Brazil’s ethanol slaves: 200,000 migrant sugar cutters who prop up renewable energy boom,” The Guardian, March 9, 2007.
Ibid.
Vivian Sequera, “Brazil Raid Frees Ethanol Plant Slaves,” Associated Press, July 3, 2007.
Clemens Hoges, The High Price of Clean, Cheap Ethanol,” Der Spiegel, January 22, 2009.
http://yonkerstribune.typepad.com/yonkers_tribune/2009/01/engel-outlines-energy-plan-for-the-future-1.html
Robert Bryce is the author of Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of “Energy Independence” available from the carousel at the bottom of this page.
Why is Democracy Now shielding “war for oil” against reality?
By M. Idrees – 12/15/09
In its headlines for December 14, Democracy Now followed the report on Blair’s confession about his committment to regime change in Iraq regardless of the absence of WMDs, with this:
Iraq Signs Oil Deals with 10 Foreign Companies
Blair’s comments come just as Iraq has signed a series of major oil deals. A two-day auction ended Saturday with ten foreign companies winning access to Iraq’s massive reserves. The oil giant Royal Dutch Shell won the rights to the Manjoon oilfield near Basra, one of the world’s largest. The US-based Exxon Mobil and Occidental Petroleum also submitted winning bids.
The wording is careful: it appears to suggest a connection between what Blair said and the Iraqi oil contracts. The war in other words was for oil. That is a remrkable conclusion to draw from news about an auction in which US companies were the big losers (hence DN’s careful choice of the words ‘foreign companies’). Unless Democracy Now is suggesting that the US waged a war for Russia, Norway and China — biggest winners in the auction — it is not clear why it continues to insist on the discredited “war for oil” argument? Why is it so difficult to admit who actually conceived the war?
But some could argue that this may be a mere reflection of the changing balance of power: that US oil majors are unable to secure contracts doesn’t necessarilty mean that the war wasn’t for oil.
Consider this excerpt from the news report about the auction:
The 10 deals the Iraqi Oil Ministry reached with foreign oil companies suggest that China, Russia, and European oil firms are poised to play a major role in refurbishing Iraq’s oil industry, crippled by decades of war and sanctions.
American companies walked away with stakes in just two of the 10 auctioned fields. Seven American companies had paid to participate in the second auction, which began Friday. The only one that submitted a bid lost. Two American companies reached deals for fields auctioned in June.
The meager representation of American oil giants in Iraq’s opening oil industry surprised analysts.
“Iraq finally opened its doors after six years of war, and instead of U.S. companies, you have Asians and Europeans leading the way,” said Ruba Husari, the editor of Iraq Oil Forum, an online news outlet. “It will be a long time before anything else will be on offer in Iraq.”
Concerns over security, underscored by massive coordinated bombings Tuesday, and political instability as the U.S. military withdraws, likely kept American oil companies from venturing more forcefully in Iraq, which has the world’s third-largest proven crude reserves, analysts said.
Now compare it to this piece by Anthony Sampson from December 2002:
While Washington hawks depict a war against Iraq as achieving security of oil supplies, Western oil companies are worried about the short-term danger and the supposed long-term benefits of intervention…
Oil companies dread having supplies interrupted by burning oilfields, saboteurs and chaotic conditions. And any attempt to redraw the frontiers could increase the dangers in both Iran and Iraq, as rivals seek to regain territory.
I hope you get my drift? So much for ‘war for oil’.
Zionist hawk calls for “tough diplomacy” toward Iran
Press TV – December 15, 2009
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has called for “tough diplomacy” and “tough sanctions” to persuade Iran to halt its uranium enrichment activities.
“We still believe it’s time for diplomacy, probably tough diplomacy, there is a need for tough sanctions, preferably based on Chapter 7 of the (UN) Charter,” Barack told reporters at a press conference in Vienna on Monday.
Iran faces pressure to stop enriching uranium, with the major powers claiming its civilian nuclear program is cover for a nuclear weapons program.
Along with the major powers, Israel — the only player in the Middle East with a nuclear arsenal — accuses Iran of trying to produce a nuclear weapon and maintains that a “nuclear Iran” is the prime existential threat to its security. Under such a pretext, it has threatened Iran with a military option.
However, unlike Israel, Iran is a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have never found evidence that Iran’s civilian nuclear program has been diverted.
In addition, Iran has called for the total eradication of all weapons of mass destruction.
Chavez says Clinton threatens Venezuela over ties with Iran
MOSCOW, December 14 (RIA Novosti) – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said a recent statement by the U.S. secretary of state on ties with Iran was “a clear threat” against his country and Bolivia, the EFE news agency said on Monday.
Hillary Clinton said on Monday that “if people want to flirt with Iran, they should take a look at what the consequences might well be for them.” She expressed hope that they would “think twice” before doing so.
“Clinton’s statements are, above all a threat to Bolivia and Venezuela, as well as the whole Bolivarian Alliance,” the agency quoted the Venezuelan leader as saying at a summit of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America (ALBA).
ALBA, or the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, was founded by former Cuban leader Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez in 2005 and now comprises nine members – Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Dominica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Antigua and Barbuda.
“They are a direct evidence of the Imperialistic threat, which seeks to halt the development of progressive forces… Facing this threat, we agreed… to strengthen Alba and to activate [cooperation] in all directions: economic, political and social,” the Venezuelan leader went on.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose country is suspected of developing a nuclear program aimed at the production of an atomic weapon, has visited a number of Latin American states in late November, including Bolivia and Venezuela.
Washington ‘rejects Iran uranium swap offer’
Press TV – December 13, 2009
Washington has reportedly dismissed a Tehran offer to swap 400 kilograms of its low enriched uranium in the Persian Gulf island of Kish.
“Iran’s proposal today does not appear to be consistent with the fair and balanced draft agreement proposed by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) in consultation with the United States, Russia and France,” AFP quoted an unnamed US official as saying.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Saturday said the country is ready “to take 400 Kg of 3.5 percent enriched uranium to the Island of Kish and exchange it with an amount equivalent to 20 percent of the original batch.”
Mottaki added that the process would begin “right away” if the P5+1, the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany, agree to the offer.
The US official talking on condition of anonymity, however, said the offer was “nothing new.” Iran should take up the existing IAEA proposal, the official added, and send 1,200 kilograms of its low enriched uranium to Russia “in one batch.”
“We remain committed to these terms. Unfortunately, Iran has been unwilling to engage in further talks on its nuclear program,” the official said. “We urge Iran not to squander this opportunity.”
The West has been pressuring Iran to accept a UN-backed draft deal which requires Iran to send most of its domestically produced low enriched uranium (LEU) abroad to be converted into more refined fuel for the Tehran reactor that produces medical isotopes.
Iran has however called for “concrete guarantees” as some Western countries have previously failed to adhere to their nuclear commitments with regards to Tehran.
Iran’s nuclear program was launched in the 1950s with the help of the United States as part of the Atoms for Peace program.
The then US President, Gerald Ford believed that the “introduction of nuclear power will both provide for the growing needs of Iran’s economy and free remaining oil reserves for export or conversion to petrochemicals.”
After the 1979 Revolution which toppled Iran’s US-backed monarch Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Western companies working on Iran’s program refused to fulfill their obligations even though they had been paid in full.
Tehran and Paris had signed a deal, under which France agreed to deliver 50 tons of uranium hexafluoride (UF6) to Iran, a promise which was never fulfilled.
Despite being a 10-percent shareholder and entitled to France’s Eurodif output, Paris has refused to give any enriched uranium to Iran.
In January 1978, Germany’s Kraftwerk Union, which according to a 1975 contract was obliged to complete the Bushehr reactor, stopped working at the nuclear project with one reactor 50 percent complete, and the other reactor 85 percent complete.
Iran offers to swap low-enriched uranium for fuel
AFP – December 12, 2009
Iran’s foreign minister on Saturday proposed that Tehran swap 400 kilos of low-enriched uranium for nuclear fuel in an exchange on a Gulf island as the first phase of a deal with world powers.
Any new sanctions against Tehran over its controversial nuclear programme “will have no impact,” Manouchehr Mottaki also said at a security conference in Bahrain.
“We are prepared to take 400 kilogrammes (880 pounds) of 3.5-percent enriched uranium to the island of Kish and exchange it” for the equivalent in 20-percent enriched uranium, he said.
He told the opening session of the conference in Manama that Iran agreed “in principle” to an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) proposal to swap 1,200 kilos of enriched uranium for nuclear fuel.
The 400-kilo exchange on Iran’s southern Gulf island, a free trade zone, could be an initial step in a process that would take several years, Mottaki told a later news conference.
The Islamic republic’s foreign minister said the process could begin “right away” if the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany agreed to the offer.
But the IAEA has already ruled out a swap taking place inside Iran.
“I don’t think that is an option. The whole purpose of the deal is to defuse the crisis,” outgoing chief Mohamed ElBaradei said last month at the agency’s Vienna base before handing over to his successor, Yukiya Amano.
In a deal brokered in October, it was proposed that Iran ship out most of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU) for further processing by Russia and France so it could be turned into the fuel needed for a research reactor.
The world powers have been pushing the UN nuclear watchdog-initiated plan for Iran to farm out its uranium enrichment work abroad.
Under the plan, Iran would be supplied with 20-percent enriched fuel in return for allaying Western concerns by shipping out most of its stocks of LEU.
Mottaki also told reporters that any new sanctions against Iran, which is already under three sets of sanctions for its refusal to halt enrichment, would run “against international law and the UN charter and will have no impact.”
Despite US and European threats of new sanctions because of its refusal to accept the October deal, Iran is ready for further talks on its nuclear programme with the UN Security Council permanent members plus Germany, he said.
“We are ready to continue dialogue with the permanent-five-plus-one,” Mottaki said.
But “wherever we are under constraints and wherever we need technology and are denied it, we will work to gain access to the technology ourselves,” he said.
Mottaki also said Iran would need up to 15 nuclear plants to cover the country’s domestic electricity needs over the next two decades.
Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmed bin Mohammed al-Khalifa, addressing the conference, opposed new sanctions against Iran, describing Tehran’s talks with the major powers as flawed.
“To move from a wrong system of talks and put sanctions on the people of Iran is not fair,” he said.
“Why did the five-plus-one talks fail? Because countries of the (Middle East) region were not included in these talks,” he said.
Saddam Hussein’s Pick, Lukoil, Wins West Qurna Oil Contract
Lukoil received a contract to develop the deposit from Saddam Hussein in 1997
Lukoil, Statoil Win West Qurna, Prize in Iraq Bidding
By Anthony DiPaola and Kadhim Ajrash
Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) — OAO Lukoil and partner Statoil ASA won rights to develop the second phase of Iraq’s “super giant” West Qurna crude deposit, the largest offered to foreign investors in today’s second round of bidding.
Lukoil, the Russian producer with the most oil assets abroad, beat out teams headed by London-based BP Plc, Paris- based Total SA and Kuala Lumpur-based Petroliam Nasional Bhd. Lukoil committed at the auction in Bagdad to increase output at West Qurna, 65 kilometers northwest of Basra, to 1.8 million barrels a day for a fee of $1.15 a barrel.
“We have been struggling for this project over these years,” Lukoil Chief Executive Officer Vagit Alekperov said in a statement today. “We intend to meet all the obligations in connection with the development of West Qurna-2 to the benefit of the Iraqi people and our shareholders.”
Russia’s OAO Gazprom, Angola’s Sonangol SA and Petroliam Nasional also won contracts awarded today in Iraq, which holds the world’s third-largest oil reserves. The government, which assigned deals this weekend and in June, aims to boost output to more than 12 million barrels a day over the next six years, Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said today in Bagdad.
He called the second round a “success,” resulting in seven contracts to develop fields containing 28 percent of the country’s crude assets. Iraq awarded two service contracts yesterday to groups led by Royal Dutch Shell Plc and China National Petroleum Corp.
Largest Fields
The winning bidders for two of Iraq’s largest fields, West Qurna and Majnoon, offered their services at one-quarter to one- third of the best bids proposed at the first auction in June, according to Oil Ministry data. BP Plc and China National Petroleum Corp. agreed in the first round to develop Rumaila, the largest Iraqi field awarded, for $2 a barrel, half their initial bid on the filed with 17 billion barrels of reserves.
“The round is a success in the sense that the prices given for the fields were right,” said Tariq Shafiq, an adviser with London-based Petrolog & Associates and a former Oil Ministry official. “There is recognition that Iraq needs international companies to help raise oil recovery rates.”
West Qurna, described as a “super giant” by Iraq’s Oil Ministry, is being developed in two licenses. The 12.9 billion barrels of oil reserves in West Qurna’s phase two make that deposit the biggest on offer in this bidding round, according to U.S. Energy Department data.
Saddam Hussein
In the first round, Lukoil bid together with Houston- based producer ConocoPhillips for the first phase of West Qurna. Lukoil received a contract to develop the deposit from former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 1997. He then annulled it in 2002. Lukoil’s CEO unsuccessfully lobbied Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to reinstate it this April.
The opening of Iraq’s reserves persuaded more than 35 international and state-run oil companies to set aside concerns insurgent attacks or political instability may disrupt operations. Bombings in Baghdad this week left at least 101 people dead and hundreds injured as violence escalates before elections planned in March.
“Our focus now is to establish the organization needed to develop this project in a responsible and safe manner,” Torgeir Kydland, senior vice president at Statoil, Norway’s state- controlled oil company, said in a statement.
Five Projects
The five projects in today’s bidding were West Qurna-2, Garraf, Badra, Middle Furat, and Najmah. Petroliam Nasional, known as Petronas, and Japan Petroleum Exploration Co., known as Japex, won Garraf. They outbid groups led by Turkish Petroleum Corp., known as TPAO, and PT Pertamina, Indonesia’s oil company.
Gazprom led the only group bidding for rights to develop Iraq’s Badra oilfield. It won the contract after lowering its cost for the work.
Sonangol, Angola’s state-run oil company, today agreed to Iraq’s terms to develop the Qaiyarah deposit after their initial bid was rejected yesterday. Sonangol also won rights to develop Iraq’s Najmah crude deposit, the last field to be auctioned. Iraq received no bids today for the Middle Furat, or Middle Euphrates, field.
Statoil bid unsuccessfully for phase one of West Qurna in June. Lukoil worked with Norsk Hydro, now part of Statoil, in exploring the Azar field in the Anaran block in Iran, close the Iraqi border, according to Statoil’s Web site.
‘Main Prize’
The first phase of West Qurna was awarded last month to Exxon Mobil Corp. and Shell after an initial failure to agree on terms during the country’s earlier bidding round in June. The first phase has about 8.7 billion barrels of reserves.
Four groups involving eight companies bid for West Qurna-2. Exxon and Shell didn’t bid for the second phase.
“It’s always been seen as the main prize in the second round,” said Samuel Ciszuk, an analyst at IHS Global Insight in London.
Iraq, the third-largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, is struggling to raise output from about 2.4 million barrels a day and to boost revenue from crude sales after six years of conflict destroyed the economy and infrastructure.
“All of the low hanging fruit in the industry is gone,” Gianna Bern, president of Brookshire Advisory & Research Inc. in Flossmoor, Illinois, said in an e-mail. “The Supermajors and many national oil companies will still participate in bid rounds as the industry is forced to go wherever the reserves are located.”
25 Percent Stake
Iraq will hold a 25 percent stake in all field development licenses, with the remainder split between companies winning the bid. Bidders must accept service contracts with a flat fee for each barrel extracted, rather than production-sharing agreements in which they gain a stake in the crude produced. This means they are not positioned to benefit from a rise in oil prices.
The winning bids from yesterday’s auction show Shell and Malaysian partner Petroliam Nasional Bhd., plan to boost output at the Majnoon field to 1.8 million barrels of output a day, from about 50,000 barrels a day now, earning a fee of $1.39 a barrel. The partners beat a rival bid by Total SA and CNPC.
CNPC, Petronas and Total will boost production at Halfaya to 535,000 barrels a day, for a fee of $1.40 per barrel produced, beating groups led by Statoil, Italy’s Eni SpA and India’s Oil & Natural Gas Corp.
Majnoon holds 12.6 billion barrels of oil reserves and Halfaya holds 4.1 billion barrels, according to U.S. estimates.
To contact the reporter on this story: Anthony DiPaola in Dubai at adipaola@bloomberg.net
Who will save Gaza’s children?
Never mind Copenhagen, an environmental catastrophe is going on right now – contaminated water is poisoning babies in Gaza
By Victoria Brittain
The Guardian
December 9, 2009
Among all the complex and long-term solutions being sought in Copenhagen for averting environmental catastrophe across the world, there is one place where the catastrophe has already happened, but could be immediately ameliorated with one simple political act.
In Gaza there is now no uncontaminated water; of the 40,000 or so newborn babies, at least half are at immediate risk of nitrate poisoning – incidence of “blue baby syndrome”, methaemoglobinaemia, is exceptionally high; an unprecedented number of people have been exposed to nitrate poisoning over 10 years; in some places the nitrate content in water is 300 times World Health Organisation standards; the agricultural economy is dying from the contamination and salinated water; the underground aquifer is stressed to the point of collapse; and sewage and waste water flows into public spaces and the aquifer.
The blockade of Gaza has gone on for nearly four years, and the vital water and sanitation infrastructure went past creaking to virtual collapse during the three-week assault on the territory almost a year ago.
What would it take to start the two UN sewerage repair projects approved by Israel; a UN water and sanitation project, not yet approved; and two more UN internal sewage networks, not yet approved? Right now just one corner of the blockade could be lifted for these building materials and equipment to enter Gaza, to let water works begin and to give infant lives a chance. Just one telephone call from the Israeli defence ministry could do it – an early Christmas present to the UN staff on the ground who have been ready to act for months and have grown desperate on this front, as on so many others.
Earlier this year, just one question face to face to the Israeli government, from Senator John Kerry after he visited Gaza, allowed pasta into Gaza. Who from Europe or the US will ask the Israeli defence minister the face-to-face question for the blue babies? Sarah Brown, the British prime minister’s wife, would be the perfect candidate – an independent person who has the ear of the powerful, a mother who knows something about grief for babies. And she could be accompanied by Lord Mandelson in case there was any bullying.
The science on all this is unchallenged. Last September a UN report spelled it out in stark detail, including the regional implications for Israel and Egypt if the shared aquifer is not “rested” and alternative water sources found. The United Nations Environment Programme estimated that $1.5bn could be needed over 20 years to restore the aquifer, including the establishment of desalination plants to take the pressure off the underground water supplies.
Gaza’s huge pale sandy beaches used to be society’s playground and reassurance of happiness and normality, with families picnicking, horses exercising, fishermen mending their nets, children swimming and boys exercising in the early morning, but these days they are mainly empty, and not just because it is winter. Between 50m and 60m litres of untreated sewage have flowed into the Mediterranean every day this year since the end of the Israeli invasion in January, the sea smells bad and few fish are available in the three nautical mile area Palestinians are allowed in. This resource seems as ruined as the rubble of Gaza’s parliament and ministries.
A visitor to Gaza could miss this underground disaster, seeing what the surreal economy of the tunnels from Egypt has brought in: a chic new coffee house, with new furniture and prints on the wall, which would not be out of place in Piccadilly, fish from Oman for restaurants, fat sheep and goats for the Eid feast, new cars reassembled after being cut into four, huge motorbikes straight out of Easy Rider, bustling markets full of foods, clothes, fridges, washing machines, pharmaceuticals, some brought in to order, and much more. Some people are getting very rich on both sides of the Rafah border.
But the tunnels are a small slice of the reality. “We have run out of words to describe how bad it is here,” says John Ging, director of operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Gaza. Ging heads a team of 10,000 mainly Palestinian workers who run the aid supplies that are all that stand between the vast majority of Gazans and destitution. “We have 80% unemployment, an economy at subsistence level, infrastructure destroyed, etc, but even worse than the humanitarian plight is the destruction of civil society.”
Ging’s great preoccupation is “the 750,000 children susceptible to an environment where things are moving rapidly in the wrong direction, where the injustice is bewildering, and every day worse”.
There is a big problem of insecurity and violence here, and it is getting worse. Most adults display stoic resilience, and cling to a belief in traditional values, but there is a compelling narrative by extremists which becomes ever more difficult to combat. Only lifting the siege would change the dynamic.
An international community that has accepted the “normalcy” of the degrading tunnel economy for Gaza, shames us all. Ending the water emergency should be the first step to breaking the blockade.
Iraq buys Israeli equipment to observe border with Syria
08/12/2009 – 23:27:24
Iraq’s Interior Ministry has bought from the US modern Israeli-made equipment worth $ 49million for observing part of borders with Syria and Iran.
According to the US army’s statement issued yesterday, the equipment includes towers with cameras and system for transmitting information.
In this context, the Israeli Yedioth Ahranoth reported the transaction between Iraq and the US provides for buying equipment made in Israel.
It added that the equipment are of high quality in technical field as Israel planted several equipmet on the Lebanese borders and Gaza borders.
“The US-Iraqi transaction is part of the US-Israeli military cooperation which is of benefit to Israel as its weapons are exported abroad”, the paper added.
Under the US-Israeli military cooperation, the US has to help Israel promote its products in the countries with which Israel has no relations, especially the Arab countries.
Yedioth Ahranoth alleged that Kuwaiti, Bahraini and Omani armies are using Israeli “Gore” guns on which US flag is printed.
The US army claims that Iran backs gunmen who are attacking its forces, while the Iraqi government accuses Syria of providing shelter for leaders behinds Baghdad- bombs.
Damascus has asked the US to provide it with sophisticated systems to control borders with Iraq, but Washington rejected the demand because it fears that the systems would reach the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance.
الكاتب: Basma Qaddour
مصدر الخبر: source
Aletho News 
