Oil and politics have always gone together for a simple reason; since oil became an indispensable commodity without which the world as we know it today would not function, countries that produce oil have learned how to use it as a weapon. And who says weapons, says politics.
The power of oil as a political weapon became evident during the 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict that became known as The October War in the Arab world and the Yom Kippur War in Israel. Hoping to sway Western sentiments in favor of the Arab cause Arab oil producing countries such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf sheikdoms agreed to reduce their output. Naturally, less oil on the market meant higher prices at the pump and for the home consumer of heating oil. The Arab oil embargo forced Western governments to enact strict measures in order to safeguard oil reserves.
The tactic employed by the oil producers however backfired: forced by some governments to leave their cars in the garage on alternate days along with having to pay more money for less gas, the 1973 Arab oil embargo initiative was a public relations disaster. Furthermore, given that they were producing, exporting and selling less gas, the oil producers lost billions of dollars in potential revenues.
However, what the '73 oil embargo did accomplish was demonstrate the potential oil had as a weapon. The outcome changed much in the modern history of oil and politics. The embargo forced the West to become less dependent on Arab oil and American and international oil companies began looking elsewhere to supplement Arab oil.
There were alternatives to Arab oil except that until the Arab embargo of 1973 purchasing Arab oil was far less expensive than erecting platforms in the inclement weather of the North Sea, for example, in Norwegian waters or off the English coast. The Arab oil embargo and rising oil prices justified exploitation of North Sea oil, Canadian oil and other previously untapped oil fields. The outcome was two-fold; first, European and American dependence on Arab oil lessened; and second, it gave the new producers additional revenues as oil prices continued to escalate.
However, the importance of oil in politics, or rather the importance of the politics of oil, and the important role oil would play in modern post-World War II geopolitics was recognized by the United States very early on. It soon became evident that in the industrialized era oil would replace coal as the main source of energy and as the coalmining towns of Newcastle and West Virginia began to die, a new mirage began to rise in the deserts of Arabia.
The U.S.'s keen interest in oil politics surfaced around the close of WWII, when on Feb. 15, 1945, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt flew to Egypt to meet with Saudi Arabia's King Abdulaziz ibn Saud aboard the USS Quincy in the Great Bitter Lake in the Suez Canal. The meeting between Roosevelt and inb Saud was a major landmark in contemporary history of oil as it opened the chapter of oil-politics when the American president promised the Saudi king to protect his oil fields in return for preferential treatment.
Just weeks earlier the United States had thwarted a final German attempt to make one last thrust through Allied lines at Bastogne, (where Gen. Anthony McAullif is reported to have said "Nuts," when asked by the Germans to surrender). Had the Germans been successful they would have been able to link their forces in the Ardennes with the Belgian port of Antwerp, thus giving them access to an uninterrupted flow of oil, essential to keep the gaz-guzzling tanks moving forward. As it turned out the Germans lost the Battle of the Bulge because their tanks ran out of gas.
Roosevelt immediately recognized the strategic importance of oil. Had Nazi Germany won the Battle of the Bulge World War II would have been prolonged perhaps just long enough to allow German scientists to finalize the V2 rocket and as they hoped, produce the first atomic bomb, giving them ultimate victory. In essence what lost the war for Germany was shortage of oil.
Since the end of WWII there were other wars that were fought over oil. The United States went to war in 1990/91 against Saddam Hussein to liberate tiny Kuwait from Iraq after Saddam's forces declared Kuwait was Iraq's 19th province and occupied it.
Indeed, one might even trace the events of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden's hatred of America for the nearly unconditional support given by the U.S. to the House of Saud to that historic meeting in the Great Bitter Lake between Roosevelt and bin Saud.
Finally, it is interesting to note that the two presidents who took America into wars in the Middle East over oil -President George Bush and his son, George W. Bush - both had connections to oil money. Coincidence? You decide.
This article was written by Claude Salhani for OilPrice.com
Claude Salhani is the senior editor with Trend News Agency and is a journalist, author and political analyst based in Baku, specializing in the Middle… More
Comments
Truly revolutionary, cost-competitive, energy breakthroughs are on their way.
Rowan University published experiments demonstrating excess heat. The only explanation appears to be a new source of energy: fractional Hydrogen.
GEN3 Partners advise Fortune 100 firms. They have reproduced the experiments.
A barrel of ordinary water becomes the energy equivalent of 200 barrels of oil!
BlackLight Power states they will demonstrate small prototype power plants this year. PacifiCorp, Conectiv and four small utilities have agreed to purchase more than 8,000 megawatts of electricity.
Our own, very different, fractional Hydrogen technology is aimed at cost-competitive automotive applications.
One gallon of water might fuel a hybrid car for 1,000 miles!
See: Love Affair with Autos Allows a Seductive Alternative - on the website -
http://www.aesopinstitute.org
That article includes even more difficult to believe magnetic generators. These will replace many types of batteries, including those needed for electric vehicles. No recharge required.
Both technologies will allow cars and trucks to become power plants when parked: No wires necessary.
Vehicles will be able to pay for themselves!
Once convincingly validated by independent laboratories, these almost impossible to believe technologies will change all of our conventional assumptions about energy, cars and oil.
A 24/7 development program could make that happen faster than might be imagined!
It is only recently that Rowan published their experiments.
Our own work suggests that fractional Hydrogen can be in mass production for hybrid vehicles within 5 years.
Faster, with 24/7 development!
To the surprise of many, there is no violation of thermodynamics involved in fractional Hydrogen. It is simply new science.
That said, until more laboratories convincingly demonstrate that fractional Hydrogen is real, it is understandable that it will not be believed possible.
Experiments are always much more important than theory. Two labs have found excess heat. The details have been published. Let more experiments be done. The National labs would be an excellent venue.
The late Dr. Robert L. Carroll, a mathematical physicist, first mentioned Inverse Quantum States. His 1990 paper with that title begins: “Quantum theory as applied to the atom stops far short of its goal. The philosophy that the least quantum state of an electron in orbit is unity excludes an infinity of possibilities”.
Randell Mills has pioneered technology based on energy released as the electrons of Hydrogen atoms are induced by a catalyst to transition to lower energy levels (i.e. drop to lower base orbits around each atom's nucleus). Ronald Bourgoin, once a graduate student of Dr. Carroll’s, showed the general wave equation predicts exactly the 137 inverse principal quantum levels Mills claims.
The late Arie De Geus’s published patent application claimed a unique energy production method, based upon utilization of fractional Hydrogen (f/H).
Our own work leads towards remarkable energy conversion systems that utilize Energy from Collapsing Hydrogen Orbits - ECHO.
In engines or fuel cells, Hydrogen is normally burned. It has been demonstrated that hydrogen atoms can release an enormous amount of energy without burning, just as Dr. Carroll earlier suggested might prove possible.
However, until we can demonstrate that a hybrid car can travel 1,000 miles on a gallon of water,skepticism and disbelief is to be expected.
My guess is that will take perhaps three years without a 24/7 development program. How much less it might require if the work proceeds around the clock is anyone's guess.
An example is room temperature Ultraconductors(tm). These are polymer equivalents of ambient temperature superconductors. They have been the subject of four successfully completed Small Business Innovation Research contracts: A Phase I and a Phase II with the USAF and a pair with what is now called the Missile Defense Agency. Almost 1,000 samples of these materials were independently produced for the Air Force by another firm.
Our work with fractional Hydrogen technologies only began early last year, although Dr. Carroll, mentioned above, worked with us for 12 years (and predicted a path to room temperature superconductivity back in the 1960s). We have followed Randell Mills work since it was first publicized in the early 1990s. Dr. Vladimir Noninski, skilled in calorimetry and a friend was invited by Mills to visit his lab shortly afterwards and measure the excess heat. He did so and then repeated the experiment at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. Both experiments resulted in published scientific papers.
Given the hundreds of billions of dollars supporting scientists in pursuit of hot fusion - with little in the way of practical technology produced to date, we are quite proud of what has been accomplished on a relative shoestring.
You jump from one fantasy to the next each time claiming the the current project is months or weeks away from independent validation and/or production. It's never happened. The safest bets about Mark Goldes are that the current 'technology' will never be validated, much less produced, and that he'll jump to another free energy con within 24 months.
Please readers, a little Internet searching will show this nonsense for exactly what it is...
We have urged additional independent laboratory tests of fractional Hydrogen and I have repeatedly stated that it is easy to understand disbelief in any energy claim that cannot provide independent laboratory validation. National laboratories are excellent venues for such tests as is EarthTech International.
The need for alternatives to oil and coal is far more urgent than is generally realized. As this website has recognized, a sharp increase in the price of oil is a probable event in the not too distant future. That would be catastrophic for the world economy.
We continue to develop radically new energy systems and expect they will make important contributions that will surprise skeptics.
Those who stare at caterpillars and are ignorant of the fact they often evolve into winged creatures - that might never have been suspected from watching them crawl along the ground - have an analog in those who make such comments.
Radically new technologies often take a long span of years to ripen into practical products. There are many paths along the way that prove to be dead ends. But, room temperature superconductivity, fractional Hydrogen, magnetic generators, both solid-state and mechanicsl, that convert ambient energy - and others are all moving toward markets. Much more slowly than we would prefer, but perhaps in time to help ameliorate a sharp upward spike in the price of oil that might cause an economic catastrophe.