How Big Oil Dictates US Foreign Policy

The Secret of the Seven Sisters

Al Jazeera English (2013)

Film Review

Despite its length, this documentary should be compulsory viewing. Everyone with an IQ over 90 should see it at least once before they die. It was only in viewing this film that I fully grasped the insane, oil-inspired military aggression in the third world and the US fascination with despotic dictators.

The video below is actually an 8-part series shown over successive nights on Al Jazeera-English. I’ve summarized the highlights of each of the eight parts so you can fast forward to specific segments that interest you.

0.00 – 23.26

Part 1 takes viewers from the founding of the secret Seven Sisters oil cartel in 1928 to the creation of the competing Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 1960. The latter is made up of oil producing countries that have nationalized their oil industries.*

The film begins by describing the secret (illegal) cartel formed in 1928 by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (which became British Petroleum), Standard Oil (which became Exxon) and Royal Dutch Shell. The goal was to end the cutthroat competition that was eating into profits. At a secret meeting in Scotland the three companies agreed to an orderly division of global production zones, as well as a process for fixing oil prices.

Later Mobil, Gulf, Texico and Chevron would join these three oil giants. The existence of the cartel remained secret until the 1950s, when it became known as the Seven Sisters.

This segment describes the totalitarian control BP exercised over Iran until 1951. A strike for higher wages led to a national uprising that overthrew the Shah and resulted in the democratic election of Mohammad Mosadegh as president. When the latter threatened to nationalize Iran’s oil industry, the British government requested CIA assistance to overthrow Mosadegh and restore the Shah to the throne. In return, the US government won the right for American oil companies to join BP in exploiting Iran’s oil resources.

In July 1956 after Egyptian president Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal (the main route for transporting Middle East oil to Europe), Britain, France and Israel declared war on Egypt. Nasser responded to an aerial bombing campaign by using concrete bunkers to blockade all Suez traffic. For once, the US and USSR collaborated to pressure the three aggressors to withdraw their forces and restore the transit of oil tankers through the canal.

23.26 – 46.00

Part 2 traces how the rise of OPEC worked to gradually erode the dominance of the Seven sisters – with violent repercussions.

In 1972 Saddam Hussein nationalized Iraq’s oil industry, with technical and military support from the Soviets and the French.

By October 1973, when Israel’s Arab neighbors launched the Yum Kippur War, OPEC members controlled 60% of the global oil supply. This enabled them to launch an oil embargo against the US in retaliation for their support of Israel in the 1973 conflict.

In 1978 Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, living in exile in Paris, called for a workers strike in the Iranian oil industry that caused a total shutdown of oil production. This, in turn, led the US to abandon their longtime support of the Shah and his secret police. The result was a national uprising, the forced exile of the Shah, the return of Ayatollah and the nationalization of Iran’s oil industry.

Determined to regain American corporate control of Iran’s oil industry, the US government backed Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iraq in 1980. The sudden onset of peace in 1988 led to a period of “overproduction” and a dangerous drop in oil prices. In response, George Bush senior, whose Zapata oil company had made a fortune via offshore drilling in Kuwait, openly encouraged Saddam Hussein (through ambassador April Glaspie) to invade Kuwait. This would create a pretext for the first US invasion of Iraq in 1991.

In May 2001 (20 months before the US invasion), a secret energy task force headed by former oil executives Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice, drew up a plan whereby Exxon, Shell and BP would divide up US occupied Iraq into eight oil extraction zones.

48.00 – 61.00

Part 3 describes the decision by the Seven Sisters to open up Africa to increasing oil exploitation due to their gradual loss of control over Middle East oil.

In 1970, Colonel Omar Gaddafi led a coup against a corrupt Libyan monarchy that was allowing the Seven Sisters to pay 12 cents a barrel in royalties to extract high quality Libyan oil. Gaddafi immediately nationalized the oil industry, raised oil prices 33% and used the funds to finance generous public services for the Libyan world and to fund freedom fighters all over the world (including the Palestinians).

This section also traces the history of the French oil companies ELF and Total in Nigeria. After Algeria won independence from France in 1971, they nationalized their oil industry, and ELF began exploiting oil resources in Nigeria, Chad, Congo, Cameroon, and Angola, where they financed guerrillas and despotic regimes and participated in bribery and embezzlement schemes that massively increased the international indebtedness of these countries. In 2003 the CEO of ELF was sentenced to prison and the company was bought out by Total.

61.00 – 95.00

Part 4 covers the role of the Seven Sisters in stoking Sudan’s civil war (most of Sudan’s oil comes from South Sudan) and the role of Shell Oil Company in Nigeria’s trial and execution of environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.

95.00 – 118.00

Part 5 traces the longstanding battle between Russia and the US oil industry over control of the Baku oilfields on the Caspian Sea. It begins with Lenin’s capture of the oilfields in 1920. Hitler’s primary reason for attacking the USSR in 1941 was to gain control over Baku.

This section also details how a US-Saudi conspiracy to flood the market with oil in the late eighties (dropping the global oil price to $13) ultimately led to the Soviet collapse in 1989. At the time revenue from oil sales was the Soviet’s sole source of foreign currency.

118.00 – 142.00

Part 6 concerns the role of the color revolutions in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in keeping Caspian Sea oil out of Russian hands and under the control of US oil companies.

It briefly discusses the US role in Boris Yeltsin’s coup against the Russian parliament and his privatization of the Russian oil industry on behalf of the Seven sisters and a handful of Russian oligarchs (Putin has subsequently re-nationalized Russia’s oil industry).

142.00 -165.00

Part 7 discusses the concept of Peak Oil and the current dispute between the Iraqi Kurds and the Iraqi government over the control of the Bakr oil terminal near Bazra. At present it’s illegal for the Kurds to export their own oil. Eighty-five percent of Iraqi oil is processed at the Bakr oil terminal and Iraqi Kurdistan on receives 17% of this revenue.

165.00 – 190.00

Part 8 is about the Seven Sisters exploitation of Mexican and Venezuelan oil prior to the election of Hugo Chavez as president. It also summarizes that status of the countries (Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Brazil, and Malaysia) that have nationalized their oil industry. At present these countries control one-third of oil and gas production, and more than one-third of oil reserves. Despite their role in instigating western military aggression, the influence of the Seven Sisters continues to declines.

At present they control 10% of oil production and only 3% of oil reserves. Their monopoly on exploration, drilling and refining technology gives them disproportionate control over the industry.

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*Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela

The US and Israel Quietly Break Up Iraq

 

US Court Orders Kurdish Oil Seized

While the world is distracted with Israeli atrocities in Gaza, the US and Israel are quietly breaking up Iraq. According to Reuters UK, a federal court in Texas has ordered US Marshals to seize a $100 million cargo of Kurdish oil on a tanker off the coast of Galveston, Texas – but only if the tanker enters US territorial waters.

Attorneys for the government of Iraq laid claim to the oil in a lawsuit they filed on July 28. Since May, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has shipped five million-barrel tankers of oil from the Turkish port of Ceyhan in defiance of Iraqi law, which mandates that Baghdad has sole authority over Iraq’s natural resources. One cargo of Kurdish crude was delivered to the United States in May to an unidentified buyer.

Four other tanker loads of Kurdish oil have been delivered to Israel.

The recent inability of the Iraqi government to defend its northern territories from the Islamic State (aka ISIS aka ISIL) has emboldened the KRG to assert control over the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. With the complicity of the Turkish government, they have been marketing the oil on their own behalf. Because Kurdistan is land-locked the oil must be shipped via pipeline to Turkey.

Obama’s Contradictory Position on Kurdish Autonomy

This is one rare instance in which the US and Israel appear to be on opposite sides (or do they?). According to the Wall Street Journal, the Obama administration publicly opposes direct oil sales by Kurdistan, fearing this could contribute to the break-up of Iraq.

Yet, repeating a common pattern, the official position contradicts growing evidence that the CIA is training and arming ISIS militants.

Israel, meanwhile, is eager to expand trade with Kurdistan. According to unnamed Israeli officials, they see it as an opportunity to expand Israel’s limited diplomatic network in the Middle East, while simultaneously shoring up the country’s energy security.

photo credit: judy_and_ed via photopin cc

Letter from a Modern Day Mandela

photo credit: http://www.freeocalan.org/

Open Letter to the Guardian

Guest post by Abdullah Ocalan

On Thursday 5 December 2013, the Guardian published an editorial article on the occasion of Nelson Mandela’s death. The article included a significant(!) comparison between Mandela and some other names like Jawaharlal Nehru, Aung Sang Suu Kyi, and me.  As long as they approach the issue with a hegemon’s mindset, the potentates will certainly continue to make such comparisons among those figures wining the affection of their peoples. However, any comparison has its own inner problems.

The time of the struggles, varying geographic and political conditions and even the characteristic differences between the figures will render such comparisons problematic. First of all, for me, being remembered together with a leader for whom all the world shed tears shows the extent to which our struggle line has taken universal dimensions. It also demonstrates the fact that our case couldn’t be explained as a struggle only against an unjust treatment.

Writing on the capabilities of a leader with exemplary methods of struggle and negotiation just after his death needs some more pondering on the history and politics of risk-takers, in order to get a better understanding of the conditions of those who haven’t been afraid of struggling in the front line throughout history.

There are clear-cut differences between the front-line strugglers and deskbound analysts. The greatest difference is to witness the death of your comrades and your people, live the experience moment to moment, and do right and wrong.  Restricting the esteem and dignity of such an important leader with ‘the prison’ is a beleaguered approach which holds in contempt the self-realized political struggle of a people with over 40 million population voluntarily approving this leader as the representation of their own will.  How objective and just would it be to turn a blind eye on the national identity the Kurdish people have achieved after a 40-year-long freedom struggle, and on our peace efforts for a democratic solution to the Kurdish question.

Comparing me with Nelson Mandela in your article, you had referred to me as “feared and worshiped”. Here, not only can I see more easily the writer’s desire to be the state chronicle of a history which tramples on the world’s oppressed, but also I discern the codes of the purposive enmity harbored against both of the compared figures, whose only resource for facing the enslaving, massacre and denial policies is their own self-belief.

It is too evident to need proof that a person who has spent the last 14 years of his life in a prison-island alone and under solitary confinement can be a “source of fear” only for those who have put him into chains. The chains speak for themselves ….

In reply to those who, instead of analyzing the fear spread by the hegemons, are busy giving advice and teaching lessons to those struggling against these hegemons, I should say, in all modesty, that Dear Madiba and me have more parallels than contrasts.

Everybody knows that the ordeal succeeded in facing the Apartheid regime was an accomplishment of not only the South African people, but at the same time of the leader in whom they had unsuspectedly confided their fate.  No matter their numbers, the many ludicrous comments made on Mandela’s credibility come from the quarters which  adopt a remote and trivial approach to the ‘struggle of the oppressed’ rather than making a close and reasonable analysis.

The self-organization processes of the communities subjected to suppression and discrimination would differ from the common practices, especially when they begin to make a true analysis of the notion of capitalist modernity. Traditionally, the organizational options of ‘the book’ are already known. But time proceeds forward and circumstances change, in company with historical determinism. Changing conditions will bring about changes in the behavior and attitude of individuals and organizations, either captive or free. When it comes to the PKK, instead of bringing about pragmatic progress, these changes have led to the political and ethical progress for a movement which has transformed itself on the basis of the struggle for democratic modernity and the developing direct democracy examples in the world.

The 12 September 1980 fascist coup followed by many organized coups against our community as well as the international conspiracy act against me and our movement share one thing in common with other interferences in other struggles of the oppressed; and that is the silence of the international community in the face of these interventions.  Despite the progress in the international democratic standards in the 21st century, due to the state propaganda characteristic of the international conspiracy, the dehumanization of the struggling leaders held captive still continues, based on poor intellectual standards.

How odd it is that a credible newspaper in Britain has not noticed the recent democratization progresses that we have made in Mesopotamia. As far as the approach is concerned, I hope it to be only ‘odd’, not more. Looking at the general approach of the article, what I see is not only the “oddness”; rather, every line is a dead giveaway to a hierarchic and ‘from above’ viewpoint.

Here, those opposing peace are accusing us of starting negotiations, are dehumanizing me in the eyes of the new generations and defaming our movement which has adopted peace and settlement as its main principle.  They are running and organized activity to blacken the reputation of our efforts for democratic modernity.  How odd it is that racist notions and old propaganda rhetoric which have even lost their reputation in Turkey are still being repeatedly covered in the international press.

The only topic to be discussed after Mandel’s demise should be Apartheid, a regime which history would remember only with shame. Nobody would keep a memoir of Apartheid and its leaders; nobody would shed tears for them; whereas Mandela has become a shining star for the peoples of Africa.  Our historical mission is to ensure the ever brilliance of this star for the peoples of the Middle East. The friendship developed on the basis of principled and political integrity between the peoples’ movements and particularly our movement, relies on the changing dynamics and the horizontal nature of their policies.  To believe that these laws of goodwill and friendship have been developed on the basis of fear can only be explained by having no knowledge about the metamorphosis eras the Kurdish political movement has undergone and failing to observe its democratic inner reflections of the peaceful and negotiating perspective of this movement.

Likewise, negotiation and struggle are both important processes in determining the future of peoples’ movements and those leading these processes are figures winning the confidence of the peoples, not ‘feared’ ones. If not so, it wouldn’t be possible for these movements to be represented both in the parliamentary system and the local politics , as it wouldn’t have been possible to succeed in the years-long armed struggle.

My recommendation to the editorial board of the Guardian is to do more research and analysis on the role of the women in our political movement and the resulting transformative effects. Then, they would certainly encounter such an infinite experience so as to take off their colonialist hat, though ashamedly.

Abdullah Ocalan
The Prison Island of Imrali

Abdullah Öcalan Apo, is one of the founding members (1978) of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey. Like the early ANC, the PKK is labeled as a “terrorist” organization by the US and its allies. Link to “Free Ocalan” website: http://www.freeocalan.org/