The #OPEC Epoch is Over – Where are #OilPrices Headed Now?

WashingtonsBlog

By David Haggith, the Great Recession Blog.

The fate of oil companies and nations hangs in the balance of oil prices. Russia could go broke. Some think that’s by US design. Saudi Arabia could experience its Arab Spring if oil prices remain too low too long. And OPEC is dead. That’s the biggest news in this new century for oil.

The House of Saud has stated clearly many times now and again this week in an even more emphatic manner that it intends to move the oil market from decades of OPEC price manipulation to a raw supply-and-demand equation. Rigging the price of oil was the raison d’être of the cartel known as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, and that function has now ended. But people are slow to get their heads around such big news.

Saudi Arabians enjoyed a tax-free environment as long as oil paid the bills and cheap subsidized fuel. Huge revenue from oil enabled constant pay-offs to the powerful that stabilized the state. All of that has ended or is at risk of ending as the Saudis seek to rebalance their state budget in the face of huge declines in revenue. So, changing the pricing structure of oil is a perilous change of course for the House of Saud, which tells you how serious they are about transforming the market back to a free market.

It’s fraught with peril for all. Among oil companies and banks, it’s not just the little leaguers that are

The REAL Reason for New U.S. and French Military Involvement In Iraq

by WashingtonsBlog

Why We’re Bombing to Protect Erbil

Why is Obama now re-committing the U.S. military to Iraq? Why is France strongly backing military action?

Obama says it’s to protect minorities.    That’s nothing new.  Obama is the fourth president in a row to bomb Iraq … while claiming it is for humanitarian purposes.

But the architects of the Iraq War (the one which started in 2003) themselves admitted it was about oil.

But what about now? Why are the U.S. and France deploying military force in Iraq now?

Well, ISIS captured some key oil fields in the Kurdish region of Iraq on August 3rd.

Mere days later, the U.S. started bombing ISIS.

And the strikes were targeted in protecting oil resources. As International Business Times notes:

Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby tweeted: “US military aircraft conduct strike on Isil [Islamic State] artillery. Artillery was used against Kurdish forces defending Erbil, near US personnel.”

Two F-18 fighters dropped laser-guided 500-pound bombs on the mobile artillery target. Militants of the Islamic State were using artillery that has been abandoned by the Iraqi army when it fled to shell Kurdish forces defending the regional capital of Kurdistan.
US airstrikes were very small and very targeted and the Peshmerga Kurdistan forces are waiting for more strikes by the US fighter jets, according to reports.

Similarly, the Military Times reported yesterday:

The Pentagon’s top war planner … Army Lt. Gen. William Mayville, the director of operations, or “J-3” for the Joint Staff [said]  “I think in the immediate areas where we have focused our strikes, we have had a very temporary effect … and we may have blunted some [ISIL] tactical decisions to move in those directions further east toward Erbil,” Mayville said.
“However, these strikes are unlikely to affect ISIL’s overall capabilities or its operations in other areas of Iraq and Syria,” he said.
Obama authorized the airstrikes for two specific purposes. One mission is to prevent an ISIL advance into the city of Erbil ….

It should be noted, initially, that months of murder, mayhem and brutality by ISIS on Christians and other minorities didn’t cause the U.S. or France to intervene militarily for “humanitarian” reasons.

And notice that the airstrikes were very targeted on protecting Erbil … the regional capital of Kurdistan.

The U.S. and France have never lifted a finger to protect the Kurds.   Indeed, the U.S. has actively betrayed the Kurds and let them be slaughtered.  For example, during the Gulf War, the U.S. called on the Kurds to rise up against Saddam (implying that he would protect them), but then let Saddam slaughter the Kurds en masse.

So why are the U.S. and France moving now to protect Erbil?

Because Erbil has now become a major oil center.  The Kurdish government estimates that the region is the world’s 9th largest oil producer.

Oil companies from around the world operate in Kurdistan, including (major oil companies are indicated in bold, U.S. and French oil companies in italics):

USA

• Exxon Mobil
• Chevron
• Aspect Energy
• Marathon Oil Corporation
• Hillwood International Energy
• Hunt Oil
• Prime Oil
• Murphy Oil
• Hess Corporation
• HKN Energy
• Viking International

France

• Total

Venezuela Deals Blow to Bankster Fascists

by Dean Henderson

On March 15th Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro addressed his military.  Mindful of the recent CIA/bankster putsch in Ukraine, he warned the right-wing fascist thugs who have incited violence in the country over the past two months, “Prepare yourself.  We are coming for you.”  He then played John Lennon’s Give Peace a Chance.

Venezuelan National Guardsman took over the Plaza Altamira in Caracas and put down another provocation in the borough of Chacao.  Suddenly on Sunday opposition leader and oligarch Henrique Capriles said for the first time that he was ready to talk with the Maduro government.

Violence erupted in Venezuela in January.  In a country sitting atop what some estimates put at 700 billion barrels of oil, it has become an annual bankster-sponsored occurrence.  Bolivarian socialism does not jive with Illuminati plans to colonize the giant Lake Maracaibo oil patch.

In January 2011 the Venezuelan oligarchy and their CIA/Big Oil backers held a rally in Caracas dubbed Operation Venezuela.  The event, which was countered by supporters of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, marked the anniversary of the deposing of Marcos Perez Jimenez in Venezuela in 1958.  But as with all recent CIA-sponsored Orange/Velvet/Cedar “revolutions”, the contradiction lies within the history books.  Jimenez, you see, was a right-wing dictator, the polar opposite of Chavez.

In 1914 Royal Dutch/Shell subsidiary Caribbean Petroleum discovered the vast Mena Grande oilfield in Venezuela.  Foreign oil companies began flocking to the area.  When oil was discovered at Lake Maracaibo in 1922, Venezuelan dictator Juan Vicente Gómez allowed Americans to write Venezuela’s petroleum law.

On November 27, 1948 Venezuela’s first democratically-elected President Romulo Gallegos was overthrown on a coup led by Jimenez cronies.  Democracy was not restored until 1958 when Jimenez was overthrown.  President Romulo Ernesto Betancourt Bello won the election held later that year.  The populist Betancourt had been President from 1945-1948.  He had transferred power to the novelist Gallegos shortly before the right-wing coup.