U.S. Oil Output to Overtake Saudi Arabia’s by 2020

Lananh Nguyen
Nov 12, 2012
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-12/u-s-to-overtake-saudi-arabia-s-oil-production-by-2020-iea-says.html

Growing supplies of crude extracted through new technology including hydraulic fracturing of underground rock formations will transform the U.S. into the largest producer for about five years starting about 2020, the Paris-based adviser to 28 nations said today in its annual World Energy Outlook. The U.S. met 83 percent of its energy needs in the first six months of this year, according to the Energy Department in Washington.

“The IEA outlook feeds into the idea of a shift in the center of influence in the world oil market,” said Gareth Lewis-Davies, an analyst at BNP Paribas SA in London. “Given Saudi Arabia is willing to shift production up and down it will retain a large degree of influence, and remain important as a price-influencer.”

The U.S., whose crude imports have fallen 11 percent this year, is on track to produce the most oil since 1991, according to Energy Department data. In a year when Iran has threatened to halt Persian Gulf oil shipments, the growing output, coupled with a gas-production boom, may help insulate the nation from supply disruptions. President Barack Obama cited “freeing ourselves from foreign oil” as a policy goal in his election victory speech last week, echoing his predecessor, George W. Bush, who in 2006 urged the U.S. to break its “addiction” to imported crude.

Oil Prices

West Texas Intermediate crude, the benchmark U.S. grade, has dropped 13 percent this year to $85.55 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, as stockpiles swelled to a 22-year high. Prices have more than quadrupled in the past decade, reaching as high as $147.27 a barrel in July 2008.

Global demand for oil is projected to rise to 99.7 million barrels a day in 2035, up from 87.4 million last year, according to the IEA, which advises industrialized nations including the U.S., Germany and Japan. Today’s report projects trends to 2035.

Saudi Arabia pumped 9.8 million barrels of oil a day last month, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. U.S. output was 6.7 million barrels a day in the week ended Nov. 2, according to the Energy Department.

Overtaking Saudi Arabia

The U.S. will pump 11.1 million barrels of oil a day in 2020 and 10.9 million in 2025, the IEA said. Those figures are 500,000 barrels a day and 100,000 barrels a day higher, respectively, than its forecasts for Saudi Arabia for those years. The desert kingdom is due to become the biggest producer again by 2030, pumping 11.4 million barrels a day versus 10.2 million in the U.S.

“Around 2017, the U.S. will be the largest oil producer of the world, overtaking Saudi Arabia,” IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol said at a press conference in London today. “This is of course a major development and definitely will have significant implications.”

Officials at the U.S. Energy Department weren’t available for comment because government offices were closed in observance of the U.S. Veteran’s Day holiday today. A Saudi Arabian oil ministry official based in Riyadh wasn’t immediately available to comment on the report when contacted by phone today.

The IEA report described the U.S.’s advancement toward energy self-sufficiency as “a dramatic reversal of the trend seen in most other energy-importing countries.” The nation is developing so-called tight oil reserves including the Bakken shale formation, which are extracted by hydraulic fracturing or horizontal drilling.

Shrinking Imports

U.S. oil imports will drop to about 4 million barrels a day in 10 years from a current average of 10 million because of new production and stricter fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks, which will curb demand, Birol said.

The IEA isn’t alone in forecasting that the U.S. will overtake Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the largest oil producer. The U.S. will achieve that goal before the end of this decade, Citigroup Inc. said in a March 20 report that included biofuels and natural gas liquids in its calculations.

The European Union banned oil imports from Iran in July over the nation’s nuclear program, reducing shipments from a country that was until then the second-biggest producer in OPEC.

The IEA’s members will probably pay about $125 a barrel for imported oil by 2035, compared with Brent crude prices near $109 today on London’s ICE Futures Europe exchange. The North Sea grade peaked at a record $147.50 a barrel in July 2008 before tumbling to about $46 that December, and has gained in each of the three years since then.

‘Epic Failure’

Efforts by global policy makers to promote energy efficiency have been an “epic failure” and fallen short of their economic potential, Birol said. Increased energy-saving measures could cut worldwide oil demand by almost 13 million barrels a day by 2035, or the current combined output of Russia and Norway. Put another way, were efficiency measures suggested by the IEA enacted in full, the increase in world energy demand over the period would be cut in half.

Natural gas consumption will rise in the forecast period, driven by China, India and the Middle East.

“In the United States, low prices and abundant supply see gas overtake oil around 2030 to become the largest fuel in the energy mix,” according to the report, written by a team of researchers led by Birol.

Iraqi Surge

Iraq will be the biggest contributor to new oil supplies, raising production to 6 million barrels a day by 2020. By 2035, the nation’s output rate will rise to more than 8 million, overtaking Russia to become the world’s second-largest exporter, the IEA said. The country pumped 3.4 million barrels a day last month, making it the second-largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, after Saudi Arabia, according to Bloomberg estimates.

The forecasts for Iraq, a special focus of this year’s IEA outlook, were previously published on Oct. 9.

In emerging nations, government subsidies will continue to spur fossil fuels use, even as lower-carbon energy sources become more popular. State subsidies cost $523 billion last year, up almost 30 percent from 2010. Subsidy programs, which remain most prevalent in the Middle East and North Africa, have become more expensive as oil prices rose, the agency said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Lananh Nguyen in London at lnguyen35@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Voss at sev@bloomberg.net

Top 10 Threats of 2012

Arnaud De Borchgrave
Friday, 06 Jan 2012
Full Article:
http://www.newsmax.com/deBorchgrave/Iran-al-Qaida-Pakistan-threats/2012/01/06/id/423323

These are the top 10 that directly threaten the U.S. homeland and are likely to trigger U.S. military involvement:

A mass casualty attack on the U.S. homeland or on a treaty ally.

A severe North Korean crisis (e.g., armed provocations, internal political instability, advances in nuclear weaponry).

A major military incident with China involving U.S. or allied forces.

An Iranian nuclear crisis (e.g., surprise advances in nuclear weapons/delivery capability, Israeli response).

A highly disruptive cyber-attack on U.S. critical infrastructure (e.g., telecommunications, electrical power, pipeline output, transportation and emergency services.

A significant increase in drug trafficking violence in Mexico that spills over into the United States.

Severe internal instability in Pakistan triggered by a civil-military crisis or terror attacks.

Political instability in Saudi Arabia that endangers global oil supplies.

A U.S.-Pakistan military confrontation, triggered by a terror attack or U.S. counter-terror.

Intensification of the European sovereign debt crisis that leads to the collapse of the euro, triggering a double-edged transatlantic crisis.

Happy New Year!

FBI Insider: Obama Administration Likely Manufactured Dubious Terror Plot

No information about plot exists within FBI channels
Paul Joseph Watson
Wednesday, October 13, 2011
http://www.prisonplanet.com/fbi-insider-obama-administration-likely-manufactured-dubious-terror-plot.html

Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer says that an FBI insider told him the dubious terror plot to assassinate a Saudi ambassador which has been blamed on Iran was likely manufactured by the Obama administration, because no information about the plot even exists within FBI channels.

The plot, an assassination attempt against Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, was pinned on an Iranian-American used-car salesman from Texas and subsequently linked by the Obama administration to a wider conspiracy controlled by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

According to the administration, used car salesman Mansour J. Arbabsiar tried to hire assassins from a Mexican drug gang to carry out the murder, but the head of the drug gang turned out to be a DEA agent posing as a Mexican Los Zetas gangster. The story has all the hallmarks of classic FBI entrapment tactics that have characterized almost every major terror bust in recent times.

Having personally interrogated Iranians, Shaffer doubted the fact that members of the elite Quds Force would risk carrying out an assassination in the United States when it would be far easier to conduct such a plot in the middle east.

“It does not smell correctly,” Shaffer told Fox Business host Andrew Napolitano, adding that it was doubtful a successful used car salesman who has been part of the community for 15 years would suddenly become embroiled in an international assassination plot.

Asked by Napolitano if Arbabsiar was the victim of another FBI sting, Shaffer responded, “I think that’s part of it.”

“The FBI’s had a record lately and I did talk to one of my inside guys and he is saying he thinks the same thing, you know why, because he can’t find any real information and he’s got a clearance – so that tells him that there’s something going on that’s extraordinary by the fact that he’s an inside investigator, knows what’s going on and yet, I’m gonna quote here, ‘There’s nothing on this within the DOJ beyond what they’ve talked about publicly’ – which means to him that there’s something very wrong with it,” said Shaffer.

Even the New York Times is now reporting that the dubious nature of the plot has caused “a wave of puzzlement and skepticism from some foreign leaders and outside experts.”

The military-industrial complex has long been searching for a pretext that could be used to justify military strikes against Iran.

In a 2009 report entitled “Which Path to Persia?”, the elitist Brookings Institution wrote, “It would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be.”

The dubious plot has been instantly seized upon by the likes of Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to push for Iran to be further isolated by the international community. Kerry’s comments were perhaps the most bellicose, telling reporters yesterday, “I don’t think anything should be taken off the table at this point in time.”

It has also served as a useful distraction for Attorney General Eric Holder, who is currently under investigation for his role in the infamous Fast and Furious program, which saw the federal government deliver thousands of military-grade weapons to leaders of Mexican drug gangs.

“That the current “alleged” plot pinned on Iran revolves around yet another undercover federal agency conducting a long-term sting operation defies belief,” writes Tony Cartalucci. “That we are expected to believe one of Iran’s most elite military forces left such a sensitive, potentially war-starting operation to a used-car salesman and a drug gang reported in the papers daily for its involvement with US government agencies (and who turns out to actually be undercover DEA agents) is so ridiculous it can only be “made up” as Secretary Clinton puts it. More accurately, it is the result of an impotent US intelligence community incapable of contriving anything more convincing in the face of an ever awakening American public, to bolster its morally destitute agenda. The cartoonish nature of the plot and the arms’ length even its proponents treat it with to maintain plausible deniability is indicative of a dangerously out of control ruling elite and an utterly incompetent, criminally insane government.”

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.

The World's Tallest Skyscraper

Courtesy of Yahoo and Gizmodo, here's some designer images of Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which at 3,281 feet will be the world's tallest building when completed. Dubai's Burq Khalifa is a mere 2,717 feet tall...

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/kingdom-tower-set-world-record-tallest-mega-skyscraper-170649407.html

http://gizmodo.com/5828801/the-new-images-of-the-kingdom-tower-are-simply-insane/gallery/1

Saudis mobilise thousands of troops to quell growing revolt

Robert Fisk, Middle East Correspondent
Saturday, 5 March 2011
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudis-mobilise-thousands-of-troops-to-quell-growing-revolt-2232928.html

Saudi Arabia was yesterday drafting up to 10,000 security personnel into its north-eastern Shia Muslim provinces, clogging the highways into Dammam and other cities with busloads of troops in fear of next week's "day of rage" by what is now called the "Hunayn Revolution".

Saudi Arabia's worst nightmare – the arrival of the new Arab awakening of rebellion and insurrection in the kingdom – is now casting its long shadow over the House of Saud. Provoked by the Shia majority uprising in the neighbouring Sunni-dominated island of Bahrain, where protesters are calling for the overthrow of the ruling al-Khalifa family, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is widely reported to have told the Bahraini authorities that if they do not crush their Shia revolt, his own forces will.

The opposition is expecting at least 20,000 Saudis to gather in Riyadh and in the Shia Muslim provinces of the north-east of the country in six days, to demand an end to corruption and, if necessary, the overthrow of the House of Saud. Saudi security forces have deployed troops and armed police across the Qatif area – where most of Saudi Arabia's Shia Muslims live – and yesterday would-be protesters circulated photographs of armoured vehicles and buses of the state-security police on a highway near the port city of Dammam.

Although desperate to avoid any outside news of the extent of the protests spreading, Saudi security officials have known for more than a month that the revolt of Shia Muslims in the tiny island of Bahrain was expected to spread to Saudi Arabia. Within the Saudi kingdom, thousands of emails and Facebook messages have encouraged Saudi Sunni Muslims to join the planned demonstrations across the "conservative" and highly corrupt kingdom. They suggest – and this idea is clearly co-ordinated – that during confrontations with armed police or the army next Friday, Saudi women should be placed among the front ranks of the protesters to dissuade the Saudi security forces from opening fire.

If the Saudi royal family decides to use maximum violence against demonstrators, US President Barack Obama will be confronted by one of the most sensitive Middle East decisions of his administration. In Egypt, he only supported the demonstrators after the police used unrestrained firepower against protesters. But in Saudi Arabia – supposedly a "key ally" of the US and one of the world's principal oil producers – he will be loath to protect the innocent.

So far, the Saudi authorities have tried to dissuade their own people from supporting the 11 March demonstrations on the grounds that many protesters are "Iraqis and Iranians". It's the same old story used by Ben Ali of Tunisia and Mubarak of Egypt and Bouteflika of Algeria and Saleh of Yemen and the al-Khalifas of Bahrain: "foreign hands" are behind every democratic insurrection in the Middle East.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Mr Obama will be gritting their teeth next Friday in the hope that either the protesters appear in small numbers or that the Saudis "restrain" their cops and security; history suggests this is unlikely. When Saudi academics have in the past merely called for reforms, they have been harassed or arrested. King Abdullah, albeit a very old man, does not brook rebel lords or restive serfs telling him to make concessions to youth. His £27bn bribe of improved education and housing subsidies is unlikely to meet their demands.

An indication of the seriousness of the revolt against the Saudi royal family comes in its chosen title: Hunayn. This is a valley near Mecca, the scene of one of the last major battles of the Prophet Mohamed against a confederation of Bedouins in AD630. The Prophet won a tight victory after his men were fearful of their opponents. The reference in the Koran, 9: 25-26, as translated by Tarif el-Khalidi, contains a lesson for the Saudi princes: "God gave you victory on many battlefields. Recall the day of Hunayn when you fancied your great numbers.

"So the earth, with all its wide expanse, narrowed before you and you turned tail and fled. Then God made his serenity to descend upon his Messenger and the believers, and sent down troops you did not see – and punished the unbelievers." The unbelievers, of course, are supposed – in the eyes of the Hunayn Revolution – to be the King and his thousand princes.

Like almost every other Arab potentate over the past three months, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia suddenly produced economic bribes and promised reforms when his enemy was at the gates. Can the Arabs be bribed? Their leaders can, perhaps, especially when, in the case of Egypt, Washington was offering it the largest handout of dollars – $1.5bn (£800m) – after Israel. But when the money rarely trickles down to impoverished and increasingly educated youth, past promises are recalled and mocked. With oil prices touching $120 a barrel and the Libyan debacle lowering its production by up to 75 per cent, the serious economic – and moral, should this interest the Western powers – question, is how long the "civilised world" can go on supporting the nation whose citizens made up almost all of the suicide killers of 9/11?

The Arabian peninsula gave the world the Prophet and the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans and the Taliban and 9/11 and – let us speak the truth – al-Qa'ida. This week's protests in the kingdom will therefore affect us all – but none more so than the supposedly conservative and definitely hypocritical pseudo-state, run by a company without shareholders called the House of Saud.

Passing the peace pipe instead

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_6421.shtml

Passing the peace pipe instead
By Jayne Lyn Stahl
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Oct 7, 2010

No sooner has the ink dried on the first copy of Bob Woodward’s tell all book which, among other things, outs the conflict between Obama and his military advisors over the direction of the Afghan war, than the Washington Post reports that the Karzai government is now in “high level,” preliminary talks with the Taliban in an attempt to negotiate an end to the nine year war. This information was provided anonymously by Afghan, and Arab sources.

One can only marvel at the convenient timing, less than a month away from a crucial midterm election in which a Democratic Congress is about to lose its shirt and at a time, too, when public awareness of rising drone attacks in neighboring Pakistan has never been greater.

While Mr. Obama has said from the start that he favors diplomacy over warfare, only the most ingenuous would deny the egregious political expediency of passing the peace pipe given that July 2011 endgame in the region gets closer with every passing day.

Reportedly, too, the Saudis have held what are called “inconclusive meetings” to reconcile the Taliban with the Karzai government until about a year ago. You may recall that Osama bin Laden hails from Saudi Arabia. Why, over the past nine years, haven’t the Saudis arranged to have a pow-wow with him?

Another gaping question is, given all the controversy surrounding Hamid Karzai’s brother, and the pervasiveness of Taliban influence to be found throughout Afghanistan from its police force to its poppy farmers, how can these negotiations be seen as anything but a public relations ploy designed to obscure the obvious: to accept the legitimacy of the Afghan war, one would have to believe that the insurgents are fighting themselves.

But, indeed they are not. This is not a civil war. What is happening in Afghanistan is altogether different from what happened in Iraq. It is not about faction A Taliban fighting faction B, but instead access to Helmand Province’s lucrative poppy field, and ongoing control of the region including, as also recently disclosed, access to the area’s mineral wealth. .

America’s short-term memory deficit must astound the world. Does anybody remember the Obama administration’s stated objective being counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, or merely to divest the Afghan/Pakistan border of al Qaeda? How quickly that goal was forgotten. .

General Petraeus, too, appears to endorse “high level” Taliban representatives reaching out to the Karzai government: “This is how you end these kinds of insurgencies,” he is reported to have said. Now he tells us! After the surge, troop increase of 30,000, not to mention escalation of the drone campaign, after many thousands of American, and Afghan lives, ending the war is as simple as taking a meeting.

One thing is clear. Any meeting between Taliban representatives and the Karzai government that doesn’t include, and affirm Pakistan’s sovereignty will be counterfeit as any withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan in July, 2011 will then mean only redeployment to Islamabad.

Jayne Lyn Stahl is a widely published poet, essayist, playwright, and screenwriter, member of PEN American Center, and PEN USA.

Deepak Chopra on Mumbai

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelle-haimoff/deepak-chopra-on-mumbai-t_b_146837.html

Michelle Haimoff
November 27, 2008
Deepak Chopra on Mumbai: Too Controversial for CNN?

Read More: Auto Industry, Big Oil, Cars, Chevrolet, Cnn, Deepak Chopra, Deepak Chopra Cnn, Deepak Chopra Mumbai, India, Larry King, Mumbai, Mumbai Attacks, Mumbai Deaths, Mumbai Hotel Shootings, Mumbai Terrorist Attacks, Oil, Oil Industry, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism, War On Terror, Politics News

A CNN journalist interviewed Deepak Chopra last night about his take on the Mumbai attacks and how to prevent similar attacks in the future, but it looked like producers cut Chopra off when he started to get too controversial.

Chopra: What we have seen in Mumbai has been brewing for a long time, and the war on terrorism and the attack on Iraq compounded the situation. What we call "collateral damage" and going after the wrong people actually turns moderates into extremists, and that inflammation then gets organized and appears as this disaster in Bombay. Now the worst thing that could happen is there's a backlash on the Muslims from the fundamental Hindus in India, which then will perpetuate the problem. Inflammation will create more inflammation.

CNN: Let me jump in on that because you're presuming something very important, which is that it's Muslims who have carried out these attacks and, in some cases, with Washington in their sights.

Chopra: Ultimately the message is always toward Washington because it's also the perception that Washington, in their way, directly or indirectly funds both sides of the war on terror. They fund our side, then our petrol dollars going to Saudi Arabia through Pakistan and ultimately these terrorist groups, which are very organized. You know Jonathan, it takes a lot of money to do this. It takes a lot of organization to do this. Where's the money coming from, you know? The money is coming from the vested interests. I'm not talking about conspiracy theories, but what happens is, our policies, our foreign policies, actually perpetuate this problem. Because, you know, 25% of the world's population is Muslim and they're the fastest growing segment of the population of the world. The more we alienate the Muslim population, the more the moderates are likely to become extremists.

CNN: I hope you're - you've - (CNN edits out the rest and inserts him concluding the interview saying "Indian physician and philosopher Deepak Chopra.")

I don't know why CNN wrapped the Chopra interview so hastily, but perhaps it was because the network had a Chevrolet ad to run. Chevrolet. Which is a manufacturer of automobiles. Which are propelled by gasoline. Which comes from oil rich countries like Saudi Arabia. Which fund Islamic fundamentalists. Which do things like attack hotels in India.

As Thomas L. Friedman has been saying for years, "the price of oil and the pace of freedom are inversely correlated." When oil prices are high, anti-democratic regimes become richer and more powerful, terrorists get funding and the world is unsafe. When oil prices are low, the "petroauthoritarian regimes [have] to open themselves to foreign investment and educate and empower their people more in order to earn income." When there is no demand for oil at all, there is simply no money with which to fund terrorists.

I hope that CNN producers didn't edit the end of the Chopra interview in deference to their car company advertisers. Chopra touched on similar topics with Larry King earlier in the day, so perhaps cutting the interview off was just a formatting decision. I'm going to pretend that it's that. Because if I thought that a news network in a democratic country was censoring the connection between oil dependence and terrorism for fear of upsetting advertisers I wouldn't be able to sleep at night.

Oil Output to Hold Steady, OPEC Says

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120472070893413521.html

Oil Output to Hold Steady, OPEC Says
By SPENCER SWARTZ and GRAINNE MCCARTHY
March 5, 2008

VIENNA -- OPEC held its current production policy unchanged Wednesday, according to senior officials, rebuffing calls from large consuming nations to pump more oil to help alleviate scorching crude prices.

The decision comes amid heightened fears about the health of economic growth in the U.S., the world's largest energy consumer, and against a backdrop of rising crude inventories in the world's industrialized nations.

Despite benchmark crude prices trading above $100 a barrel, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries opted to continue pumping and wait until the energy demand picture in the U.S. becomes clearer, officials said ahead of the group's official post-meeting press conference.

"The oil market is currently stable," said Saudi Arabia's powerful Oil Minister Ali Naimi. "Stock levels are within the five-year average and there is no need to increase even one barrel of oil."

OPEC's decision comes after President George W. Bush said it would be a "mistake" for the cartel not to raise output. "I think it's a mistake to have your biggest customer's economy slow down...as a result of high energy prices," Mr. Bush said. "My advice to OPEC is understand the consequences of high energy prices."

OPEC, which produces four out of every ten barrels of oil consumed globally, says there's no demand for extra oil and continues to lay the blame for soaring oil prices at the door of what Mr. Naimi called "tremendous speculation."

"There are even those who buy futures and speculate that oil prices will reach more than $200 in 2013 and 2015." he said. "The most important thing that OPEC and Saudi Arabia look at is the stability of market factors."

"Heightened levels of speculation have been a major driving force behind the volatility of the past few years, and this has not been welcomed by our organization," said OPEC President Chakib Khelil.

Crude oil traders say OPEC is powerless to wield much influence over crude oil prices, which are currently taking their cue more from Federal Reserve monetary policy, rising inflation fears and the weak dollar than oil supply and demand factors. Alongside $100 crude, gold is flirting with $1,000 an ounce, and a host of commodities are trading at multiyear highs.

Still, many analysts believe the next few months could herald a change in OPEC policy, with producers either officially or unofficially taking more barrels of oil off global markets in the event of a marked slowdown in the U.S. making a real dent in energy demand. A big uncertainty in this scenario centers on how well developing economies, most notably China and India, can withstand any U.S. slowdown or recession.

"Persistent oil demand in Asia and the Middle East is based on a perception of a less degree of linkage between the U.S. economy and Asian economies," said Tor Kartevold, a special adviser on oil trading to Norway's StatoilHydro ASA. "The jury is still out on that."

Mr. Naimi gave an upbeat view of global energy demand for now, confirming that the kingdom is pumping 9.2 million barrels a day and finding customers for it. Saudi Arabia, the only true custodian of spare capacity within the 13-member group, has been pumping at this level for several months, some 300,000 barrels a day above its official OPEC quota.

Nymex light, sweet crude broke back above the $100 a barrel mark before the OPEC decision emerged. The rollover was widely anticipated by the crude markets, and had little immediate impact on prices.

"The key will be whether they say "we're not going to do anything before the next scheduled meeting" or "we're going to hold another one'," said Jim Rintoul of TheOilTrader. "If the meeting is less than three months away, it would suggest they want to keep hold of this market, and the market would see that as supportive of prices."

On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude for April delivery was recently trading up 80 cents and $100.32 a barrel. On London's Intercontinental Exchange, April Brent was up 53 cents at $98.05.

--Hassan Hafidh and Nick Heath contributed to this article.

Write to Spencer Swartz at spencer.swartz@dowjones.com and Grainne McCarthy at grainne.mccarthy@dowjones.com

George of Arabia

George of Arabia:
Better Kiss Your Abe 'Goodbye'
by Greg Palast
GregPalast.com
Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Bend over, pull out your wallet and kiss your Abe ‘goodbye.’ The Lincolns have got to go - and so do the Hamiltons and Jacksons.

Those bills in your billfold aren’t yours anymore. The landlords of our currency - Citibank, the national treasury of China and the House of Saud - are foreclosing and evicting all Americans from the US economy.

It’s mornings like this, when I wake up hung-over to photos of the King of Saudi Arabia festooning our President with gold necklaces, that I reluctantly remember that I am an economist; and one with some responsibility to explain what the hell Bush is doing kissing Abdullah’s camel.

Let’s begin by stating why Bush is not in Saudi Arabia. Bush ain’t there to promote ‘Democracy’ nor peace in Palestine, nor even war in Iran. And, despite what some pinhead from CNN stated, he sure as hell didn’t go to Riyadh to tell the Saudis to cut the price of oil.

What’s really behind Bush’s hajj to Riyadh is that America is in hock up to our knickers. The sub-prime mortgage market implosion, hitting a dozen banks with over $100 billion in losses, is just the tip of the debt-berg.

Since taking office, Bush has doubled the federal debt to more than $5 trillion. And, according to US Treasury figures, on net, foreign investors have purchased close to 100% of that debt. That’s $3 trillion borrowed from the Saudis, the Chinese, the Japanese and others.

Now, Bush, our Debt Junkie-in-Chief, needs another fix. The US Treasury, Citibank, Merrill-Lynch and other financial desperados need another hand-out from Abdullah’s stash. Abdullah, in turn, gets this financial juice by pumping it out of our pockets at nearly $100 a barrel for his crude.

Bush needs the Saudis to charge us big bucks for oil. The Saudis can’t lend the US Treasury and Citibank hundreds of billions of US dollars unless they first get these US dollars from the US. The high price of oil is, in effect, a tax levied by Bush but collected by the oil industry and the Gulf kingdoms to fund our multi-trillion dollar governmental and private debt-load.

The US Treasury is not alone in its frightening dependency on Arabian loot. America’s private financial institutions are also begging for foreign treasure. Yesterday, King Abdullah’s nephew, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, already the top individual owner of Citibank, joined the Kuwait government’s Investment Authority and others to mainline a $12.5 billion injection of capital into the New York bank. Also this week, the Abu Dhabi government and the Saudi Olayan Group are taking a $6.6 billion chunk of Merrill-Lynch. It’s no mere coincidence that Bush is in Abdullah’s tent when the money-changers made the deal just outside it.

Bush is there to assure Abdullah that, unlike Dubai’s ports purchase debacle, there will be no political impediment to the Saudi’s buying up Citibank nor the isle of Manhattan.

So what? I mean, for the average American about to lose their job and their bungalow it doesn’t matter a twit whether it’s Sheik bin Alwaleed who owns Citibank or Sheik Sanford Weill, Citi’s past Chairman.

It’s the price paid to buy back our money from abroad that’s killing us. Despite the Koranic prohibition on charging interest, the Gulf princes demand their pound of flesh, exacting a 7% payment from Citibank and 9% from Merrill. That hefty interest bill then pushes adjustable rate mortgages into the stratosphere and pushes manufacturing into China by making borrowing and energy costs impossible to overcome. Forget the cost of health care: General Motors’ interest burden quintupled in just two years.

As the great economist Paddy Chayefsky wrote in the film The Network:

“The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back. … It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity…. There are no nations, there are no peoples. There is only one vast and immense, interwoven, multi-national dominion of petro-dollars. … There is no America. There is no ‘democracy.’ The world is a business, one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work.”

In 2005, the US consumer paid Arab and OPEC nations a quarter trillion dollars ($252 billion) for oil - and the USA received back 100% of it - and then some ($311 billion) via Gulf nations’ investment in US Treasury bills and purchases of US businesses and property. Bush’s trip to Abdullah’s tent is all about this vast business of keeping this petro-dollar treadmill spinning.

The Bush Administration, rather than tax Americans to cover our deficits or make the banks suffer the consequences of their predatory lending practices, is allowing the Saudis to charge us big time at the pump with the understanding they will lend it all back to us - so the party never has to stop.

It has been reported that the President’s Secret Service men traveling with him seemed embarrassed by the eye-popping loads of diamond and gold gifts which they have to carry back for President Bush. They need not feel they have taken too much from their hosts: Bush has assured Abdullah that the King can suck it back out through our gas tanks.
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Greg Palast is the author of The Network: The World as a Company Town, in the New York Times bestseller, Armed Madhouse. Hear Ed Asner read from the book and the film ‘The Network’ at http://www.gregpalast.com/

Who killed Benazir Bhutto? The main suspects

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7687

Who killed Benazir Bhutto? The main suspects
by Jeremy Page
Global Research, December 27, 2007
The Times

The main suspects in Benazir Bhutto’s assassination are the Pakistani and foreign Islamist militants who saw her as a heretic and an American stooge and had repeatedly threatened to kill her.

But fingers will also be pointed at Inter-Services Intelligence, the agency that has had close ties to the Islamists since the 1970s and has been used by successive Pakistani leaders to suppress political opposition.

Ms Bhutto narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in October, when a suicide bomber killed about 140 people at a rally in the port city of Karachi to welcome her back from eight years in exile.

Earlier that month, two militant warlords based in Pakistan's lawless northwestern areas, near the border with Afghanistan, had threatened to kill her on her return.

One was Baitullah Mehsud, a top commander fighting the Pakistani army in the tribal region of South Waziristan. He has close ties to al Qaeda and the Afghan Taleban.

The other was Haji Omar, the “amir” or leader of the Pakistani Taleban, who is also from South Waziristan and fought against the Soviets with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.

After that attack Ms Bhutto revealed that she had received a letter signed by a person who claimed to be a friend of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden threatening to slaughter her like a goat.

She accused Pakistani authorities of not providing her with sufficient security and hinted that they may have been complicit in the bomb attack. Asif Ali Zardari, her husband, directly accused the ISI of being involved in that attempt on her life.

Mrs Bhutto stopped short of blaming the Government directly, saying that she had more to fear from unidentified members of a power structure that she described as allies of the “forces of militancy”.

Analysts say that President Musharraf himself is unlikely to have ordered her assassination, but that elements of the army and intelligence service would have stood to lose money and power if she had become Prime Minister.

The ISI, in particular, includes some Islamists who became radicalised while running the American-funded campaign against the Soviets in Afghanistan and remained fiercely opposed to Ms Bhutto on principle.

Saudi Arabia, which has strong influence in Pakistan, is also thought to frown on Ms Bhutto as being too secular and Westernised and to favour Nawaz Sharif, another former Prime Minister.

Opec urged to end use of dollar

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/0D71066E-B8DE-4360-9F5C-816B8EA604D8.htm

Opec urged to end use of dollar

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, has called on Opec members to stop pricing oil in "worthless" US dollars.

"They get our oil and give us a worthless piece of paper," he told reporters at the close of a two day meeting of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries in Saudi Arabia.

The fall in the value of the dollar has weakened the purchasing power of Opec members and helped push oil prices to nearly $100 a barrel.

Ahmadinejad is to meet Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, later on Monday to discuss the issue.

Chavez echoed Ahmadinejad's sentiment, saying "the empire of the dollar has to end".

Opec's summit in Riyadh ended on Sunday with leaders divided over whether to dump the dollar as a currency to price and sell oil.

Both Iran and Venezuela have proposed trading oil in a basket of currencies to replace the falling dollar, but a final statement from Opec after the meeting did not include any reference to the weakening dollar.

Instead Opec vowed to keep providing Western consumers with an "adequate" supply of oil.

Saudi Arabia, a staunch ally of the US, had opposed the move to include concerns over the falling dollar included in the summit's closing statement and tried to direct the focus of the summit towards studying the effect of the oil industry on the environment.

Falling dollar

But both Iran and Venezuela made it clear that they would press for action on the dollar, which could include pricing oil in a basket of currencies.

"There was a proposal from Iran and Venezuela to have a basket of currencies for the pricing of OPEC oil," Bayan Jabor, the Iraqi finance minister, said.

"But a consensus could not be reached," he said, adding that backed by Ecuador, the two had won agreement that finance ministers would discuss the issue before a scheduled oil ministers meeting in Abu Dhabi on December 5.

"Because the final communique was already drafted, there was an agreement that Opec finance ministers hold a meeting before the oil meeting in the UAE in December to discuss economic issues including the dollar's exchange rate."

The Venezuelan leader had opened the summit urging Opec, which accounts for 40 per cent of world oil supplies, to be a "geopolitical agent".

Chavez lauded Opec's ability to ensure high oil prices for developing producer nations, saying Opec "must stand up and act as a vanguard against poverty in the world".

He threatened that if Washington follows through on military threats against Iran, oil could double to $200 a barrel.

The summit, only the third in the group's history, also acknowledged the oil industry's role in global warming, with pledges of cash for research into climate change.

Chavez Tells OPEC to Curb `Imperialism'

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aNmE.oybx0H0&refer=worldwide

Chavez Tells OPEC to Use Politics, Curb `Imperialism'
By Daniel Williams and Maher Chmaytelli

Nov. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez brought his revolutionary zeal to the cartel that controls 40 percent of the world's oil, urging fellow members at a weekend summit to fight against ``imperialism'' and ``exploitation.''

Chavez used the Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to advance a struggle for the soul of the cartel. Countering him was the conference host, Saudi King Abdullah, who said the organization's goal was simply to produce prosperity.

Their contrasting visions elbowed aside the usual OPEC talk about production quotas and currency fluctuations. In the short term at least, Abdullah's vision is likely to prevail, said Ihsan Bu-Hulaiga, who runs a private business consulting firm in Riyadh and advises the Saudi government.

``OPEC has to do with oil; it cannot solve the world's problems with a political agenda,'' he said. ``It would be putting its bread and butter at risk.''

Support for Chavez came from President Rafael Vicente Correa of Ecuador and from Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose nation is the target of a U.S.-led campaign of sanctions and pressure over allegations that it is pursuing nuclear weapons and destabilizing the region.

Chavez, 53, and Correa, 44, stopped short of threatening an embargo in case of a U.S. attack on Iran. ``We don't want to speculate,'' Correa said in response to a question about whether a halt in oil sales to the U.S. should be employed in case of war.

Anti-Colonial Roots

Chavez said his call for geopolitical activism takes OPEC back to its anti-colonial roots. He likened OPEC to the Non- Aligned Movement, a group founded in the 1950s to stand outside the Soviet-U.S. rivalry.

Chavez also addressed OPEC's debate over whether to drop the U.S. dollar as its currency for pricing oil. ``The dollar is in a free fall and everyone should be worried about it. The fall of the dollar is not the fall of the dollar. It's the fall of the American empire,'' he told a cluster of reporters outside the OPEC meeting hall yesterday.

King Abdullah brushed off proposals from Chavez and Ahamdinejad to drop the dollar.

To counter Chavez's appeal, Bu-Hulaiga said, OPEC needs the U.S. to help ease tensions with Iran and to resolve the Israel- Palestinian conflict. ``It's not enough to ask Chavez to be quiet,'' he said in an interview. ``We need responsibility everywhere. The United States can help lower the tone.''

OPEC has used oil as a weapon before, when its Arab members stopped sales to countries that supported Israel in the 1973 Middle East war. The actions sent petroleum prices spiraling upward, created long lines at gas stations in the United States and Europe and produced high inflation across the globe.

$250 Barrel

Correa said a new war in the region could drive prices to $250 a barrel. Chavez, in his speech, predicted a figure of $200 ``if the United States is crazy enough to invade Iran.'' On Nov. 16 in New York, crude oil for December delivery closed at $95.10 a barrel.

Ahmadinejad, 51, played down the possibility of a U.S. attack, saying that President George W. Bush's administration lacks the ``economic, political and military'' means to carry one out. ``No war will break out in the region,'' he predicted during a news conference yesterday.

``Iran and Venezuela, because they have ideological differences with the U.S., are trying to drag the other OPEC members into the conflict, by appealing to solidarity against imperialism and aggression,'' said John Sfakianakis, chief economist at the Saudi British Bank in Riyadh and formerly a research fellow at Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

The era of OPEC political activism is over, the cartel's Secretary General Abdalla el-Badri told reporters last week. ``We are not using the oil we sell to the world as a political weapon,'' he said at a Nov. 14 press conference in Riyadh.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said OPEC wouldn't take a stand on a possible U.S. invasion of Iran. ``These are issues that can be raised in other forums, not in OPEC,'' he told a news conference yesterday.

To contact the reporters on this story: Daniel Williams in Riyadh at dwilliams41@bloomberg.net; Maher Chmaytelli in Riyadh at mchmaytelli@bloomberg.net