The Real Reason For The War In Iraq

I want you to imagine a pipe. It’s a big open-ended pipe and here’s how big it is. It’s so big that Shaquille O’Neal can stand inside it wearing a top hat. In metres it’s 2.4 m diameter or, for you Americans, it’s 7 feet 10 inches. Now, let’s get Shaq out of the way because we don’t want him to get injured, because down this pipe we are going to send crude oil. This crude oil will flow at a speed of 3 m/sec or 6.7 miles/hour, a fairly fast running pace, and it will fill the whole diameter of the pipe. So this is what I want you to visualise, a pipe 7 feet 10 inches diameter flowing full bore with crude oil, every minute of every hour, of every day of every year, on and on without cease. It flows like a river, it gushes continuously, it roars forward, a cataract of black oil. Just imagine what that oil would look like as it cascaded out of that pipe. Think of the sheer ear-drum shattering noise, the earth-shaking vibration, the awesome power of it.

The quantity that flows through this pipe is 10,178,711 barrels per day. Every day, on and on. This is, on recent average, the amount of crude oil that the US imports every day, continuously, year after year, and the trend, rather than decreasing, in these days of worrying middle east politics and global warming, and so on, is increasing. Of course there is not a single pipe. There are a number of them, from Canada for example, plus the oil imported, largely from the Middle East, by the huge tankers that berth at LOOP off the coast of Louisiana, and at the offshore lightering areas off of Galveston, plus the smaller tankers, relatively speaking, berthing at shore facilities on both coasts. The US in fact only produces just over 5.5 million barrels per day, so it relies on imports for about two thirds of its needs.

Now let’s add this up in cash. We need to keep it on a daily basis because if you try to think of it yearly it’s just crazy. Let’s say a barrel on average costs $50. In fact today it’s about $65/barrel. So 10,178,711 times 50 = $508,935,550 per day. Have you got that? Half a billion dollars a day! That’s what’s flowing out as the crude flows in. Now I believe the US has a trade deficit of about 49 billion dollars. That’s about 100 days of crude oil imports, actually it’s a lot fewer than that if we keep to a realistic oil price. Is anybody making the connection here?

Of course the US needs energy to produce goods and to keep the economy moving, but does it need so much that it hurts? It hurts the economy and it hurts the environment. It seems perverse to me. And do you know what is really perverse? If a US politician wants to make himself unelectable he just has to stand up and say that gasoline is too cheap and that there is a crying need to put more tax on it and to consume less.

And here’s the real truth behind the war in Iraq. GW Bush has no idea how to run the country without this huge oil consumption. In his term imports have continuously risen to these levels, and they just keep on climbing. And now this and this.

The growing economies of India and China are taking more and more out of a finite supply, pushing prices higher and creating supply problems in the medium to long term. Where does it end? The gloomiest scenario is a world economic collapse and further turmoil in oil producing areas such as Iraq. It’s not too far fetched to say that Iraq is only the beginning unless the American public wakens up to what is going on, and unless American politicians start telling the truth about how vulnerable the country is to depend so much on imported oil. While Bush is in power? Fat fucking chance. You need more? Read all about it here.

Now think of the torrent of oil flowing today into the US, over 10 million barrels a day, and picture it slowing, stuttering, trickling and then .. stopping.