Imperialists’ Battle for Mideast Oil Heats Up

The Daura oil refinery in Baghdad, Iraq.Given the continuing long-range threat posed by China’s and Russia’s bosses to U.S. rulers, now add the menace of these two rising powers to U.S. plans for control of Iraq’s oil wealth. Chinese and Russian companies scored big in mid-December’s second round of bidding for Iraqi oil fields. This opens yet a new front in the imperialists’ energy dogfight.

Already within Iraq, “The dispute among Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens and other minority groups over the oil city of Kirkuk and a resource-rich area of northern Iraq remains a stark obstacle to long-term stability.” (NY Times, 12/20). Imported al Qaeda fighters and Iran’s nearby armed forces (which seized an Iraqi oil well on December 17) also stand to frustrate U.S. bosses’ dreams of pumping 12 million barrels a day of Iraqi crude.
Now their Chinese and Russian competitors will seek to protect their new Iraqi claims with military muscle in the face of the U.S. occupation. The ink on China’s and Russia’s oil contracts had barely dried when their ally Iran grabbed the Iraqi well.

The raid underscored the Beijing-Moscow-Tehran bloc’s strategic advantage. To occupy Iraq, the U.S. war machine must continually mount massive 7,000-mile air- and sea-lifts. Iranian troops can literally walk there. In addition to support for Iran’s conventional forces, China’s and Russia’s new pres- ence in Iraq increasingly leads them to back Iran’s blossoming nuclear weapons program, to enhance ally Iran’s position as a regional power.

The Pentagon’s response entails permanent bases both in Iraq and Afghanistan, an outpost against foes China, Russia, Iran and wildcard Pakistan. Baghdad’s deals with China National Petroleum Corp. and Russian Lukoil and Gazprom made even more crucial for U.S. rulers Obama’s Afghan surge of 30,000 more soldiers (and up to 56,000 mercenaries, says the Washington Post, 12/18).

Inconvenient Truth of ‘War for Oil’ Forces Obama to Cut China, Russia in on Iraq Spoils

In order to seize Iraq’s oil, the U.S. invasion slaughtered over a million Iraqis, and maimed and made homeless mil- lions more (including four million refugees). Two think-tanks, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the James Baker institute, both linked closely to Exxon Mobil, cooked up and spread the lie of Saddam’s “weapons of mass destruction” to “justify” the 2003 invasion. A pre-war joint CFR-Baker report salivated over a post-war treasure-trove of six million barrels a day (an estimate now doubled).

So why — with over 200,000 U.S. troops (including mer- cenaries) in his country — did Iraq’s U.S. puppet leader Maliki let China and Russia in on the game? Firstly, Obama and his U.S. capitalist handlers dread a worldwide public opinion revolt against their heavy-handed Iraq tactics, especially among workers in Saudi Arabia, Exxon Mobil’s single biggest oil source with an increasingly restive population of 35,000,000. The millions of Saudi workers get nothing from Exxon’s Saudi arrangement, the most lucrative ongoing deal in capitalism’s history.

Lately, the CIA-aided Saudi Air Force has been busy counter-attacking growing anti-U.S. militant groups on both sides of the Saudi-Yemen border. “Obama administration officials say that any hint of rigged awards, in which U.S. companies hauled in the lion’s share of oil contracts, would do far more political damage by undermining U.S. credibility abroad.” (Energy Intelligence report, 11/30) Secondly, Iraq let the Chinese and Russians in also because the U.S. has been unable to ex- ercise full control, not even pacifying, let alone conquering, the country.

Norwegian-U.S. Petro-strategic Love Match — Source of Obama’s 'Peace' Prize — Hits Rough Patch

Several aspects of the Baghdad oil field auction underscore U.S. weakness in Iraq. Petrostate energy ministers and Big Oil CEOs actually had to walk the last mile to the auction because suicide car-bombers had made driving too risky. None would bid on licenses for major fields amid conflicts still raging in Sadr City and Nineveh. And Norway’s rulers — whose government-owned Statoil stands to profit so much from Obama’s surging Afghan war that they awarded him the Nobel Prize (see CHALLENGE, 12/9) — double-crossed him.

In the Iraq auction, Statoil, teamed as junior partner with U.S. enemy Russia’s Lukoil to win a major oil field. Obama retaliated by accepting the “Peace” prize from Norway’s King Harald with a Hitlerite rant extolling profit-ensuring wars: “The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms.” Obama pointedly reminded his oil-soaked majesty that Norwegian troops serve under U.S. command in Afghanistan. Simultaneously, U.S. pressure got former Statoil advisor Kai Eide booted as top UN officer in Afghanistan.

Yet, U.S. rulers (and their British allies), as oc- cupying invaders, do enjoy certain advantages in Iraq. In underpublicized first-round bidding in June, Exxon (U.S.), BP (British), and Shell (British-Dutch) won rights to the biggest Iraqi fields. Exxon & Co. also won bigger profit margins, crucial in capitalist competition: “The [Lukoil-Statoil] partnership will earn 56¢ a barrel. ... Exxon, with minority partner Shell, will receive about 93¢ a barrel.” (Energy Intelligence, 12/13) And the Western firms hope Chinese and Russian firms’ lagging oil-technology skills will make them miss contractual production quotas.

Letting China and Russia into Iraq hardly rep- resents a U.S. olive branch. In fact, it brings the “world’s sole superpower” closer into head-on conflict with a strengthening rival alliance. Emergence of a World War III is sped up as ongoing regional oil wars become more deadly.

For the international working class, building an anti-imperialist war movement with a revolutionary outlook becomes more urgent. PLP’s leadership among masses of workers, soldiers and students, in factories, barracks, unions, schools and churches is even more vital now. We need to organize to destroy the billionaires’ profit system and its endless wars.