Big Oil, Big Lies

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"If you want to rule the world you need to control the oil. All the oil. Anywhere." --Michel Collon, Monopoly (EPO, Bruxelles, 2000). [1]
"Oilmen are like cats; you can never tell from the sound of them whether they are fighting or making love." --Calouste Gulbenkian. [2]

Axis of Oil

"Sitting at the apex of world power, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney form an axis of oil with the industry. President Bush comes from a family with long and deep connections to petroleum companies. Prior to becoming vice president, Cheney headed Halliburton Co., which describes itself as 'one of the world's largest providers of products and services to the petroleum and energy industries.'

"Time and again, be it in Alaska or Indonesia, Bush and Cheney have demonstrated their proclivity to prioritize oil interests over human rights and the environment. Indeed, Vice President Cheney's Energy Task Force, after consulting with many CEOs in the energy industry, defined national security as access to oil." [3]

"It seems likely then that Big Oil, through the Cheney task force, was involved in discussions with the administration about getting control of oil in Iraq," ZNet's Linda McQuaig wrote September 27, 2004.

Halliburton

While Vice President Dick Cheney headed Halliburton, the company "signed contracts with Iraq worth $73 million through two subsidiaries." During the 2000 presidential campaign, "Cheney said Halliburton did business with Libya and Iran through foreign subsidiaries, but maintained he had imposed a 'firm policy' against trading with Iraq," the Washington Post reported in June 2001.

"Oil industry executives and confidential U.N. records showed, however, that Halliburton held stakes in two companies that signed contracts to sell more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was chairman and chief executive officer, the Post reported."

Caspian Sea Oil and Pipelineistan

By 2000, "[s]ix US oil giants -- Unocal, Total, Chevron, Pennzoil, Amoco and Exxon -- [had] invested heavily in the massive oilfield potential in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The region's untapped oil reserves are estimated to be worth up to $2,000 billion.

"The one serious drawback companies have faced is getting the supplies to the right market, the energy-hungry Asian Pacific economies. Afghanistan -- the only Central Asian country with very little oil -- is by far the best route to transport the oil to Asia.

"Enron, the biggest contributor to the Bush-Cheney campaign of 2000, conducted the feasibility study for a US$2.5 billion trans-Caspian gas pipeline which is being built under a joint venture agreement signed in February 1999 between Turkmenistan, Bechtel and General Electric Capital Services." [4]

War on Terror? or War for Oil?

"Whereas Russian, French, and Chinese firms have positioned themselves to benefit from Iraqi oil once sanctions are ended, it is U.S. companies, left in the cold so far, that stand to gain the most from regime change in Baghdad," Michael Renner wrote in The Globalist December 18, 2002. "Rehabilitating those facilities would be a lucrative job for the oil service industry, including Vice President Cheney’s former company, Halliburton."

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