Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Freitag, August 08, 2008
Mittwoch, August 06, 2008
Ukrainian political battle could hit European gas prices
Ukrainian political battle could hit European gas prices
Alex Dryden, The Daily Telegraph, 29 Jul 2008
'Wear two jumpers' was the advice recently given to British homeowners facing higher gas bills by Jake Ulrich, managing director of Centrica Energy, part of the group that owns British Gas.
More recently, Ian Marchant, chief executive of Scottish & Southern Energy, warned that there would be further price hikes in our gas and electricity bills even before winter. Then, on Friday, EDF announced that it would be increasing gas prices to its UK customers by 22pc, blaming wholesale energy costs for the latest price hike.
Ukrainian political battle could hit European gas prices
Alex Dryden, The Daily Telegraph, 29 Jul 2008
'Wear two jumpers' was the advice recently given to British homeowners facing higher gas bills by Jake Ulrich, managing director of Centrica Energy, part of the group that owns British Gas.
More recently, Ian Marchant, chief executive of Scottish & Southern Energy, warned that there would be further price hikes in our gas and electricity bills even before winter. Then, on Friday, EDF announced that it would be increasing gas prices to its UK customers by 22pc, blaming wholesale energy costs for the latest price hike.
Although the price of oil has fallen back from its $147-a-barrel high, Britain's leading energy companies still expect consumers to face bigger energy bills this year. MPs are unhappy. Yesterday they claimed that the market is not functioning properly and urged the Government to introduce a windfall tax on utility companies to help families.
However, a battle for political supremacy in far-off Ukraine is likely to have just as big an influence on European gas prices in coming months as the fluctuations on global energy markets.
Britain now imports 21bn cubic metres of gas every year since its North Sea reserves started falling. Some imports come by ship as liquified natural gas and some has to be bought in the European markets which is then piped over to the UK mainland from the Continent.
But much of Europe's gas is imported from Russia through pipelines that cross Ukraine. It is the control of those pipelines that is now the subject of a tense political tussle between Ukraine's President Victor Yushchenko and his former ally turned rival, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
At the heart of the politicians' struggle is an oligarch whose influence will play a major part in dictating the price of gas in Britain's wholesale markets.
President Yushchenko believes the existing arrangements should remain and that current prices for gas transit payments should not be reviewed. He believes that the existing deal, whereby 55bn cubic metres of gas are delivered to Ukraine at $179.50 per cubic metre, is the best possible one. But he faces formidable opposition.
Behind Tymoshenko's plan, known in Ukraine as the "change of concept", is Gayduk. Like Tymoshenko, Gayduk was formerly an ally of President Yushchenko but has fallen out with him over the gas transit question.
Tymoshenko made Gayduk her chief adviser earlier this year. He is the head of a business conglomerate called the Donbass Industrial Union (DIU) but little else is known about "the quiet Donetskian", as he is called, except that he is one of Ukraine's most powerful oligarchs.
He made his fortune, estimated to be in the region of $5bn, between 1998 and 2001 supplying gas to the Donbass region, where half of Ukraine's industry is located.
A Tymoshenko representative, however, states that her critics are wrong to focus on Gayduk. "Tymoshenko's long-term strategy is all about transparency," he said. "We've always said there should be no middleman. It is better if Ukraine's state agency NaftagasUkraini can buy direct from Russia. I've never heard of any suggestion that Vitaly Gayduk would be involved."
The political conflict between Tymoshenko and Yuschenko is expected to come to a head at the next presidential elections, likely to be held in November. According to a broad range of western and Ukrainian political analysts, if Tymoshenko replaces Yuschenko as president, or manages to usurp presidential power to her prime minister's office, she will implement her plans to change the gas transit arrangements.
"The result of there being no middleman will be that direct gas supplies from Russia will actually increase the price of gas, not decrease it," says Weiss. "Russia will have a greater influence on the price of gas. Ukrainian industrialists will then lobby for a new middleman. The new middleman will be Gayduk and DIU."
Tymoshenko has claimed that changing how gas is transported across Ukraine is a fight against "Gazprom's and the Kremlin's price dictatorship", but her apparent opposition to the Kremlin is at odds with her ally Gayduk's connections in Russia. He is close to the Russian gas exporter Gazmetall which in turn has close connections to the Kremlin.
Gayduk's DIU business has been attempting to negotiate a merger with Gazmetall whose leaders - principally Alisher Usmanov - are very close to the Kremlin's ruling elite under Dmitry Medvedev and, formerly, Vladimir Putin. Under the presidency of Medvedev in Moscow, the activities of Gazmetall in Ukraine have been growing significantly.
Another partner of DIU is Andrei Kostin, head of Russia's state bank, Vneshtorgbank, and a close friend of Putin. Gayduk also has close connections with Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich and Alexander Abramov, who together own the Russian steelmaker Evraz.
This Russian and Ukranian political intrigue over who controls the gas being piped to us in the West comes at a time when Western Europe's home-grown production of gas is in steep decline.
According to statistics from Eurogas, production fell by 4.9pc in 2006 and by 7pc in 2007, and this fall in production is set to continue ever more sharply. Norway is the main indigenous provider of gas in Western Europe, supplying 18pc of the EU's needs.
The UK's 21bn cubic metres of imported gas each year is steadily rising, while at the same time Western Europe's indigenous gas production declines. Already 10 EU countries are almost entirely dependent for their natural gas supplies on Russian and CIS gas production, with Ukraine as the transit country.
Ukraine is the vital link for Western Europe, and the prices we pay for the transit of gas - as well as the price for the gas itself - will be reflected in our industrial and domestic bills.
We can try wearing an extra jumper this winter, but the price of gas looks as if it is rising inexorably and the obscure political and business machinations in Ukraine will play an important part.
Vitaly Gayduk has made a huge personal fortune in gas trading and ownership of Ukrainian energy companies. But he is not simply a businessman, he is playing a pivotal role in a looming political crisis that threatens to send gas prices higher.
His influence on the Russian and Ukrainian gas markets that are so key to the UK came to the fore in the recent "gas wars" between Russia and Ukraine in which Russia sought to use its energy leverage for political gain, a tactic it has used several times with EU countries such as Lithuania. It was Gayduk who negotiated a solution to the row.
President Yushchenko and Prime Minister Tymoshenko, former allies since the Orange Revolution in 2004, are locked in a mounting conflict over the price of the gas that is piped across the Ukraine. The country's role as the transit country for 73pc of Western Europe's gas being exported by Russia and the CIS countries makes it vital to the EU's energy markets. What happens in the Ukraine affects what happens further west.
At the heart of the conflict is Tymoshenko's desire to abolish an intermediary arrangement that currently involves gas coming from Russia passing through a Ukrainian company called RosUkrEnergo. Instead she plans to buy gas directly from Russia and the CIS countries, through NaftagasUkrainy, controlled by her government. This is a move that most independent analysts agree will raise the price of gas for consumers in Western Europe.
"Such a course, abolishing a middleman, will increase the price of natural gas and will cause instability in the Ukraine", according to Lidia Lowson at the American Centre for Political Monitoring. "From this instability Tymoshenko will be able to impose her own middleman to calm the situation. That man will be Gayduk."
When contacted, Gayduk's office said he was unavailable for comment.
The reason that the price of gas will rise if bought directly rather than through an intermediary is that its price will be fixed by governments - principally Ukraine's and Russia's - rather than by organisations that operate through commercial criteria.
"Without an intermediary, the governments of Tymoshenko and [Dmitry] Medvedev will be able to dictate prices," Inna Weiss of the Central Group of European Political Monitoring says. "With the existing situation there is a clear interest in co-operation and good relationships with Western Europe. That is what Yushchenko represents."
Last week Alexei Miller, chairman of Gazprom, met with Tymoshenko to discuss the gradual rise in the price of gas from $179.50 to more than $400 per cubic metre.
Alex Dryden, The Daily Telegraph, 29 Jul 2008
'Wear two jumpers' was the advice recently given to British homeowners facing higher gas bills by Jake Ulrich, managing director of Centrica Energy, part of the group that owns British Gas.
More recently, Ian Marchant, chief executive of Scottish & Southern Energy, warned that there would be further price hikes in our gas and electricity bills even before winter. Then, on Friday, EDF announced that it would be increasing gas prices to its UK customers by 22pc, blaming wholesale energy costs for the latest price hike.
Ukrainian political battle could hit European gas prices
Alex Dryden, The Daily Telegraph, 29 Jul 2008
'Wear two jumpers' was the advice recently given to British homeowners facing higher gas bills by Jake Ulrich, managing director of Centrica Energy, part of the group that owns British Gas.
More recently, Ian Marchant, chief executive of Scottish & Southern Energy, warned that there would be further price hikes in our gas and electricity bills even before winter. Then, on Friday, EDF announced that it would be increasing gas prices to its UK customers by 22pc, blaming wholesale energy costs for the latest price hike.
Although the price of oil has fallen back from its $147-a-barrel high, Britain's leading energy companies still expect consumers to face bigger energy bills this year. MPs are unhappy. Yesterday they claimed that the market is not functioning properly and urged the Government to introduce a windfall tax on utility companies to help families.
However, a battle for political supremacy in far-off Ukraine is likely to have just as big an influence on European gas prices in coming months as the fluctuations on global energy markets.
Britain now imports 21bn cubic metres of gas every year since its North Sea reserves started falling. Some imports come by ship as liquified natural gas and some has to be bought in the European markets which is then piped over to the UK mainland from the Continent.
But much of Europe's gas is imported from Russia through pipelines that cross Ukraine. It is the control of those pipelines that is now the subject of a tense political tussle between Ukraine's President Victor Yushchenko and his former ally turned rival, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
At the heart of the politicians' struggle is an oligarch whose influence will play a major part in dictating the price of gas in Britain's wholesale markets.
President Yushchenko believes the existing arrangements should remain and that current prices for gas transit payments should not be reviewed. He believes that the existing deal, whereby 55bn cubic metres of gas are delivered to Ukraine at $179.50 per cubic metre, is the best possible one. But he faces formidable opposition.
Behind Tymoshenko's plan, known in Ukraine as the "change of concept", is Gayduk. Like Tymoshenko, Gayduk was formerly an ally of President Yushchenko but has fallen out with him over the gas transit question.
Tymoshenko made Gayduk her chief adviser earlier this year. He is the head of a business conglomerate called the Donbass Industrial Union (DIU) but little else is known about "the quiet Donetskian", as he is called, except that he is one of Ukraine's most powerful oligarchs.
He made his fortune, estimated to be in the region of $5bn, between 1998 and 2001 supplying gas to the Donbass region, where half of Ukraine's industry is located.
A Tymoshenko representative, however, states that her critics are wrong to focus on Gayduk. "Tymoshenko's long-term strategy is all about transparency," he said. "We've always said there should be no middleman. It is better if Ukraine's state agency NaftagasUkraini can buy direct from Russia. I've never heard of any suggestion that Vitaly Gayduk would be involved."
The political conflict between Tymoshenko and Yuschenko is expected to come to a head at the next presidential elections, likely to be held in November. According to a broad range of western and Ukrainian political analysts, if Tymoshenko replaces Yuschenko as president, or manages to usurp presidential power to her prime minister's office, she will implement her plans to change the gas transit arrangements.
"The result of there being no middleman will be that direct gas supplies from Russia will actually increase the price of gas, not decrease it," says Weiss. "Russia will have a greater influence on the price of gas. Ukrainian industrialists will then lobby for a new middleman. The new middleman will be Gayduk and DIU."
Tymoshenko has claimed that changing how gas is transported across Ukraine is a fight against "Gazprom's and the Kremlin's price dictatorship", but her apparent opposition to the Kremlin is at odds with her ally Gayduk's connections in Russia. He is close to the Russian gas exporter Gazmetall which in turn has close connections to the Kremlin.
Gayduk's DIU business has been attempting to negotiate a merger with Gazmetall whose leaders - principally Alisher Usmanov - are very close to the Kremlin's ruling elite under Dmitry Medvedev and, formerly, Vladimir Putin. Under the presidency of Medvedev in Moscow, the activities of Gazmetall in Ukraine have been growing significantly.
Another partner of DIU is Andrei Kostin, head of Russia's state bank, Vneshtorgbank, and a close friend of Putin. Gayduk also has close connections with Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich and Alexander Abramov, who together own the Russian steelmaker Evraz.
This Russian and Ukranian political intrigue over who controls the gas being piped to us in the West comes at a time when Western Europe's home-grown production of gas is in steep decline.
According to statistics from Eurogas, production fell by 4.9pc in 2006 and by 7pc in 2007, and this fall in production is set to continue ever more sharply. Norway is the main indigenous provider of gas in Western Europe, supplying 18pc of the EU's needs.
The UK's 21bn cubic metres of imported gas each year is steadily rising, while at the same time Western Europe's indigenous gas production declines. Already 10 EU countries are almost entirely dependent for their natural gas supplies on Russian and CIS gas production, with Ukraine as the transit country.
Ukraine is the vital link for Western Europe, and the prices we pay for the transit of gas - as well as the price for the gas itself - will be reflected in our industrial and domestic bills.
We can try wearing an extra jumper this winter, but the price of gas looks as if it is rising inexorably and the obscure political and business machinations in Ukraine will play an important part.
Vitaly Gayduk has made a huge personal fortune in gas trading and ownership of Ukrainian energy companies. But he is not simply a businessman, he is playing a pivotal role in a looming political crisis that threatens to send gas prices higher.
His influence on the Russian and Ukrainian gas markets that are so key to the UK came to the fore in the recent "gas wars" between Russia and Ukraine in which Russia sought to use its energy leverage for political gain, a tactic it has used several times with EU countries such as Lithuania. It was Gayduk who negotiated a solution to the row.
President Yushchenko and Prime Minister Tymoshenko, former allies since the Orange Revolution in 2004, are locked in a mounting conflict over the price of the gas that is piped across the Ukraine. The country's role as the transit country for 73pc of Western Europe's gas being exported by Russia and the CIS countries makes it vital to the EU's energy markets. What happens in the Ukraine affects what happens further west.
At the heart of the conflict is Tymoshenko's desire to abolish an intermediary arrangement that currently involves gas coming from Russia passing through a Ukrainian company called RosUkrEnergo. Instead she plans to buy gas directly from Russia and the CIS countries, through NaftagasUkrainy, controlled by her government. This is a move that most independent analysts agree will raise the price of gas for consumers in Western Europe.
"Such a course, abolishing a middleman, will increase the price of natural gas and will cause instability in the Ukraine", according to Lidia Lowson at the American Centre for Political Monitoring. "From this instability Tymoshenko will be able to impose her own middleman to calm the situation. That man will be Gayduk."
When contacted, Gayduk's office said he was unavailable for comment.
The reason that the price of gas will rise if bought directly rather than through an intermediary is that its price will be fixed by governments - principally Ukraine's and Russia's - rather than by organisations that operate through commercial criteria.
"Without an intermediary, the governments of Tymoshenko and [Dmitry] Medvedev will be able to dictate prices," Inna Weiss of the Central Group of European Political Monitoring says. "With the existing situation there is a clear interest in co-operation and good relationships with Western Europe. That is what Yushchenko represents."
Last week Alexei Miller, chairman of Gazprom, met with Tymoshenko to discuss the gradual rise in the price of gas from $179.50 to more than $400 per cubic metre.
Dienstag, August 05, 2008
NZZ: «Peak oil» – die grosse Herausforderung Die Endlichkeit der fossilen Energien
NZZ
5. August 2008, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
«Peak oil» – die grosse Herausforderung
Die Endlichkeit der fossilen Energien
Die Preise für fossile Energien steigen. Das ist derzeit wesentlich eine Folge des markant wachsenden Verbrauchs. Die Nachfrageproblematik wird verschärft, weil das weltweite Fördermaximum beim Erdöl bald einmal erreicht sein wird. Der Autor des folgenden Artikels weist darauf hin, dass Ersatz-Energieträger kaum zur Verfügung stehen, was gravierende Folgen für die menschliche Zivilisation haben dürfte.
Von Alex von Zelewsky*
5. August 2008, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
«Peak oil» – die grosse Herausforderung
Die Endlichkeit der fossilen Energien
Die Preise für fossile Energien steigen. Das ist derzeit wesentlich eine Folge des markant wachsenden Verbrauchs. Die Nachfrageproblematik wird verschärft, weil das weltweite Fördermaximum beim Erdöl bald einmal erreicht sein wird. Der Autor des folgenden Artikels weist darauf hin, dass Ersatz-Energieträger kaum zur Verfügung stehen, was gravierende Folgen für die menschliche Zivilisation haben dürfte.
Von Alex von Zelewsky*
Vor gut einem halben Jahrhundert, im Jahr 1956, präsentierte ein amerikanischer Geophysiker, M. King Hubbert (1903–1989), erstmals die Hypothese des «peak oil» (PO), wonach jedes Ölfeld betreffend seine Fördermenge von seiner Erschliessung bis zur Erschöpfung eine sogenannte Glockenkurve durchläuft. Seine Prognose, dass der Peak für die kontinentalen Ölfelder der USA Anfang der siebziger Jahre des vergangenen Jahrhunderts erreicht sein werde, wurde bestätigt. Seither sind die Erdölimporte der USA auf über 70 Prozent ihres Gesamtbedarfs gestiegen, während das Land noch Anfang der sechziger Jahre nahezu selbstversorgend war. Ähnliche Entwicklungen waren bis jetzt in allen Ölfeldern der Welt zu beobachten, und es gibt bis anhin keine Anzeichen dafür, dass Hubberts Annahmen nicht zutreffen würden.
Fördermaximum im nächsten Jahrzehnt
Die am leichtesten zugänglichen Ölvorkommen sind längst entdeckt und zu einem grossen Teil auch bereits ausgebeutet. Daraus ergibt sich eine Kurve für die weltweite Ölförderungsmenge, welche ebenfalls durch einen Maximalwert gekennzeichnet ist. Experten wie der sehr erfahrene und angesehene Erdölgeologe Colin Campbell setzen den Zeitpunkt des PO auf etwa 2011 an, bei einer Fördermenge von weniger als 100 Millionen Barrel pro Tag (heute etwa 87 Millionen). Natürlich sind solche Angaben mit einer gewissen Unsicherheit behaftet, es besteht aber unter unabhängigen Fachleuten kaum mehr ein Zweifel darüber, dass der PO im nächsten Jahrzehnt eintreten wird.
Nur gewisse Interessenvertreter beharren auf der Behauptung, die Erdölproduktion werde weltweit in ein Plateau einmünden. Allerdings reift auch in diesen Kreisen die Einsicht, dass der PO bald erreicht sein wird. So hat in einem Interview Christophe de Margerie, der CEO des französischen Konzerns Total, kürzlich die Ansicht geäussert, dass die weltweite Erdölproduktion bald ihr Maximum erreichen wird und die Nachfrage nicht mehr gedeckt werden kann. Er äussert sich auch über die Chefs der anderen Ölgesellschaften, indem er sagt: «Wir denken alle dasselbe, es ist nur eine Frage, ob man es auch zu sagen wagt.»¹
Thema endlich zur Kenntnis nehmen
Zwar hat zum Beispiel Colin Campbell immer wieder von sich reden gemacht, etwa mit der Gründung der ASPO (Association for the Study of Peak Oil), und die NZZ hat ihm im «Folio» 9/04 einen Beitrag gewidmet. Andere, wie die ASPO Schweiz,² versuchen, ebenfalls zu informieren. Und doch ist es erstaunlich, wie die allermeisten Zeitgenossen dieses wohl schwerwiegendste und bedrohlichste Problem unserer Zeit immer wieder verdrängen. In der Öffentlichkeit werden zu Recht seit Jahren Umweltprobleme verschiedenster Art breit diskutiert. In vorderster Linie stehen dabei Sorgen über den Klimawandel. Viel zu reden gibt auch das wichtige Problem der Sicherheit der Versorgung mit elektrischer Energie. Obwohl wir in der Schweiz nahezu doppelt so viel Energie in Form von Erdöl konsumieren wie in Form von Elektrizität und dazu im Gegensatz zu Letzterer null Prozent im eigenen Land erzeugen, kümmert man sich bis heute kaum um die Frage, was geschehen wird, wenn die Einfuhr des flüssigen Energieträgers ins Stocken geraten oder wenn dessen Preis exorbitant steigen sollte.
Vermutlich liegt aber der Zeithorizont für die exponentiell zunehmende Verknappung des Erdöls näher als derjenige für den Versorgungsengpass mit Elektrizität. Man ist sich oft nicht bewusst, in welch ungeheurem Masse wir von der Versorgung mit Erdöl abhängig sind. Und dies nicht nur im Verkehr, in der Energieversorgung der Siedlungen und in grossen Bereichen der Rohstofferzeugung. Auch in der Nahrungsmittelerzeugung sind wir vollständig vom Erdöl abhängig. Ohne einen massiven Einsatz von Erdöl wäre die Ernährung von nun bald 7 Milliarden Menschen ausgeschlossen.
In der Schweiz wie auch in den anderen westlichen Industrieländern erzeugen nur ganz wenige Prozente der Bevölkerung die Nahrungsmittel für diejenigen, die nicht im Agrarsektor tätig sind. Dazu verbrauchen wir pro Kopf und Tag etwa 4 Kilogramm Erdöl. Fehlte diese Energiequelle, so träten grosse Hungersnöte auf, und die Theorien von Malthus³ würden vermutlich bestätigt. Am WEF 2008 in Davos wurde darüber diskutiert, ob nun die Armut, das Wasser oder das Klima das schwerwiegendste Problem der näheren Zukunft darstelle, der PO wurde nicht in diese Liste aufgenommen. Auch im schweizerischen Sorgenbarometer blieb der «peak oil» bisher unbeachtet.
Lässt sich die Katastrophe vermeiden?
Die Frage ist, ob wir überhaupt noch Möglichkeiten haben, die ganz grosse Katastrophe zu verhindern. Gewiss werden Anstrengungen unternommen, die Energieaufwendungen in einigen Bereichen zu vermindern, aber alle Massnahmen zur Förderung sogenannt erneuerbarer Energien haben bis heute kaum zu einer Substitution von fossiler Energie geführt. Spektakuläre Aktionen wie zum Beispiel die geplante Erdumrundung mit einem Solarflugzeug werden auch von Politikern als Meilensteine in der Anwendung der Solarenergie gefeiert.
Im Grunde genommen führen uns aber diese Produkte technischer Innovation nur vor Augen, wie hoffnungslos unterlegen die Solarenergie gegenüber dem Erdöl ist. Weder wird jemals ein Containerschiff mit Sonnenenergie betrieben werden können, noch werden Passagierflugzeuge sich mit dieser Energiequelle in die Luft erheben. Grosse Skepsis ist auch gegenüber anderen Versprechungen angebracht. So ist nach einer anfänglichen Euphorie rasch klar geworden, dass Biofuels kein Ausweg aus der Energiekrise sein können. Kann uns die Kernenergie retten? Kernspaltung, auf der heute alle kommerziellen Anlagen zur Gewinnung von Kernenergie beruhen, liefert bereits einen signifikanten Anteil am gesamten Energieaufkommen. Ohne auf die Problematik der Kernenergie näher einzugehen, kann aber gesagt werden, dass sie im Elektrizitätssektor sicherlich weiter eingesetzt werden wird. Ausser der Möglichkeit, die Abwärme für Heizzwecke zu nutzen, kann aber weder im Verkehrswesen noch in der Landwirtschaft und auch in vielen anderen Bereichen die Kernenergie nicht als Substituent für das Erdöl dienen. Die Kernfusion, die Energiequelle der Sonne, ist heute noch weit von einer kontrollierten Anwendung entfernt.
Von einem übergeordneten Standpunkte aus kann man die Entwicklung, die die menschliche Gesellschaft gegenwärtig durchläuft, als einen evolutionären Prozess betrachten. Die Menschheit hat in den vergangenen 150 Jahren dank der Erschliessung der fossilen Energiequellen eine spektakuläre Entwicklung durchgemacht, die nun vermutlich bald zu einem Endpunkt gelangen wird. Es wird dann wieder ein Evolutionsschub anstehen, wobei das Darwinsche Prinzip des «survival of the fittest» zum Zuge kommen wird. Mit grosser Wahrscheinlichkeit wird zu Ende dieses Jahrhunderts von der menschlichen Zivilisation, wie wir sie kennen, nicht mehr viel übrig bleiben. Die nächste grosse Krise wird sich von vorherigen, wie zum Beispiel dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, grundlegend dadurch unterscheiden, dass keine billige Energie zu ihrer Überwindung zur Verfügung stehen wird. Die Art und Weise, wie die Menschheit auf den PO reagieren wird, wird entscheidend sein.
¹ The Economist, January 12th 2008. ² http://www.peakoil.ch/index.html ³ Thomas Robert Malthus (1736–1834), britischer Ökonom und Sozialphilosoph.* Alex von Zelewsky ist emeritierter Professor für Chemie der Universität Freiburg (Schweiz).
5. August 2008, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
«Peak oil» – die grosse Herausforderung
Die Endlichkeit der fossilen Energien
Die Preise für fossile Energien steigen. Das ist derzeit wesentlich eine Folge des markant wachsenden Verbrauchs. Die Nachfrageproblematik wird verschärft, weil das weltweite Fördermaximum beim Erdöl bald einmal erreicht sein wird. Der Autor des folgenden Artikels weist darauf hin, dass Ersatz-Energieträger kaum zur Verfügung stehen, was gravierende Folgen für die menschliche Zivilisation haben dürfte.
Von Alex von Zelewsky*
5. August 2008, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
«Peak oil» – die grosse Herausforderung
Die Endlichkeit der fossilen Energien
Die Preise für fossile Energien steigen. Das ist derzeit wesentlich eine Folge des markant wachsenden Verbrauchs. Die Nachfrageproblematik wird verschärft, weil das weltweite Fördermaximum beim Erdöl bald einmal erreicht sein wird. Der Autor des folgenden Artikels weist darauf hin, dass Ersatz-Energieträger kaum zur Verfügung stehen, was gravierende Folgen für die menschliche Zivilisation haben dürfte.
Von Alex von Zelewsky*
Vor gut einem halben Jahrhundert, im Jahr 1956, präsentierte ein amerikanischer Geophysiker, M. King Hubbert (1903–1989), erstmals die Hypothese des «peak oil» (PO), wonach jedes Ölfeld betreffend seine Fördermenge von seiner Erschliessung bis zur Erschöpfung eine sogenannte Glockenkurve durchläuft. Seine Prognose, dass der Peak für die kontinentalen Ölfelder der USA Anfang der siebziger Jahre des vergangenen Jahrhunderts erreicht sein werde, wurde bestätigt. Seither sind die Erdölimporte der USA auf über 70 Prozent ihres Gesamtbedarfs gestiegen, während das Land noch Anfang der sechziger Jahre nahezu selbstversorgend war. Ähnliche Entwicklungen waren bis jetzt in allen Ölfeldern der Welt zu beobachten, und es gibt bis anhin keine Anzeichen dafür, dass Hubberts Annahmen nicht zutreffen würden.
Fördermaximum im nächsten Jahrzehnt
Die am leichtesten zugänglichen Ölvorkommen sind längst entdeckt und zu einem grossen Teil auch bereits ausgebeutet. Daraus ergibt sich eine Kurve für die weltweite Ölförderungsmenge, welche ebenfalls durch einen Maximalwert gekennzeichnet ist. Experten wie der sehr erfahrene und angesehene Erdölgeologe Colin Campbell setzen den Zeitpunkt des PO auf etwa 2011 an, bei einer Fördermenge von weniger als 100 Millionen Barrel pro Tag (heute etwa 87 Millionen). Natürlich sind solche Angaben mit einer gewissen Unsicherheit behaftet, es besteht aber unter unabhängigen Fachleuten kaum mehr ein Zweifel darüber, dass der PO im nächsten Jahrzehnt eintreten wird.
Nur gewisse Interessenvertreter beharren auf der Behauptung, die Erdölproduktion werde weltweit in ein Plateau einmünden. Allerdings reift auch in diesen Kreisen die Einsicht, dass der PO bald erreicht sein wird. So hat in einem Interview Christophe de Margerie, der CEO des französischen Konzerns Total, kürzlich die Ansicht geäussert, dass die weltweite Erdölproduktion bald ihr Maximum erreichen wird und die Nachfrage nicht mehr gedeckt werden kann. Er äussert sich auch über die Chefs der anderen Ölgesellschaften, indem er sagt: «Wir denken alle dasselbe, es ist nur eine Frage, ob man es auch zu sagen wagt.»¹
Thema endlich zur Kenntnis nehmen
Zwar hat zum Beispiel Colin Campbell immer wieder von sich reden gemacht, etwa mit der Gründung der ASPO (Association for the Study of Peak Oil), und die NZZ hat ihm im «Folio» 9/04 einen Beitrag gewidmet. Andere, wie die ASPO Schweiz,² versuchen, ebenfalls zu informieren. Und doch ist es erstaunlich, wie die allermeisten Zeitgenossen dieses wohl schwerwiegendste und bedrohlichste Problem unserer Zeit immer wieder verdrängen. In der Öffentlichkeit werden zu Recht seit Jahren Umweltprobleme verschiedenster Art breit diskutiert. In vorderster Linie stehen dabei Sorgen über den Klimawandel. Viel zu reden gibt auch das wichtige Problem der Sicherheit der Versorgung mit elektrischer Energie. Obwohl wir in der Schweiz nahezu doppelt so viel Energie in Form von Erdöl konsumieren wie in Form von Elektrizität und dazu im Gegensatz zu Letzterer null Prozent im eigenen Land erzeugen, kümmert man sich bis heute kaum um die Frage, was geschehen wird, wenn die Einfuhr des flüssigen Energieträgers ins Stocken geraten oder wenn dessen Preis exorbitant steigen sollte.
Vermutlich liegt aber der Zeithorizont für die exponentiell zunehmende Verknappung des Erdöls näher als derjenige für den Versorgungsengpass mit Elektrizität. Man ist sich oft nicht bewusst, in welch ungeheurem Masse wir von der Versorgung mit Erdöl abhängig sind. Und dies nicht nur im Verkehr, in der Energieversorgung der Siedlungen und in grossen Bereichen der Rohstofferzeugung. Auch in der Nahrungsmittelerzeugung sind wir vollständig vom Erdöl abhängig. Ohne einen massiven Einsatz von Erdöl wäre die Ernährung von nun bald 7 Milliarden Menschen ausgeschlossen.
In der Schweiz wie auch in den anderen westlichen Industrieländern erzeugen nur ganz wenige Prozente der Bevölkerung die Nahrungsmittel für diejenigen, die nicht im Agrarsektor tätig sind. Dazu verbrauchen wir pro Kopf und Tag etwa 4 Kilogramm Erdöl. Fehlte diese Energiequelle, so träten grosse Hungersnöte auf, und die Theorien von Malthus³ würden vermutlich bestätigt. Am WEF 2008 in Davos wurde darüber diskutiert, ob nun die Armut, das Wasser oder das Klima das schwerwiegendste Problem der näheren Zukunft darstelle, der PO wurde nicht in diese Liste aufgenommen. Auch im schweizerischen Sorgenbarometer blieb der «peak oil» bisher unbeachtet.
Lässt sich die Katastrophe vermeiden?
Die Frage ist, ob wir überhaupt noch Möglichkeiten haben, die ganz grosse Katastrophe zu verhindern. Gewiss werden Anstrengungen unternommen, die Energieaufwendungen in einigen Bereichen zu vermindern, aber alle Massnahmen zur Förderung sogenannt erneuerbarer Energien haben bis heute kaum zu einer Substitution von fossiler Energie geführt. Spektakuläre Aktionen wie zum Beispiel die geplante Erdumrundung mit einem Solarflugzeug werden auch von Politikern als Meilensteine in der Anwendung der Solarenergie gefeiert.
Im Grunde genommen führen uns aber diese Produkte technischer Innovation nur vor Augen, wie hoffnungslos unterlegen die Solarenergie gegenüber dem Erdöl ist. Weder wird jemals ein Containerschiff mit Sonnenenergie betrieben werden können, noch werden Passagierflugzeuge sich mit dieser Energiequelle in die Luft erheben. Grosse Skepsis ist auch gegenüber anderen Versprechungen angebracht. So ist nach einer anfänglichen Euphorie rasch klar geworden, dass Biofuels kein Ausweg aus der Energiekrise sein können. Kann uns die Kernenergie retten? Kernspaltung, auf der heute alle kommerziellen Anlagen zur Gewinnung von Kernenergie beruhen, liefert bereits einen signifikanten Anteil am gesamten Energieaufkommen. Ohne auf die Problematik der Kernenergie näher einzugehen, kann aber gesagt werden, dass sie im Elektrizitätssektor sicherlich weiter eingesetzt werden wird. Ausser der Möglichkeit, die Abwärme für Heizzwecke zu nutzen, kann aber weder im Verkehrswesen noch in der Landwirtschaft und auch in vielen anderen Bereichen die Kernenergie nicht als Substituent für das Erdöl dienen. Die Kernfusion, die Energiequelle der Sonne, ist heute noch weit von einer kontrollierten Anwendung entfernt.
Von einem übergeordneten Standpunkte aus kann man die Entwicklung, die die menschliche Gesellschaft gegenwärtig durchläuft, als einen evolutionären Prozess betrachten. Die Menschheit hat in den vergangenen 150 Jahren dank der Erschliessung der fossilen Energiequellen eine spektakuläre Entwicklung durchgemacht, die nun vermutlich bald zu einem Endpunkt gelangen wird. Es wird dann wieder ein Evolutionsschub anstehen, wobei das Darwinsche Prinzip des «survival of the fittest» zum Zuge kommen wird. Mit grosser Wahrscheinlichkeit wird zu Ende dieses Jahrhunderts von der menschlichen Zivilisation, wie wir sie kennen, nicht mehr viel übrig bleiben. Die nächste grosse Krise wird sich von vorherigen, wie zum Beispiel dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, grundlegend dadurch unterscheiden, dass keine billige Energie zu ihrer Überwindung zur Verfügung stehen wird. Die Art und Weise, wie die Menschheit auf den PO reagieren wird, wird entscheidend sein.
¹ The Economist, January 12th 2008. ² http://www.peakoil.ch/index.html ³ Thomas Robert Malthus (1736–1834), britischer Ökonom und Sozialphilosoph.* Alex von Zelewsky ist emeritierter Professor für Chemie der Universität Freiburg (Schweiz).
Sonntag, August 03, 2008
Asia Times: Russia takes control of Turkmen (world?) gas
Asia Times
Central Asia
Jul 30, 2008
Russia takes control of Turkmen (world?) gas
By M K Bhadrakumar
From the details coming out of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan and Moscow over the weekend, it is apparent that the great game over Caspian energy has taken a dramatic turn. In the geopolitics of energy security, nothing like this has happened before. The United States has suffered a huge defeat in the race for Caspian gas. The question now is how much longer Washington could afford to keep Iran out of the energy market.
Asia Times
Central Asia
Jul 30, 2008
Russia takes control of Turkmen (world?) gas
By M K Bhadrakumar
From the details coming out of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan and Moscow over the weekend, it is apparent that the great game over Caspian energy has taken a dramatic turn. In the geopolitics of energy security, nothing like this has happened before. The United States has suffered a huge defeat in the race for Caspian gas. The question now is how much longer Washington could afford to keep Iran out of the energy market.
Gazprom, Russia's energy leviathan, signed two major agreements in Ashgabat on Friday outlining a new scheme for purchase of Turkmen gas. The first one elaborates the price formation principles that will be guiding the Russian gas purchase from Turkmenistan during the next 20-year period. The second agreement is a unique one, making Gazprom the donor for local Turkmen energy projects. In essence, the two agreements ensure that Russia will keep control over Turkmen gas exports.
The new pricing principle lays out that starting from next year, Russia has agreed to pay to Turkmenistan a base gas purchasing price that is a mix of the average wholesale price in Europe and Ukraine. In effect, as compared to the current price of US$140 per thousand cubic meters of Turkmen gas, from 2009 onward Russia will be paying $225-295 under the new formula. This works out to an additional annual payment of something like $9.4 billion to $12.4 billion. But the transition to market principles of pricing will take place within the framework of a long-term contract running up to the year 2028.
The second agreement stipulates that Gazprom will finance and build gas transportation facilities and develop gas fields in Turkmenistan. Experts have estimated that Gazprom will finance Turkmen projects costing $4-6 billion. Gazprom chief Alexei Miller said, "We have reached agreement regarding Gazprom financing and building the new main gas pipelines from the east of the country, developing gas fields and boosting the capacity of the Turkmen sector of the Caspian gas pipeline to 30 billion cubic meters." Interestingly, Gazprom will provide financing in the form of 0% credits for these local projects. The net gain for Turkmenistan is estimated to be in the region of $240-480 million.
From all appearance, Gazprom, which was headed by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for eight years from 2000 to May 2008, has taken an audacious initiative. It could only have happened thanks to a strategic decision taken at the highest level in the Kremlin. In fact, Medvedev had traveled to Ashgabat on July 4-5 en route to the Group of Eight summit meeting in Hokkaido, Japan.
Curiously, the agreements reached in Ashgabat on Friday are unlikely to enable Gazprom to make revenue from reselling Turkmen gas. Quite possibly, Gazprom may now have to concede similar terms to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the two other major gas producing countries in Central Asia. In other words, plain money-making was not the motivation for Gazprom. The Kremlin has a grand strategy.
Coincidence or not, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin traveled to Beijing at the weekend to launch with his Chinese counterpart, Vice Premier Wang Oishan, an energy initiative - a so-called "energy negotiation mechanism". The first round of negotiations within this framework took place on Saturday in Beijing. There has been an inexplicable media blackout of the event, but Beijing finally decided to break the news. The government-owned China Daily admitted on Monday, "Both China and Russia kept silent on the details of the consensus they reached on energy cooperation in the first round of their negotiation in Beijing on the weekend."
Without getting into details, China Daily merely took note of the talks as "a good beginning" and commented, "It seems that a shift of Russia's energy export policy is under way. Russia might turn its eyes from the Western countries to the Asia-Pacific region ... The cooperation in the energy sector is an issue of great significance for Sino-Russian relations ... the political and geographic closeness of the two countries would put their energy cooperation under a safe umbrella and make it a win-win deal. China-Russia ties are at their best times ... The two sides settled their lingering border disputes, held joint military exercises, and enjoyed rapidly increasing bilateral trade."
It is unclear whether Gazprom's agreements in Ashgabat and Sechin's talks in Beijing were inter-related. Conceivably, they overlapped in so far as China had signed a long-term agreement with Turkmenistan whereby the latter would supply 30 billion cubic meters of gas to China annually for the 30-year period starting from 2009. The construction work on the gas pipeline leading from Turkmenistan to China's Xinjiang Autonomous region has already begun. China had agreed on the price for Turkmen gas at $195 per thousand cubic meters. Now, the agreement in Ashgabat on Friday puts Gazprom in the driving seat for handling all of Turkmenistan's gas exports, including to China.
Russia and China have a heavy agenda to discuss in energy cooperation far beyond the price of Turkmen gas supplies. But suffice it to say that Gazprom's new stature as the sole buyer of Turkmen gas strengthens Russia's hands in setting the price in the world gas (and oil) market. And that has implications for China. Moscow would be keen to ensure that Russian and Chinese interests are harmonized in Central Asia.
Besides, Russia is taking a renewed interest in the idea of a "gas cartel". Medvedev referred to the idea during the visit of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to Moscow last week. The Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported on Friday that "Moscow finds the idea of coordination of gas production and pricing policy with other gas exporters to be too tempting to abandon". The daily quoted Miller as saying, "This forum of gas exporters will set up the global gas balance. It will give answers to the questions concerning when, where and how much gas should be produced."
Until fairly recently Moscow was sensitive about the European Union's opposition to the idea of a gas cartel. (Washington has openly warned that it would legislate against countries that lined up behind a gas cartel). But high gas prices have weakened the European Union's negotiating position.
The agreements with Turkmenistan further consolidate Russia's control of Central Asia's gas exports. Gazprom recently offered to buy all of Azerbaijan's gas at European prices. (Medvedev visited Baku on July 3-4.) Baku will study with keen interest the agreements signed in Ashgabat on Friday. The overall implications of these Russian moves are very serious for the US and EU campaign to get the Nabucco gas pipeline project going.
Nabucco, which would run from Turkey to Austria via Bulgaria, Rumania and Hungary, was hoping to tap Turkmen gas by linking Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan via a pipeline across the Caspian Sea that would be connected to the pipeline networks through the Caucasus to Turkey already existing, such as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.
But with access denied to Turkmen gas, Nabucco's viability becomes doubtful. And, without Nabucco, the entire US strategy of reducing Europe's dependence on Russian energy supplies makes no sense. Therefore, Washington is faced with Hobson's choice. Friday's agreements in Ashgabat mean that Nabucco's realization will now critically depend on gas supplies from the Middle East - Iran, in particular. Turkey is pursuing the idea of Iran supplying gas to Europe and has offered to mediate in the US-Iran standoff.
The geopolitics of energy makes strange bedfellows. Russia will be watching with anxiety the Turkish-Iranian-US tango. An understanding with Iran on gas pricing, production and market-sharing is vital for the success of Russia's overall gas export strategy. But Tehran visualizes the Nabucco as its passport for integration with Europe. Again, Russia's control of Turkmen gas cannot be to Tehran's liking. Tehran had keenly pursed with Ashgabat the idea of evacuation of Turkmen gas to the world market via Iranian territory.
There must be deep frustration in Washington. In sum, Russia has greatly strengthened its standing as the principal gas supplier to Europe. It not only controls Central Asia's gas exports but has ensured that gas from the region passes across Russia and not through the alternative trans-Caspian pipelines mooted by the US and EU. Also, a defining moment has come. The era of cheap gas is ending. Other gas exporters will cite the precedent of the price for Turkmen gas. European companies cannot match Gazprom's muscle. Azerbaijan becomes a test case. Equally, Russia places itself in a commanding position to influence the price of gas in the world market. A gas cartel is surely in the making. The geopolitical implications are simply profound for the US.
Moreover, Russian oil and gas companies are now spreading their wings into Latin America, which has been the US's traditional backyard. During Chavez's visit to Moscow on July 22, three Russian energy companies - Gazprom, LUKoil and TNK-BP - signed agreements with the Venezuelan state-owned petroleum company PDVSA. They will replace the American oil giants ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips in Venezuela.
At the signing ceremony, Medvedev said, "We have not only approved these agreements but have also decided to supervise their implementation." Chavez responded, "I look forward to seeing all of you in Venezuela."
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
Central Asia
Jul 30, 2008
Russia takes control of Turkmen (world?) gas
By M K Bhadrakumar
From the details coming out of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan and Moscow over the weekend, it is apparent that the great game over Caspian energy has taken a dramatic turn. In the geopolitics of energy security, nothing like this has happened before. The United States has suffered a huge defeat in the race for Caspian gas. The question now is how much longer Washington could afford to keep Iran out of the energy market.
Asia Times
Central Asia
Jul 30, 2008
Russia takes control of Turkmen (world?) gas
By M K Bhadrakumar
From the details coming out of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan and Moscow over the weekend, it is apparent that the great game over Caspian energy has taken a dramatic turn. In the geopolitics of energy security, nothing like this has happened before. The United States has suffered a huge defeat in the race for Caspian gas. The question now is how much longer Washington could afford to keep Iran out of the energy market.
Gazprom, Russia's energy leviathan, signed two major agreements in Ashgabat on Friday outlining a new scheme for purchase of Turkmen gas. The first one elaborates the price formation principles that will be guiding the Russian gas purchase from Turkmenistan during the next 20-year period. The second agreement is a unique one, making Gazprom the donor for local Turkmen energy projects. In essence, the two agreements ensure that Russia will keep control over Turkmen gas exports.
The new pricing principle lays out that starting from next year, Russia has agreed to pay to Turkmenistan a base gas purchasing price that is a mix of the average wholesale price in Europe and Ukraine. In effect, as compared to the current price of US$140 per thousand cubic meters of Turkmen gas, from 2009 onward Russia will be paying $225-295 under the new formula. This works out to an additional annual payment of something like $9.4 billion to $12.4 billion. But the transition to market principles of pricing will take place within the framework of a long-term contract running up to the year 2028.
The second agreement stipulates that Gazprom will finance and build gas transportation facilities and develop gas fields in Turkmenistan. Experts have estimated that Gazprom will finance Turkmen projects costing $4-6 billion. Gazprom chief Alexei Miller said, "We have reached agreement regarding Gazprom financing and building the new main gas pipelines from the east of the country, developing gas fields and boosting the capacity of the Turkmen sector of the Caspian gas pipeline to 30 billion cubic meters." Interestingly, Gazprom will provide financing in the form of 0% credits for these local projects. The net gain for Turkmenistan is estimated to be in the region of $240-480 million.
From all appearance, Gazprom, which was headed by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for eight years from 2000 to May 2008, has taken an audacious initiative. It could only have happened thanks to a strategic decision taken at the highest level in the Kremlin. In fact, Medvedev had traveled to Ashgabat on July 4-5 en route to the Group of Eight summit meeting in Hokkaido, Japan.
Curiously, the agreements reached in Ashgabat on Friday are unlikely to enable Gazprom to make revenue from reselling Turkmen gas. Quite possibly, Gazprom may now have to concede similar terms to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the two other major gas producing countries in Central Asia. In other words, plain money-making was not the motivation for Gazprom. The Kremlin has a grand strategy.
Coincidence or not, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin traveled to Beijing at the weekend to launch with his Chinese counterpart, Vice Premier Wang Oishan, an energy initiative - a so-called "energy negotiation mechanism". The first round of negotiations within this framework took place on Saturday in Beijing. There has been an inexplicable media blackout of the event, but Beijing finally decided to break the news. The government-owned China Daily admitted on Monday, "Both China and Russia kept silent on the details of the consensus they reached on energy cooperation in the first round of their negotiation in Beijing on the weekend."
Without getting into details, China Daily merely took note of the talks as "a good beginning" and commented, "It seems that a shift of Russia's energy export policy is under way. Russia might turn its eyes from the Western countries to the Asia-Pacific region ... The cooperation in the energy sector is an issue of great significance for Sino-Russian relations ... the political and geographic closeness of the two countries would put their energy cooperation under a safe umbrella and make it a win-win deal. China-Russia ties are at their best times ... The two sides settled their lingering border disputes, held joint military exercises, and enjoyed rapidly increasing bilateral trade."
It is unclear whether Gazprom's agreements in Ashgabat and Sechin's talks in Beijing were inter-related. Conceivably, they overlapped in so far as China had signed a long-term agreement with Turkmenistan whereby the latter would supply 30 billion cubic meters of gas to China annually for the 30-year period starting from 2009. The construction work on the gas pipeline leading from Turkmenistan to China's Xinjiang Autonomous region has already begun. China had agreed on the price for Turkmen gas at $195 per thousand cubic meters. Now, the agreement in Ashgabat on Friday puts Gazprom in the driving seat for handling all of Turkmenistan's gas exports, including to China.
Russia and China have a heavy agenda to discuss in energy cooperation far beyond the price of Turkmen gas supplies. But suffice it to say that Gazprom's new stature as the sole buyer of Turkmen gas strengthens Russia's hands in setting the price in the world gas (and oil) market. And that has implications for China. Moscow would be keen to ensure that Russian and Chinese interests are harmonized in Central Asia.
Besides, Russia is taking a renewed interest in the idea of a "gas cartel". Medvedev referred to the idea during the visit of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to Moscow last week. The Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported on Friday that "Moscow finds the idea of coordination of gas production and pricing policy with other gas exporters to be too tempting to abandon". The daily quoted Miller as saying, "This forum of gas exporters will set up the global gas balance. It will give answers to the questions concerning when, where and how much gas should be produced."
Until fairly recently Moscow was sensitive about the European Union's opposition to the idea of a gas cartel. (Washington has openly warned that it would legislate against countries that lined up behind a gas cartel). But high gas prices have weakened the European Union's negotiating position.
The agreements with Turkmenistan further consolidate Russia's control of Central Asia's gas exports. Gazprom recently offered to buy all of Azerbaijan's gas at European prices. (Medvedev visited Baku on July 3-4.) Baku will study with keen interest the agreements signed in Ashgabat on Friday. The overall implications of these Russian moves are very serious for the US and EU campaign to get the Nabucco gas pipeline project going.
Nabucco, which would run from Turkey to Austria via Bulgaria, Rumania and Hungary, was hoping to tap Turkmen gas by linking Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan via a pipeline across the Caspian Sea that would be connected to the pipeline networks through the Caucasus to Turkey already existing, such as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.
But with access denied to Turkmen gas, Nabucco's viability becomes doubtful. And, without Nabucco, the entire US strategy of reducing Europe's dependence on Russian energy supplies makes no sense. Therefore, Washington is faced with Hobson's choice. Friday's agreements in Ashgabat mean that Nabucco's realization will now critically depend on gas supplies from the Middle East - Iran, in particular. Turkey is pursuing the idea of Iran supplying gas to Europe and has offered to mediate in the US-Iran standoff.
The geopolitics of energy makes strange bedfellows. Russia will be watching with anxiety the Turkish-Iranian-US tango. An understanding with Iran on gas pricing, production and market-sharing is vital for the success of Russia's overall gas export strategy. But Tehran visualizes the Nabucco as its passport for integration with Europe. Again, Russia's control of Turkmen gas cannot be to Tehran's liking. Tehran had keenly pursed with Ashgabat the idea of evacuation of Turkmen gas to the world market via Iranian territory.
There must be deep frustration in Washington. In sum, Russia has greatly strengthened its standing as the principal gas supplier to Europe. It not only controls Central Asia's gas exports but has ensured that gas from the region passes across Russia and not through the alternative trans-Caspian pipelines mooted by the US and EU. Also, a defining moment has come. The era of cheap gas is ending. Other gas exporters will cite the precedent of the price for Turkmen gas. European companies cannot match Gazprom's muscle. Azerbaijan becomes a test case. Equally, Russia places itself in a commanding position to influence the price of gas in the world market. A gas cartel is surely in the making. The geopolitical implications are simply profound for the US.
Moreover, Russian oil and gas companies are now spreading their wings into Latin America, which has been the US's traditional backyard. During Chavez's visit to Moscow on July 22, three Russian energy companies - Gazprom, LUKoil and TNK-BP - signed agreements with the Venezuelan state-owned petroleum company PDVSA. They will replace the American oil giants ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips in Venezuela.
At the signing ceremony, Medvedev said, "We have not only approved these agreements but have also decided to supervise their implementation." Chavez responded, "I look forward to seeing all of you in Venezuela."
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
Samstag, August 02, 2008
NYT: Effect off rising transportation costs on Globalisation
Zeichnet sich da bereits ein Trend ab? Wir sollten unsere landwirtschaftliche und industrielle Basis doch nicht so einfach sterben lassen....
New York Times
August 3, 2008
Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization
By LARRY ROHTER
When Tesla Motors, a pioneer in electric-powered cars, set out to make a luxury roadster for the American market, it had the global supply chain in mind. Tesla planned to manufacture 1,000-pound battery packs in Thailand, ship them to Britain for installation, then bring the mostly assembled cars back to the United States.
But when it began production this spring, the company decided to make the batteries and assemble the cars near its home base in California, cutting more than 5,000 miles from the shipping bill for each vehicle.
New York Times
August 3, 2008
Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization
By LARRY ROHTER
When Tesla Motors, a pioneer in electric-powered cars, set out to make a luxury roadster for the American market, it had the global supply chain in mind. Tesla planned to manufacture 1,000-pound battery packs in Thailand, ship them to Britain for installation, then bring the mostly assembled cars back to the United States.
But when it began production this spring, the company decided to make the batteries and assemble the cars near its home base in California, cutting more than 5,000 miles from the shipping bill for each vehicle.
“It was kind of a no-brain decision for us,” said Darryl Siry, the company’s senior vice president of global sales, marketing and service. “A major reason was to avoid the transportation costs, which are terrible.”
The world economy has become so integrated that shoppers find relatively few T-shirts and sneakers in Wal-Mart and Target carrying a “Made in the U.S.A.” label. But globalization may be losing some of the inexorable economic power it had for much of the past quarter-century, even as it faces fresh challenges as a political ideology.
Cheap oil, the lubricant of quick, inexpensive transportation links across the world, may not return anytime soon, upsetting the logic of diffuse global supply chains that treat geography as a footnote in the pursuit of lower wages. Rising concern about global warming, the reaction against lost jobs in rich countries, worries about food safety and security, and the collapse of world trade talks in Geneva last week also signal that political and environmental concerns may make the calculus of globalization far more complex.
“If we think about the Wal-Mart model, it is incredibly fuel-intensive at every stage, and at every one of those stages we are now seeing an inflation of the costs for boats, trucks, cars,” said Naomi Klein, the author of “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.”
“That is necessarily leading to a rethinking of this emissions-intensive model, whether the increased interest in growing foods locally, producing locally or shopping locally, and I think that’s great.”
Many economists argue that globalization will not shift into reverse even if oil prices continue their rising trend. But many see evidence that companies looking to keep prices low will have to move some production closer to consumers. Globe-spanning supply chains — Brazilian iron ore turned into Chinese steel used to make washing machines shipped to Long Beach, Calif., and then trucked to appliance stores in Chicago — make less sense today than they did a few years ago.
To avoid having to ship all its products from abroad, the Swedish furniture manufacturer Ikea opened its first factory in the United States in May. Some electronics companies that left Mexico in recent years for the lower wages in China are now returning to Mexico, because they can lower costs by trucking their output overland to American consumers.
Neighborhood Effect
Decisions like those suggest that what some economists call a neighborhood effect — putting factories closer to components suppliers and to consumers, to reduce transportation costs — could grow in importance if oil remains expensive. A barrel sold for $125 on Friday, compared with lows of $10 a decade ago.
“If prices stay at these levels, that could lead to some significant rearrangement of production, among sectors and countries,” said C. Fred Bergsten, author of “The United States and the World Economy” and director of the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics, in Washington. “You could have a very significant shock to traditional consumption patterns and also some important growth effects.”
The cost of shipping a 40-foot container from Shanghai to the United States has risen to $8,000, compared with $3,000 early in the decade, according to a recent study of transportation costs. Big container ships, the pack mules of the 21st-century economy, have shaved their top speed by nearly 20 percent to save on fuel costs, substantially slowing shipping times.
The study, published in May by the Canadian investment bank CIBC World Markets, calculates that the recent surge in shipping costs is on average the equivalent of a 9 percent tariff on trade. “The cost of moving goods, not the cost of tariffs, is the largest barrier to global trade today,” the report concluded, and as a result “has effectively offset all the trade liberalization efforts of the last three decades.”
The spike in shipping costs comes at a moment when concern about the environmental impact of globalization is also growing. Many companies have in recent years shifted production from countries with greater energy efficiency and more rigorous standards on carbon emissions, especially in Europe, to those that are more lax, like China and India.
But if the international community fulfills its pledge to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol to combat climate change, even China and India would have to reduce the growth of their emissions, and the relative costs of production in countries that use energy inefficiently could grow.
The political landscape may also be changing. Dissatisfaction with globalization has led to the election of governments in Latin America hostile to the process. A somewhat similar reaction can be seen in the United States, where both Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton promised during the Democratic primary season to “re-evaluate” the nation’s existing free trade agreements.
Last week, efforts to complete what is known as the Doha round of trade talks collapsed in acrimony, dealing a serious blow to tariff reduction. The negotiations, begun in 2001, failed after China and India battled the United States over agricultural tariffs, with the two developing countries insisting on broad rights to protect themselves against surges of food imports that could hurt their farmers.
Some critics of globalization are encouraged by those developments, which they see as a welcome check on the process. On environmentalist blogs, some are even gleefully promoting a “globalization death watch.”
Many leading economists say such predictions are probably overblown. “It would be a mistake, a misinterpretation, to think that a huge rollback or reversal of fundamental trends is under way,” said Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. “Distance and trade costs do matter, but we are still in a globalized era.”
As economists and business executives well know, shipping costs are only one factor in determining the flow of international trade. When companies decide where to invest in a new factory or from whom to buy a product, they also take into account exchange rates, consumer confidence, labor costs, government regulations and the availability of skilled managers.
‘People Were Profligate’
What may be coming to an end are price-driven oddities like chicken and fish crossing the ocean from the Western Hemisphere to be filleted and packaged in Asia not to be consumed there, but to be shipped back across the Pacific again. “Because of low costs, people were profligate,” said Nayan Chanda, author of “Bound Together,” a history of globalization.
The industries most likely to be affected by the sharp rise in transportation costs are those producing heavy or bulky goods that are particularly expensive to ship relative to their sale price. Steel is an example. China’s steel exports to the United States are now tumbling by more than 20 percent on a year-over-year basis, their worst performance in a decade, while American steel production has been rising after years of decline. Motors and machinery of all types, car parts, industrial presses, refrigerators, television sets and other home appliances could also be affected.
Plants in industries that require relatively less investment in infrastructure, like furniture, footwear and toys, are already showing signs of mobility as shipping costs rise.
Until recently, standard practice in the furniture industry was to ship American timber from ports like Norfolk, Baltimore and Charleston to China, where oak and cherry would be milled into sofas, beds, tables, cabinets and chairs, which were then shipped back to the United States.
But with transport costs rising, more wood is now going to traditional domestic furniture-making centers in North Carolina and Virginia, where the industry had all but been wiped out. While the opening of the American Ikea plant, in Danville, Va., a traditional furniture-producing center hit hard by the outsourcing of production to Asia, is perhaps most emblematic of such changes, other manufacturers are also shifting some production back to the United States.
Among them is Craftmaster Furniture, a company founded in North Carolina but now Chinese-owned. And at an industry fair in April, La-Z-Boy announced a new line that will begin production in North Carolina this month.
“There’s just a handful of us left, but it has become easier for us domestic folks to compete,” said Steven Kincaid of Kincaid Furniture in Hudson, N.C., a division of La-Z-Boy.
Avocado Salad in January
Soaring transportation costs also have an impact on food, from bananas to salmon. Higher shipping rates could eventually transform some items now found in the typical middle-class pantry into luxuries and further promote the so-called local food movement popular in many American and European cities.
“This is not just about steel, but also maple syrup and avocados and blueberries at the grocery store,” shipped from places like Chile and South Africa, said Jeff Rubin, chief economist at CIBC World Markets and co-author of its recent study on transport costs and globalization. “Avocado salad in Minneapolis in January is just not going to work in this new world, because flying it in is going to make it cost as much as a rib eye.”
Global companies like General Electric, DuPont, Alcoa and Procter & Gamble are beginning to respond to the simultaneous increases in shipping and environmental costs with green policies meant to reduce both fuel consumption and carbon emissions. That pressure is likely to increase as both manufacturers and retailers seek ways to tighten the global supply chain.
“Being green is in their best interests not so much in making money as saving money,” said Gary Yohe, an environmental economist at Wesleyan University. “Green companies are likely to be a permanent trend, as these vulnerabilities continue, but it’s going to take a long time for all this to settle down.”
In addition, the sharp increase in transportation costs has implications for the “just-in-time” system pioneered in Japan and later adopted the world over. It is a highly profitable business strategy aimed at reducing warehousing and inventory costs by arranging for raw materials and other supplies to arrive only when needed, and not before.
Jeffrey E. Garten, the author of “World View: Global Strategies for the New Economy” and a former dean of the Yale School of Management, said that companies “cannot take a risk that the just-in-time system won’t function, because the whole global trading system is based on that notion.” As a result, he said, “they are going to have to have redundancies in the supply chain, like more warehousing and multiple sources of supply and even production.”
One likely outcome if transportation rates stay high, economists said, would be a strengthening of the neighborhood effect. Instead of seeking supplies wherever they can be bought most cheaply, regardless of location, and outsourcing the assembly of products all over the world, manufacturers would instead concentrate on performing those activities as close to home as possible.
In a more regionalized trading world, economists say, China would probably end up buying more of the iron ore it needs from Australia and less from Brazil, and farming out an even greater proportion of its manufacturing work to places like Vietnam and Thailand. Similarly, Mexico’s maquiladora sector, the assembly plants concentrated near its border with the United States, would become more attractive to manufacturers with an eye on the American market.
But a trend toward regionalization would not necessarily benefit the United States, economists caution. Not only has it lost some of its manufacturing base and skills over the past quarter-century, and experienced a decline in consumer confidence as part of the current slowdown, but it is also far from the economies that have become the most dynamic in the world, those of Asia.
“Despite everything, the American economy is still the biggest Rottweiler on the block,” said Jagdish N. Bhagwati, the author of “In Defense of Globalization” and a professor of economics at Columbia. “But if it’s expensive to get products from there to here, it’s also expensive to get them from here to there.”
New York Times
August 3, 2008
Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization
By LARRY ROHTER
When Tesla Motors, a pioneer in electric-powered cars, set out to make a luxury roadster for the American market, it had the global supply chain in mind. Tesla planned to manufacture 1,000-pound battery packs in Thailand, ship them to Britain for installation, then bring the mostly assembled cars back to the United States.
But when it began production this spring, the company decided to make the batteries and assemble the cars near its home base in California, cutting more than 5,000 miles from the shipping bill for each vehicle.
New York Times
August 3, 2008
Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization
By LARRY ROHTER
When Tesla Motors, a pioneer in electric-powered cars, set out to make a luxury roadster for the American market, it had the global supply chain in mind. Tesla planned to manufacture 1,000-pound battery packs in Thailand, ship them to Britain for installation, then bring the mostly assembled cars back to the United States.
But when it began production this spring, the company decided to make the batteries and assemble the cars near its home base in California, cutting more than 5,000 miles from the shipping bill for each vehicle.
“It was kind of a no-brain decision for us,” said Darryl Siry, the company’s senior vice president of global sales, marketing and service. “A major reason was to avoid the transportation costs, which are terrible.”
The world economy has become so integrated that shoppers find relatively few T-shirts and sneakers in Wal-Mart and Target carrying a “Made in the U.S.A.” label. But globalization may be losing some of the inexorable economic power it had for much of the past quarter-century, even as it faces fresh challenges as a political ideology.
Cheap oil, the lubricant of quick, inexpensive transportation links across the world, may not return anytime soon, upsetting the logic of diffuse global supply chains that treat geography as a footnote in the pursuit of lower wages. Rising concern about global warming, the reaction against lost jobs in rich countries, worries about food safety and security, and the collapse of world trade talks in Geneva last week also signal that political and environmental concerns may make the calculus of globalization far more complex.
“If we think about the Wal-Mart model, it is incredibly fuel-intensive at every stage, and at every one of those stages we are now seeing an inflation of the costs for boats, trucks, cars,” said Naomi Klein, the author of “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.”
“That is necessarily leading to a rethinking of this emissions-intensive model, whether the increased interest in growing foods locally, producing locally or shopping locally, and I think that’s great.”
Many economists argue that globalization will not shift into reverse even if oil prices continue their rising trend. But many see evidence that companies looking to keep prices low will have to move some production closer to consumers. Globe-spanning supply chains — Brazilian iron ore turned into Chinese steel used to make washing machines shipped to Long Beach, Calif., and then trucked to appliance stores in Chicago — make less sense today than they did a few years ago.
To avoid having to ship all its products from abroad, the Swedish furniture manufacturer Ikea opened its first factory in the United States in May. Some electronics companies that left Mexico in recent years for the lower wages in China are now returning to Mexico, because they can lower costs by trucking their output overland to American consumers.
Neighborhood Effect
Decisions like those suggest that what some economists call a neighborhood effect — putting factories closer to components suppliers and to consumers, to reduce transportation costs — could grow in importance if oil remains expensive. A barrel sold for $125 on Friday, compared with lows of $10 a decade ago.
“If prices stay at these levels, that could lead to some significant rearrangement of production, among sectors and countries,” said C. Fred Bergsten, author of “The United States and the World Economy” and director of the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics, in Washington. “You could have a very significant shock to traditional consumption patterns and also some important growth effects.”
The cost of shipping a 40-foot container from Shanghai to the United States has risen to $8,000, compared with $3,000 early in the decade, according to a recent study of transportation costs. Big container ships, the pack mules of the 21st-century economy, have shaved their top speed by nearly 20 percent to save on fuel costs, substantially slowing shipping times.
The study, published in May by the Canadian investment bank CIBC World Markets, calculates that the recent surge in shipping costs is on average the equivalent of a 9 percent tariff on trade. “The cost of moving goods, not the cost of tariffs, is the largest barrier to global trade today,” the report concluded, and as a result “has effectively offset all the trade liberalization efforts of the last three decades.”
The spike in shipping costs comes at a moment when concern about the environmental impact of globalization is also growing. Many companies have in recent years shifted production from countries with greater energy efficiency and more rigorous standards on carbon emissions, especially in Europe, to those that are more lax, like China and India.
But if the international community fulfills its pledge to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol to combat climate change, even China and India would have to reduce the growth of their emissions, and the relative costs of production in countries that use energy inefficiently could grow.
The political landscape may also be changing. Dissatisfaction with globalization has led to the election of governments in Latin America hostile to the process. A somewhat similar reaction can be seen in the United States, where both Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton promised during the Democratic primary season to “re-evaluate” the nation’s existing free trade agreements.
Last week, efforts to complete what is known as the Doha round of trade talks collapsed in acrimony, dealing a serious blow to tariff reduction. The negotiations, begun in 2001, failed after China and India battled the United States over agricultural tariffs, with the two developing countries insisting on broad rights to protect themselves against surges of food imports that could hurt their farmers.
Some critics of globalization are encouraged by those developments, which they see as a welcome check on the process. On environmentalist blogs, some are even gleefully promoting a “globalization death watch.”
Many leading economists say such predictions are probably overblown. “It would be a mistake, a misinterpretation, to think that a huge rollback or reversal of fundamental trends is under way,” said Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. “Distance and trade costs do matter, but we are still in a globalized era.”
As economists and business executives well know, shipping costs are only one factor in determining the flow of international trade. When companies decide where to invest in a new factory or from whom to buy a product, they also take into account exchange rates, consumer confidence, labor costs, government regulations and the availability of skilled managers.
‘People Were Profligate’
What may be coming to an end are price-driven oddities like chicken and fish crossing the ocean from the Western Hemisphere to be filleted and packaged in Asia not to be consumed there, but to be shipped back across the Pacific again. “Because of low costs, people were profligate,” said Nayan Chanda, author of “Bound Together,” a history of globalization.
The industries most likely to be affected by the sharp rise in transportation costs are those producing heavy or bulky goods that are particularly expensive to ship relative to their sale price. Steel is an example. China’s steel exports to the United States are now tumbling by more than 20 percent on a year-over-year basis, their worst performance in a decade, while American steel production has been rising after years of decline. Motors and machinery of all types, car parts, industrial presses, refrigerators, television sets and other home appliances could also be affected.
Plants in industries that require relatively less investment in infrastructure, like furniture, footwear and toys, are already showing signs of mobility as shipping costs rise.
Until recently, standard practice in the furniture industry was to ship American timber from ports like Norfolk, Baltimore and Charleston to China, where oak and cherry would be milled into sofas, beds, tables, cabinets and chairs, which were then shipped back to the United States.
But with transport costs rising, more wood is now going to traditional domestic furniture-making centers in North Carolina and Virginia, where the industry had all but been wiped out. While the opening of the American Ikea plant, in Danville, Va., a traditional furniture-producing center hit hard by the outsourcing of production to Asia, is perhaps most emblematic of such changes, other manufacturers are also shifting some production back to the United States.
Among them is Craftmaster Furniture, a company founded in North Carolina but now Chinese-owned. And at an industry fair in April, La-Z-Boy announced a new line that will begin production in North Carolina this month.
“There’s just a handful of us left, but it has become easier for us domestic folks to compete,” said Steven Kincaid of Kincaid Furniture in Hudson, N.C., a division of La-Z-Boy.
Avocado Salad in January
Soaring transportation costs also have an impact on food, from bananas to salmon. Higher shipping rates could eventually transform some items now found in the typical middle-class pantry into luxuries and further promote the so-called local food movement popular in many American and European cities.
“This is not just about steel, but also maple syrup and avocados and blueberries at the grocery store,” shipped from places like Chile and South Africa, said Jeff Rubin, chief economist at CIBC World Markets and co-author of its recent study on transport costs and globalization. “Avocado salad in Minneapolis in January is just not going to work in this new world, because flying it in is going to make it cost as much as a rib eye.”
Global companies like General Electric, DuPont, Alcoa and Procter & Gamble are beginning to respond to the simultaneous increases in shipping and environmental costs with green policies meant to reduce both fuel consumption and carbon emissions. That pressure is likely to increase as both manufacturers and retailers seek ways to tighten the global supply chain.
“Being green is in their best interests not so much in making money as saving money,” said Gary Yohe, an environmental economist at Wesleyan University. “Green companies are likely to be a permanent trend, as these vulnerabilities continue, but it’s going to take a long time for all this to settle down.”
In addition, the sharp increase in transportation costs has implications for the “just-in-time” system pioneered in Japan and later adopted the world over. It is a highly profitable business strategy aimed at reducing warehousing and inventory costs by arranging for raw materials and other supplies to arrive only when needed, and not before.
Jeffrey E. Garten, the author of “World View: Global Strategies for the New Economy” and a former dean of the Yale School of Management, said that companies “cannot take a risk that the just-in-time system won’t function, because the whole global trading system is based on that notion.” As a result, he said, “they are going to have to have redundancies in the supply chain, like more warehousing and multiple sources of supply and even production.”
One likely outcome if transportation rates stay high, economists said, would be a strengthening of the neighborhood effect. Instead of seeking supplies wherever they can be bought most cheaply, regardless of location, and outsourcing the assembly of products all over the world, manufacturers would instead concentrate on performing those activities as close to home as possible.
In a more regionalized trading world, economists say, China would probably end up buying more of the iron ore it needs from Australia and less from Brazil, and farming out an even greater proportion of its manufacturing work to places like Vietnam and Thailand. Similarly, Mexico’s maquiladora sector, the assembly plants concentrated near its border with the United States, would become more attractive to manufacturers with an eye on the American market.
But a trend toward regionalization would not necessarily benefit the United States, economists caution. Not only has it lost some of its manufacturing base and skills over the past quarter-century, and experienced a decline in consumer confidence as part of the current slowdown, but it is also far from the economies that have become the most dynamic in the world, those of Asia.
“Despite everything, the American economy is still the biggest Rottweiler on the block,” said Jagdish N. Bhagwati, the author of “In Defense of Globalization” and a professor of economics at Columbia. “But if it’s expensive to get products from there to here, it’s also expensive to get them from here to there.”
Mittwoch, Juli 30, 2008
Rand Corporation: Thinktank rät USA zu Strategiewechsel in Afghanistan
Tages Anzeiger
Ausland
29. Juli 2008, 08:20
Thinktank rät USA zu Strategiewechsel in Afghanistan
Die USA sollten sich in Afghanistan mehr auf Polizei- und Geheimdienstarbeit konzentrieren und sich weniger auf die Streitkräfte stützen. Dies schlägt ein renommiertes US-Institut vor.
Tages Anzeiger
Ausland
29. Juli 2008, 08:20
Thinktank rät USA zu Strategiewechsel in Afghanistan
Die USA sollten sich in Afghanistan mehr auf Polizei- und Geheimdienstarbeit konzentrieren und sich weniger auf die Streitkräfte stützen. Dies schlägt ein renommiertes US-Institut vor.
Washington solle ausserdem den Ausdruck «Krieg gegen den Terrorismus» fallenlassen, fordert die Rand-Corporation in der heute veröffentlichten Studie. «Terroristen müssen als Kriminelle wahrgenommen werden und unsere Analyse zeigt, dass es auf dem Schlachtfeld keine Lösung für den Terrorismus gibt», schreibt Seth Jones, der führende Autor der Studie.
Die Rand-Corporation untersuchte die Entwicklung von terroristischen Gruppen seit 1968 und stellte dabei fest, dass nur sieben Prozent dieser Organisationen durch militärische Niederlagen neutralisiert wurden.
43 Prozent der Gruppen hätten sich nach politischen Abkommen aufgelöst. Auch verschwanden gewisse Gruppen, als ihre Anführer durch Polizei- und Geheimdiensteinsätze getötet oder gefangengenommen wurden.
Unterwandern
Daher müsse «die anti-terroristische Strategie nach dem 11. September grundlegend überdacht werden», fordert die Rand- Corporation. Als Beispiel nennt die Studie die verstärkte Aktivität der Aufständischen im pakistanisch-afghanischen Grenzgebiet sieben Jahre nach dem 11. September 2001.
Polizei und Geheimdienst müssten «das Rückgrat der US-Bemühungen sein», verlangt die Studie. Diese könnten die terroristischen Organisationen besser unterwandern und deren Anführer aufspüren.
Ausserdem verfügten lokale Streitkräfte über mehr Legitimität und bessere operationelle Kenntnis des Terrains als ausländische Truppen. Das Eindringen von US-Truppen in islamische Gesellschaften drohe terroristische Aktivität sogar zu fördern, warnte die Studie.
vin/sda
Ausland
29. Juli 2008, 08:20
Thinktank rät USA zu Strategiewechsel in Afghanistan
Die USA sollten sich in Afghanistan mehr auf Polizei- und Geheimdienstarbeit konzentrieren und sich weniger auf die Streitkräfte stützen. Dies schlägt ein renommiertes US-Institut vor.
Tages Anzeiger
Ausland
29. Juli 2008, 08:20
Thinktank rät USA zu Strategiewechsel in Afghanistan
Die USA sollten sich in Afghanistan mehr auf Polizei- und Geheimdienstarbeit konzentrieren und sich weniger auf die Streitkräfte stützen. Dies schlägt ein renommiertes US-Institut vor.
Washington solle ausserdem den Ausdruck «Krieg gegen den Terrorismus» fallenlassen, fordert die Rand-Corporation in der heute veröffentlichten Studie. «Terroristen müssen als Kriminelle wahrgenommen werden und unsere Analyse zeigt, dass es auf dem Schlachtfeld keine Lösung für den Terrorismus gibt», schreibt Seth Jones, der führende Autor der Studie.
Die Rand-Corporation untersuchte die Entwicklung von terroristischen Gruppen seit 1968 und stellte dabei fest, dass nur sieben Prozent dieser Organisationen durch militärische Niederlagen neutralisiert wurden.
43 Prozent der Gruppen hätten sich nach politischen Abkommen aufgelöst. Auch verschwanden gewisse Gruppen, als ihre Anführer durch Polizei- und Geheimdiensteinsätze getötet oder gefangengenommen wurden.
Unterwandern
Daher müsse «die anti-terroristische Strategie nach dem 11. September grundlegend überdacht werden», fordert die Rand- Corporation. Als Beispiel nennt die Studie die verstärkte Aktivität der Aufständischen im pakistanisch-afghanischen Grenzgebiet sieben Jahre nach dem 11. September 2001.
Polizei und Geheimdienst müssten «das Rückgrat der US-Bemühungen sein», verlangt die Studie. Diese könnten die terroristischen Organisationen besser unterwandern und deren Anführer aufspüren.
Ausserdem verfügten lokale Streitkräfte über mehr Legitimität und bessere operationelle Kenntnis des Terrains als ausländische Truppen. Das Eindringen von US-Truppen in islamische Gesellschaften drohe terroristische Aktivität sogar zu fördern, warnte die Studie.
vin/sda
Dienstag, Juli 29, 2008
Sonntag, Juli 27, 2008
NZZ: Miltiärschlag gegen den Iran
26. Juli 2008, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Wie gefährlich wäre ein Militärschlag gegen Iran?
Israelisches Vormachtstreben als Hindernis bei der Suche nach Gleichgewicht
Die Spekulationen über einen möglichen israelischen oder amerikanischen Militärschlag gegen Iran reissen nicht ab. Im folgenden Beitrag hinterfragt der Autor die Gründe für eine Strategie gegenüber Teheran, die auf Ausgrenzung und Konfrontation aus ist. Er plädiert für eine moderierende Politik, die ein Gleichgewicht zwischen den regionalen Kräften anstrebt.
Von Johannes Reissner*
26. Juli 2008, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Wie gefährlich wäre ein Militärschlag gegen Iran?
Israelisches Vormachtstreben als Hindernis bei der Suche nach Gleichgewicht
Die Spekulationen über einen möglichen israelischen oder amerikanischen Militärschlag gegen Iran reissen nicht ab. Im folgenden Beitrag hinterfragt der Autor die Gründe für eine Strategie gegenüber Teheran, die auf Ausgrenzung und Konfrontation aus ist. Er plädiert für eine moderierende Politik, die ein Gleichgewicht zwischen den regionalen Kräften anstrebt.
Von Johannes Reissner*
Israelische Drohungen, mit einem Militärschlag gegen Irans Atomanlagen die «iranische Bombe» zu verhindern, häufen sich, und international reissen die Spekulationen nicht ab, ob damit nur der Druck auf Iran erhöht werden soll oder ob tatsächlich vor Ende der Amtszeit Präsident Bushs mit einem Angriff zu rechnen sei. Da Israeli auch einräumen, dass sich mit einem Militärschlag die «iranische Bombe» möglicherweise ohnehin nur um etwa vier Jahre verzögern liesse, fragt man sich allerdings, wozu er dann dienen soll und welche Folgen er haben könnte.
Die iranische Bedrohung
Die Israeli haben gute Gründe, in Iran eine Bedrohung zu sehen. Eine Welt ohne den Staat Israel wäre der iranischen Führung am liebsten. Lange bevor Ahmadinejad im Oktober 2005 Khomeiny mit der Äusserung zitierte, dass das Jerusalem besetzende Regime aus den Seiten der Geschichte verschwinden müsse, hatte der Revolutionsführer Khamenei im Mai 1999 Widerstand und Kampf als einzige Mittel genannt, um das «Krebsgeschwür Israel» auszurotten. Angesichts dessen ist die schiefe Übersetzung westlicher Medien des Khomeiny-Zitats von Ahmadinejad irrelevant. Eher bemerkenswert ist, dass die iranische Führung den Untergang Israels in aller Regel unpersönlich, quasi als geschichtliche Notwendigkeit, darstellt, nicht aber sagt, dass man es selbst besorgen werde. Doch dies kann Israel natürlich nicht beruhigen.
Zwischen Israel und der Islamischen Republik Iran bestand nicht immer unüberbrückbare Feindschaft. Khomeiny lehnte Israel zwar aus ideologischen Gründen grundsätzlich ab, aber das politische Verhältnis der iranischen Revolutionäre zu Israel war zunächst eher ambivalent und kalkuliert. Während des Krieges mit dem Irak (1980–1988) akzeptierte Iran die Lieferung amerikanischer Waffen über Israel im Rahmen der später als Iran-Contra bekanntgewordenen Affäre. Erst in den neunziger Jahren verschärfte sich die geostrategische Konkurrenz zwischen Israel und Iran, wie Trita Parsi in seinem Buch «The Treacherous Alliance. The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the U.S.» dokumentiert.
Nachdem sich Iran im ersten Krieg der USA gegen Saddam Hussein 1991 neutral verhalten hatte, schien eine Annäherung zwischen Iran und den USA möglich. Dies weckte in Israel Befürchtungen, es könnte seine Vorzugsstellung als wichtigster strategischer Partner der USA in der Region einbüssen. Um dem entgegenzuwirken, propagierte die israelische Arbeitspartei unter Rabin und Peres die Vorstellung, dass das nichtarabische Iran für Israel seine potenzielle Funktion als strategische Balance gegen die Araber verloren habe und nach der faktischen Ausschaltung des Iraks zur entscheidenden Bedrohung in der Peripherie Israels geworden sei. Diese Sicht beeinflusste auch Präsident Clinton, der im Frühjahr 1993 gegen den «kritischen Dialog» der Europäer mit Iran die «doppelte Eindämmung» des Iraks und Irans auf die Agenda amerikanischer Mittelostpolitik setzte. Nach den Terroranschlägen vom 11. September 2001 avancierte Iran zum Schurkenstaat, zum weltweit «grössten Sponsor von Terrorismus», und kam auf die «Achse des Bösen».
Veraltete Strategien
Dieser auf Marginalisierung und Exklusion nicht prowestlicher Akteure zielende Politikansatz mochte während des Kalten Kriegs zur Verhinderung prosowjetischer Satelliten noch möglich gewesen sein. Heute aber wirkt er mit seinem kruden Freund-Feind-Schema nur noch konfliktverschärfend. Denn der Globalisierungsschub der neunziger Jahre hat den regionalen Akteuren des Nahen und Mittleren Ostens enorme neue Möglichkeiten für ihr altes Spiel eröffnet, die Konkurrenz externer Mächte für den eigenen, regionalen Konkurrenzkampf zu nutzen. Diese seit dem 19. Jahrhundert geübte Praxis bestimmt die politische Dynamik der Region. Sie ist von ethnischen und konfessionellen Animositäten und Feindschaften geprägt, aber nicht von Exklusionsphantasien. Saudiarabien und die kleineren arabischen Nachbarn Irans am Persischen Golf bemühen sich um eine Eindämmung Irans durch selektive Inklusion und Engagement.
Der Westen kann der Region keine Ordnung von aussen bringen und bestimmen, wer in ihr mitspielen darf. An die Stelle der kontraproduktiven auf Exklusion ausgerichteten Strategien muss eine moderierende Balance zwischen allen Kräften der Region treten. Afghanistan und der Irak haben gezeigt, dass die Probleme erst nach der Eroberung und der Beseitigung der Regime beginnen.
Sanktionen sind keine Diplomatie
Irans Antwort auf das Anreizpaket der fünf Vetomächte des Uno-Sicherheitsrats und Deutschlands lässt neue Verhandlungen möglich erscheinen. Diese Entwicklung erfordert die volle Unterstützung der USA. Sanktionen allein sind entgegen der ständigen Behauptung Washingtons noch keine Diplomatie, sondern sind ohne Einbindung in eine politische Strategie nichts anderes als eine nichtmilitärische Strafaktion, deren inhärente Gefahr der Eskalation offensichtlich ist.
Die amerikanische Behauptung, ein Militärschlag gegen iranische Atomanlagen sei nur als «letzte Zuflucht» (last resort) zur Verhinderung der «iranischen Bombe» geplant, ist ohne den ernsthaften Versuch Washingtons, mit Teheran zu verhandeln, eine Irreführung der internationalen öffentlichen Meinung. Nur in Verhandlungen lässt sich die prinzipielle Anerkennung Irans zeigen. Zwar sieht man in Washington, dass die Lösung der Irakfrage ohne eine Einbeziehung Irans schwer möglich ist. Doch auf den Irak beschränkte Verhandlungen, die das Moment der grundsätzlichen Anerkennung Irans missen lassen, reichen Iran nicht, wie die Irak-Verhandlungen von 2007 zeigten. Dass Iran an einem grundlegenden Arrangement mit den USA interessiert ist, dafür gibt es trotz massiver antiamerikanischer Rhetorik deutliche Signale.
In Israel wird der zeitliche Abstand zum «point of no return», an dem Iran aufgrund seiner Anreicherungsaktivitäten zum Bau der Bombe fähig wäre, auf etwa ein Jahr eingeschätzt und das Ende der Amtszeit Präsident Bushs als letztmögliches Datum für einen Militärschlag genannt. Dies wirkt sehr kalkuliert. Hätten die vielen israelischen Schätzungen seit Beginn der neunziger Jahre gestimmt, müsste Iran längst die Bombe haben. Es ist Zeit, einmal in die andere Richtung zu denken, ob dem israelischen Sicherheitsbedürfnis nicht weit mehr mit einer ernsthaften Verbesserung des amerikanisch-iranischen Verhältnisses gedient wäre als mit einem Militärschlag. Doch Israel will für die eigene Sicherheit in letzter Instanz auch nicht auf die Amerikaner angewiesen sein. Eine «iranische Bombe plus amerikanische Botschaft in Teheran» widerspräche der Doktrin von Israels regionaler Vormachtstellung.
In Israel wird argumentiert, dass ein Militärschlag die nukleare Rüstung Irans zumindest verzögern würde. Die internationale Gemeinschaft könnte dann die Zeit nutzen, nach einer dauerhafteren Lösung zu suchen. Doch die Frage ist, ob es nach einem Militärschlag überhaupt eine kontrollierbare und verhandlungsoffene Situation gibt. Seit einem Jahr herrscht in Israel die Meinung vor, dass sich die unmittelbaren Reaktionen «managen» liessen. Ob Iran es tatsächlich wagen würde, Israel mit Raketen anzugreifen und einen Krieg zu entfesseln, ob der libanesische Hizbullah und Syrien zur Entlastung Irans Israel angreifen würden, all dies sei ungewiss. So schwierig dergleichen auch zu bewältigen sei, so sei es doch immerhin noch eher zu verkraften als ein nuklear gerüstetes Iran. Israels grundsätzliche strategische Überlegenheit in der Region bliebe erhalten.
Keine Hoffnung auf regionale Stabilität
Abgesehen davon, dass sich Iran im Falle eines israelischen oder amerikanischen Militärschlags erst recht zur nuklearen Rüstung entschliessen könnte, übersieht die israelische Kalkulation die möglichen mittelfristigen Folgen. Eine Schwächung des iranischen Regimes oder gar ein Regimewechsel, worauf unter anderem die Studie «The Last Resort» von Patrick Clawson und Michael Eisenstadt vom Washington Institute for Near East Policy spekuliert, würde eine Destabilisierung Irans bedeuten und im Extremfall, dass man es mit einem weiteren fragilen oder gar «failed state» zwischen dem Irak und Afghanistan zu tun hätte. Amerikanische Versuche, Minderheiten wie die Belutschen, die Kurden und die Araber in Ahwaz gegen Teheran aufzustacheln, können nur einem Chaos den Weg ebnen, das die regionale Stabilität vernichten würde.
Das aufgeheizte Klima der Drohungen und Gegendrohungen ist beängstigend genug. Doch die Beschränkung der meisten Spekulationen auf das Ob und Wie eines Militärschlags und die Vernachlässigung der Frage nach den Folgen lassen sich nur aus der von Selbstüberschätzung geprägten Überzeugung erklären, das Danach schon irgendwie regeln zu können. Bekanntlich ist Hybris ein schlechter Ratgeber.
* Der Autor ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter in der Forschungsgruppe Naher/Mittlerer Osten und Afrika der Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), Berlin.
Wie gefährlich wäre ein Militärschlag gegen Iran?
Israelisches Vormachtstreben als Hindernis bei der Suche nach Gleichgewicht
Die Spekulationen über einen möglichen israelischen oder amerikanischen Militärschlag gegen Iran reissen nicht ab. Im folgenden Beitrag hinterfragt der Autor die Gründe für eine Strategie gegenüber Teheran, die auf Ausgrenzung und Konfrontation aus ist. Er plädiert für eine moderierende Politik, die ein Gleichgewicht zwischen den regionalen Kräften anstrebt.
Von Johannes Reissner*
26. Juli 2008, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Wie gefährlich wäre ein Militärschlag gegen Iran?
Israelisches Vormachtstreben als Hindernis bei der Suche nach Gleichgewicht
Die Spekulationen über einen möglichen israelischen oder amerikanischen Militärschlag gegen Iran reissen nicht ab. Im folgenden Beitrag hinterfragt der Autor die Gründe für eine Strategie gegenüber Teheran, die auf Ausgrenzung und Konfrontation aus ist. Er plädiert für eine moderierende Politik, die ein Gleichgewicht zwischen den regionalen Kräften anstrebt.
Von Johannes Reissner*
Israelische Drohungen, mit einem Militärschlag gegen Irans Atomanlagen die «iranische Bombe» zu verhindern, häufen sich, und international reissen die Spekulationen nicht ab, ob damit nur der Druck auf Iran erhöht werden soll oder ob tatsächlich vor Ende der Amtszeit Präsident Bushs mit einem Angriff zu rechnen sei. Da Israeli auch einräumen, dass sich mit einem Militärschlag die «iranische Bombe» möglicherweise ohnehin nur um etwa vier Jahre verzögern liesse, fragt man sich allerdings, wozu er dann dienen soll und welche Folgen er haben könnte.
Die iranische Bedrohung
Die Israeli haben gute Gründe, in Iran eine Bedrohung zu sehen. Eine Welt ohne den Staat Israel wäre der iranischen Führung am liebsten. Lange bevor Ahmadinejad im Oktober 2005 Khomeiny mit der Äusserung zitierte, dass das Jerusalem besetzende Regime aus den Seiten der Geschichte verschwinden müsse, hatte der Revolutionsführer Khamenei im Mai 1999 Widerstand und Kampf als einzige Mittel genannt, um das «Krebsgeschwür Israel» auszurotten. Angesichts dessen ist die schiefe Übersetzung westlicher Medien des Khomeiny-Zitats von Ahmadinejad irrelevant. Eher bemerkenswert ist, dass die iranische Führung den Untergang Israels in aller Regel unpersönlich, quasi als geschichtliche Notwendigkeit, darstellt, nicht aber sagt, dass man es selbst besorgen werde. Doch dies kann Israel natürlich nicht beruhigen.
Zwischen Israel und der Islamischen Republik Iran bestand nicht immer unüberbrückbare Feindschaft. Khomeiny lehnte Israel zwar aus ideologischen Gründen grundsätzlich ab, aber das politische Verhältnis der iranischen Revolutionäre zu Israel war zunächst eher ambivalent und kalkuliert. Während des Krieges mit dem Irak (1980–1988) akzeptierte Iran die Lieferung amerikanischer Waffen über Israel im Rahmen der später als Iran-Contra bekanntgewordenen Affäre. Erst in den neunziger Jahren verschärfte sich die geostrategische Konkurrenz zwischen Israel und Iran, wie Trita Parsi in seinem Buch «The Treacherous Alliance. The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the U.S.» dokumentiert.
Nachdem sich Iran im ersten Krieg der USA gegen Saddam Hussein 1991 neutral verhalten hatte, schien eine Annäherung zwischen Iran und den USA möglich. Dies weckte in Israel Befürchtungen, es könnte seine Vorzugsstellung als wichtigster strategischer Partner der USA in der Region einbüssen. Um dem entgegenzuwirken, propagierte die israelische Arbeitspartei unter Rabin und Peres die Vorstellung, dass das nichtarabische Iran für Israel seine potenzielle Funktion als strategische Balance gegen die Araber verloren habe und nach der faktischen Ausschaltung des Iraks zur entscheidenden Bedrohung in der Peripherie Israels geworden sei. Diese Sicht beeinflusste auch Präsident Clinton, der im Frühjahr 1993 gegen den «kritischen Dialog» der Europäer mit Iran die «doppelte Eindämmung» des Iraks und Irans auf die Agenda amerikanischer Mittelostpolitik setzte. Nach den Terroranschlägen vom 11. September 2001 avancierte Iran zum Schurkenstaat, zum weltweit «grössten Sponsor von Terrorismus», und kam auf die «Achse des Bösen».
Veraltete Strategien
Dieser auf Marginalisierung und Exklusion nicht prowestlicher Akteure zielende Politikansatz mochte während des Kalten Kriegs zur Verhinderung prosowjetischer Satelliten noch möglich gewesen sein. Heute aber wirkt er mit seinem kruden Freund-Feind-Schema nur noch konfliktverschärfend. Denn der Globalisierungsschub der neunziger Jahre hat den regionalen Akteuren des Nahen und Mittleren Ostens enorme neue Möglichkeiten für ihr altes Spiel eröffnet, die Konkurrenz externer Mächte für den eigenen, regionalen Konkurrenzkampf zu nutzen. Diese seit dem 19. Jahrhundert geübte Praxis bestimmt die politische Dynamik der Region. Sie ist von ethnischen und konfessionellen Animositäten und Feindschaften geprägt, aber nicht von Exklusionsphantasien. Saudiarabien und die kleineren arabischen Nachbarn Irans am Persischen Golf bemühen sich um eine Eindämmung Irans durch selektive Inklusion und Engagement.
Der Westen kann der Region keine Ordnung von aussen bringen und bestimmen, wer in ihr mitspielen darf. An die Stelle der kontraproduktiven auf Exklusion ausgerichteten Strategien muss eine moderierende Balance zwischen allen Kräften der Region treten. Afghanistan und der Irak haben gezeigt, dass die Probleme erst nach der Eroberung und der Beseitigung der Regime beginnen.
Sanktionen sind keine Diplomatie
Irans Antwort auf das Anreizpaket der fünf Vetomächte des Uno-Sicherheitsrats und Deutschlands lässt neue Verhandlungen möglich erscheinen. Diese Entwicklung erfordert die volle Unterstützung der USA. Sanktionen allein sind entgegen der ständigen Behauptung Washingtons noch keine Diplomatie, sondern sind ohne Einbindung in eine politische Strategie nichts anderes als eine nichtmilitärische Strafaktion, deren inhärente Gefahr der Eskalation offensichtlich ist.
Die amerikanische Behauptung, ein Militärschlag gegen iranische Atomanlagen sei nur als «letzte Zuflucht» (last resort) zur Verhinderung der «iranischen Bombe» geplant, ist ohne den ernsthaften Versuch Washingtons, mit Teheran zu verhandeln, eine Irreführung der internationalen öffentlichen Meinung. Nur in Verhandlungen lässt sich die prinzipielle Anerkennung Irans zeigen. Zwar sieht man in Washington, dass die Lösung der Irakfrage ohne eine Einbeziehung Irans schwer möglich ist. Doch auf den Irak beschränkte Verhandlungen, die das Moment der grundsätzlichen Anerkennung Irans missen lassen, reichen Iran nicht, wie die Irak-Verhandlungen von 2007 zeigten. Dass Iran an einem grundlegenden Arrangement mit den USA interessiert ist, dafür gibt es trotz massiver antiamerikanischer Rhetorik deutliche Signale.
In Israel wird der zeitliche Abstand zum «point of no return», an dem Iran aufgrund seiner Anreicherungsaktivitäten zum Bau der Bombe fähig wäre, auf etwa ein Jahr eingeschätzt und das Ende der Amtszeit Präsident Bushs als letztmögliches Datum für einen Militärschlag genannt. Dies wirkt sehr kalkuliert. Hätten die vielen israelischen Schätzungen seit Beginn der neunziger Jahre gestimmt, müsste Iran längst die Bombe haben. Es ist Zeit, einmal in die andere Richtung zu denken, ob dem israelischen Sicherheitsbedürfnis nicht weit mehr mit einer ernsthaften Verbesserung des amerikanisch-iranischen Verhältnisses gedient wäre als mit einem Militärschlag. Doch Israel will für die eigene Sicherheit in letzter Instanz auch nicht auf die Amerikaner angewiesen sein. Eine «iranische Bombe plus amerikanische Botschaft in Teheran» widerspräche der Doktrin von Israels regionaler Vormachtstellung.
In Israel wird argumentiert, dass ein Militärschlag die nukleare Rüstung Irans zumindest verzögern würde. Die internationale Gemeinschaft könnte dann die Zeit nutzen, nach einer dauerhafteren Lösung zu suchen. Doch die Frage ist, ob es nach einem Militärschlag überhaupt eine kontrollierbare und verhandlungsoffene Situation gibt. Seit einem Jahr herrscht in Israel die Meinung vor, dass sich die unmittelbaren Reaktionen «managen» liessen. Ob Iran es tatsächlich wagen würde, Israel mit Raketen anzugreifen und einen Krieg zu entfesseln, ob der libanesische Hizbullah und Syrien zur Entlastung Irans Israel angreifen würden, all dies sei ungewiss. So schwierig dergleichen auch zu bewältigen sei, so sei es doch immerhin noch eher zu verkraften als ein nuklear gerüstetes Iran. Israels grundsätzliche strategische Überlegenheit in der Region bliebe erhalten.
Keine Hoffnung auf regionale Stabilität
Abgesehen davon, dass sich Iran im Falle eines israelischen oder amerikanischen Militärschlags erst recht zur nuklearen Rüstung entschliessen könnte, übersieht die israelische Kalkulation die möglichen mittelfristigen Folgen. Eine Schwächung des iranischen Regimes oder gar ein Regimewechsel, worauf unter anderem die Studie «The Last Resort» von Patrick Clawson und Michael Eisenstadt vom Washington Institute for Near East Policy spekuliert, würde eine Destabilisierung Irans bedeuten und im Extremfall, dass man es mit einem weiteren fragilen oder gar «failed state» zwischen dem Irak und Afghanistan zu tun hätte. Amerikanische Versuche, Minderheiten wie die Belutschen, die Kurden und die Araber in Ahwaz gegen Teheran aufzustacheln, können nur einem Chaos den Weg ebnen, das die regionale Stabilität vernichten würde.
Das aufgeheizte Klima der Drohungen und Gegendrohungen ist beängstigend genug. Doch die Beschränkung der meisten Spekulationen auf das Ob und Wie eines Militärschlags und die Vernachlässigung der Frage nach den Folgen lassen sich nur aus der von Selbstüberschätzung geprägten Überzeugung erklären, das Danach schon irgendwie regeln zu können. Bekanntlich ist Hybris ein schlechter Ratgeber.
* Der Autor ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter in der Forschungsgruppe Naher/Mittlerer Osten und Afrika der Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), Berlin.
Donnerstag, Juli 24, 2008
Mittwoch, Juli 23, 2008
Dienstag, Juli 22, 2008
NYT: A Secret Society of 30 Million (Web 2.0)
The New York Times
July 22, 2008
Editorial Notebook
A Secret Society of 30 Million
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
One of my great surprises from roaming the library stacks during graduate school was discovering that every author, no matter how minor, was already the subject of a quarterly or a newsletter. I would stumble upon a new name — Felicia Hemans, say, or Edward Young — and find that there was already a society devoted to their work, even, in many cases, a concordance and an annual meeting with elected officers. I had the distinct feeling that I had arrived late in the day, after the literary teams had all been chosen.
The New York Times
July 22, 2008
Editorial Notebook
A Secret Society of 30 Million
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
One of my great surprises from roaming the library stacks during graduate school was discovering that every author, no matter how minor, was already the subject of a quarterly or a newsletter. I would stumble upon a new name — Felicia Hemans, say, or Edward Young — and find that there was already a society devoted to their work, even, in many cases, a concordance and an annual meeting with elected officers. I had the distinct feeling that I had arrived late in the day, after the literary teams had all been chosen.
I get the same feeling — vastly multiplied — from the many worlds of social networking on the Web. I get wind of a new site, pay it a visit and discover that it already has a population four times the size of some midsized countries — everyone speaking the local dialect, taboos and kinship patterns well worked out, a robust economy and brisk trading with other social-networking sites. I have begun to fear the result if one site declared war on another. What if Bebo fired upon fubar? What if LinkedIn threatened to blockade imeem?
I can see the appeal of a virtual community. I’ve joined three or four of these groups, partly just to see what’s going on but also to reconnect with old acquaintances and find new music. But some of these sites I don’t quite get.
I’ve used Twitter a couple of times since it came to the iPhone recently. The idea is to send short messages — microblog entries of 140 characters or less — to a group of people who are “following” you. The reason is so they’ll know what you’re doing. What I come away with is a mental image of 30 or 40 people following me around all day long asking “Whatcha doing?” while I’m trying to work.
One effect of so much social networking — so many overlapping communities of interlinked individuals — is that the language of actual human interaction begins to feel degraded. What can the word “friend” mean after Facebook, where it is really a synonym for “coincidence”? How subtle can the emotions be in a TiVo-ish world like iLike, where it’s thumbs up or thumbs down? There’s no room even for the hand-wiggle that means “meh.”
There is, of course, a pleasure in sharing the things you love. But the greater pleasure will always be secret sharing. You find a book you love, you tell your best friend about it and the two of you share the secret. Something is ruined if your friend tells someone else about the book. Surely you remember this from fifth grade. I hope there will be room soon for some anti-social Web sites — places on the Web where you can go to be alone, to hide from your “friends.” Perhaps that is what real life is for. VERLYN KLINKENBORG
July 22, 2008
Editorial Notebook
A Secret Society of 30 Million
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
One of my great surprises from roaming the library stacks during graduate school was discovering that every author, no matter how minor, was already the subject of a quarterly or a newsletter. I would stumble upon a new name — Felicia Hemans, say, or Edward Young — and find that there was already a society devoted to their work, even, in many cases, a concordance and an annual meeting with elected officers. I had the distinct feeling that I had arrived late in the day, after the literary teams had all been chosen.
The New York Times
July 22, 2008
Editorial Notebook
A Secret Society of 30 Million
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
One of my great surprises from roaming the library stacks during graduate school was discovering that every author, no matter how minor, was already the subject of a quarterly or a newsletter. I would stumble upon a new name — Felicia Hemans, say, or Edward Young — and find that there was already a society devoted to their work, even, in many cases, a concordance and an annual meeting with elected officers. I had the distinct feeling that I had arrived late in the day, after the literary teams had all been chosen.
I get the same feeling — vastly multiplied — from the many worlds of social networking on the Web. I get wind of a new site, pay it a visit and discover that it already has a population four times the size of some midsized countries — everyone speaking the local dialect, taboos and kinship patterns well worked out, a robust economy and brisk trading with other social-networking sites. I have begun to fear the result if one site declared war on another. What if Bebo fired upon fubar? What if LinkedIn threatened to blockade imeem?
I can see the appeal of a virtual community. I’ve joined three or four of these groups, partly just to see what’s going on but also to reconnect with old acquaintances and find new music. But some of these sites I don’t quite get.
I’ve used Twitter a couple of times since it came to the iPhone recently. The idea is to send short messages — microblog entries of 140 characters or less — to a group of people who are “following” you. The reason is so they’ll know what you’re doing. What I come away with is a mental image of 30 or 40 people following me around all day long asking “Whatcha doing?” while I’m trying to work.
One effect of so much social networking — so many overlapping communities of interlinked individuals — is that the language of actual human interaction begins to feel degraded. What can the word “friend” mean after Facebook, where it is really a synonym for “coincidence”? How subtle can the emotions be in a TiVo-ish world like iLike, where it’s thumbs up or thumbs down? There’s no room even for the hand-wiggle that means “meh.”
There is, of course, a pleasure in sharing the things you love. But the greater pleasure will always be secret sharing. You find a book you love, you tell your best friend about it and the two of you share the secret. Something is ruined if your friend tells someone else about the book. Surely you remember this from fifth grade. I hope there will be room soon for some anti-social Web sites — places on the Web where you can go to be alone, to hide from your “friends.” Perhaps that is what real life is for. VERLYN KLINKENBORG
Sonntag, Juli 20, 2008
Dienstag, Juli 15, 2008
SZ: die Lage im Irak - Amerika im Krieg gegen sich selbst
Süddeutsche Zeitung SZ
Ressort: Ausland
URL: /ausland/artikel/336/185750/
Datum und Zeit: 15.07.2008 - 17:12
14.07.2008 18:16 Uhr
Lage im Irak
Amerika im Krieg gegen sich selbst
George W. Bush hat viel Leid über den Irak gebracht. Noch immer sterben täglich mehr als 100 Zivilisten, die Hälfte durch amerikanische Angriffe. Der Krieg verhindert den weltweiten Terrorismus nicht, er fördert ihn. Die Bombardierungen müssen endlich aufhören - und mit Verhandlungen muss begonnen werden.
Eine Außenansicht von Jürgen Todenhöfer
Süddeutsche Zeitung SZ
Ressort: Ausland
URL: /ausland/artikel/336/185750/
Datum und Zeit: 15.07.2008 - 17:12
14.07.2008 18:16 Uhr
Lage im Irak
Amerika im Krieg gegen sich selbst
George W. Bush hat viel Leid über den Irak gebracht. Noch immer sterben täglich mehr als 100 Zivilisten, die Hälfte durch amerikanische Angriffe. Der Krieg verhindert den weltweiten Terrorismus nicht, er fördert ihn. Die Bombardierungen müssen endlich aufhören - und mit Verhandlungen muss begonnen werden.
Eine Außenansicht von Jürgen Todenhöfer
Irak dpa
Nach US-Präsident George W. Bush und anderen amerikanischen Politikern berichtet nun auch Deutschlands Wirtschaftsminister Michael Glos (CSU), ausstaffiert mit Stahlhelm und Splitterschutzweste, aus den Regierungsbunkern der Festung Bagdad von einer "deutlich verbesserten Sicherheitslage".
Das ist wörtlich die offizielle Sprachregelung des Pentagon. Ich habe die US-Stellungnahmen Zaid gemailt, einem 22-jährigen Studenten, den ich im vergangenen Sommer im Irak kennengelernt habe.
Zaid hatte sich 2007 in Ramadi, der Hauptstadt der westirakischen Provinz Anbar, dem Widerstand angeschlossen, weil seine beiden jüngeren Brüder Haroun und Karim kurz hintereinander von US-Scharfschützen auf offener Straße erschossen worden waren.
Staunen über wirklichkeitsfremde Berichterstattung im Westen
Seither bekämpft er die Besatzer ebenso entschlossen wie die ausländischen Al-Qaida-Terroristen, die die US-Invasion ins Land geschwemmt hat. Und er staunt über die wirklichkeitsfremde westliche Irak-Berichterstattung, die er aus Internet und Fernsehen kennt und die das Land meist nur aus Sicht der "Sieger" zeigt.
Auch mir war bei meinem Irak-Besuch aufgefallen, wie weit in den Berichten über den "befreiten Irak" Dichtung und Wahrheit, Außenansicht und Innenansicht auseinanderklaffen. Das US-Verteidigungsministerium nutzt sein Informationsmonopol gnadenlos aus. Journalisten bekommen meist nur das zu sehen, was ihnen das Pentagon zeigen will.
Und das ist selten die Wahrheit. Über einen gemeinsamen schiitischen Freund schilderte mir der junge Sunnit Zaid, wie er die Lage im Irak des Sommers 2008 sieht: In Anbar gibt es trotz der mit Millionen Dollar gesponserten Kooperation einiger sunnitischer Stämme mit den Besatzern weiter schwere Kämpfe. Ende Juni lagen deren Schwerpunkte bei Ramadi, Falluja, Haditha, Ruthba und Heet.
Die Zahl der amerikanischen Bombenangriffe, Razzien und Schießereien in der Provinz liegt bei 35 pro Woche, die Zahl der getöteten Zivilisten bei 25. Der irakische Widerstand führt wöchentlich 20 bis 30 Militäraktionen gegen die US-Truppen.
Al-Qaida nur noch eine Splittergruppe
Al-Qaida ist auch in Anbar nur noch eine Splittergruppe. Die Bevölkerung hat die ausländischen Terroristen aus ihrer früheren Hochburg - wie aus den meisten übrigen irakischen Provinzen - weitgehend verjagt. Um nicht auch noch den angeblichen Kriegsgrund "Kampf gegen al-Qaida" aufgeben zu müssen, bezeichnet das Pentagon nun alle bekanntwerdenden Angriffe des irakischen Widerstands gegen die US-Armee als Al-Qaida-Angriffe.
Außerdem sorgt es dafür, dass über die ein bis zwei täglichen Al-Qaida-Anschläge möglichst breit berichtet wird, obwohl diese weniger als ein Hundertstel der Militäraktionen im Irak darstellen.
Inflation und Arbeitslosigkeit sind in Anbar auf fast 50 Prozent gestiegen. Neue Jobs gibt es nur noch bei Armee, Polizei und bei den von den USA bezahlten Milizen. Dort erhalten sie mit 500 Dollar pro Monat doppelt so viel Geld wie Lehrer. Einige lösen die dadurch entstehenden sozialen Konflikte, indem sie tagsüber in den amerikanisch finanzierten Sicherheitskräften arbeiten und nachts im irakischen Widerstand kämpfen.
Das Erziehungssystem in Anbar zerfällt. Zahlreiche Schulen in Ramadi wurden zerstört, keine einzige wurde neu erbaut. Trotz Schulpflicht geht nur noch die Hälfte der Kinder zur Schule. Studenten brechen aus Geldnot und mangels Perspektiven ihr Studium ab und gehen zur Polizei. Die Lebensmittelversorgung in Anbar verschlechtert sich weiter. Nahrungsmittelrationen werden nur noch unregelmäßig verteilt. Sie sind kleiner und qualitativ noch miserabler als früher.
Strom gibt es nur noch zwei Stunden pro Tag, vor dem Krieg waren es trotz Sanktionen zwölf Stunden. Das Telefonfestnetz funktioniert nicht mehr, die Müllabfuhr ist zusammengebrochen, auch sauberes Trinkwasser ist knapp.
Durchfallkrankheiten bei Kindern haben ein gefährliches Ausmaß erreicht. Den Krankenhäusern von Ramadi fehlt es an einfachsten Medikamenten sowie an spezialisierten Ärzten. Viele Ärzte sind geflohen oder tot. Die Kindersterblichkeit ist eine der höchsten der Welt - in einem Land, das durch sein Öl zu den reichsten der Welt gehören könnte.
Zaid, der durch die US-Invasion fast alles verloren hat, was er liebt, empfindet die positiven Stellungnahmen westlicher Politiker zur Lage im Irak als Verhöhnung seines Landes. Täglich sterben noch immer 100 bis 120 irakische Zivilisten in diesem völkerrechtswidrigen, sinnlosen Krieg, die Hälfte durch amerikanische Angriffe.
Die weltweite Terrorgefahr wächst von Tag zu Tag
Gleichzeitig geht die weltweite Terrorgefahr nicht etwa zurück, sondern sie wächst von Tag zu Tag. Mit jedem irakischen Kind, das durch westliche Waffen getötet wird, erhält al-Qaida im Westen (nicht im Irak!) mehr Zulauf. Der Krieg im Zweistromland verhindert den weltweiten Terrorismus nicht, im Gegenteil, er fördert ihn. Letztlich führen die USA im Irak Krieg gegen sich selbst und gegen die Glaubwürdigkeit der westlichen Werte.
Wir müssen aufhören mit Bombardieren und anfangen mit Verhandeln. Auch der Ost-West-Konflikt wurde nicht durch Gewalt, sondern mit Härte und Gerechtigkeit, durch Verhandlungen im Rahmen des KSZE-Prozesses gelöst - durch Staatsmänner wie Ronald Reagan und Michail Gorbatschow. Die 1975 begründete KSZE (Konferenz über Sicherheit und Zusammenarbeit in Europa) ist auch ein Modell zur Lösung der Konflikte des Mittleren Ostens und des Terrorismus.
Selbst Henry Kissinger sieht das so. Der Westen muss die muslimische Welt genauso großzügig und fair behandeln, wie er zu Recht Israel behandelt. Muslime sind genauso viel wert wie Juden und Christen. Der Westen muss aufhören, sie zu dämonisieren und wie Halbaffen zu behandeln. Nach der Aussöhnung von Christentum und Judentum müssen wir auch die Aussöhnung zwischen westlicher und muslimischer Welt schaffen. Wenn wir sie wirklich wollen, ist sie sehr wohl möglich.
Was immer die Zukunft bringt - den Tod seiner Brüder wird Zaid nie überwinden. Manchmal schickt er ihnen wie früher auf seinem uralten Nokia-Handy eine SMS und erzählt ihnen, was er gerade treibt. Er wird nie mehr eine Antwort bekommen. Niemand wird das Leid wieder gut machen können, das der amerikanische Präsident den Menschen im Irak zugefügt hat - den unzähligen Zaids, ihren Müttern und ihren Vätern.
Jürgen Todenhöfer ist stellvertretender Vorstandschef von Burda. Mit den Erlösen seiner Bücher über den Irak und Afghanistan finanziert er Hilfsprojekte in Afghanistan, im Kongo und im Nahen Osten.
(SZ vom 15. Juli 2007/dmo)
Ressort: Ausland
URL: /ausland/artikel/336/185750/
Datum und Zeit: 15.07.2008 - 17:12
14.07.2008 18:16 Uhr
Lage im Irak
Amerika im Krieg gegen sich selbst
George W. Bush hat viel Leid über den Irak gebracht. Noch immer sterben täglich mehr als 100 Zivilisten, die Hälfte durch amerikanische Angriffe. Der Krieg verhindert den weltweiten Terrorismus nicht, er fördert ihn. Die Bombardierungen müssen endlich aufhören - und mit Verhandlungen muss begonnen werden.
Eine Außenansicht von Jürgen Todenhöfer
Süddeutsche Zeitung SZ
Ressort: Ausland
URL: /ausland/artikel/336/185750/
Datum und Zeit: 15.07.2008 - 17:12
14.07.2008 18:16 Uhr
Lage im Irak
Amerika im Krieg gegen sich selbst
George W. Bush hat viel Leid über den Irak gebracht. Noch immer sterben täglich mehr als 100 Zivilisten, die Hälfte durch amerikanische Angriffe. Der Krieg verhindert den weltweiten Terrorismus nicht, er fördert ihn. Die Bombardierungen müssen endlich aufhören - und mit Verhandlungen muss begonnen werden.
Eine Außenansicht von Jürgen Todenhöfer
Irak dpa
Nach US-Präsident George W. Bush und anderen amerikanischen Politikern berichtet nun auch Deutschlands Wirtschaftsminister Michael Glos (CSU), ausstaffiert mit Stahlhelm und Splitterschutzweste, aus den Regierungsbunkern der Festung Bagdad von einer "deutlich verbesserten Sicherheitslage".
Das ist wörtlich die offizielle Sprachregelung des Pentagon. Ich habe die US-Stellungnahmen Zaid gemailt, einem 22-jährigen Studenten, den ich im vergangenen Sommer im Irak kennengelernt habe.
Zaid hatte sich 2007 in Ramadi, der Hauptstadt der westirakischen Provinz Anbar, dem Widerstand angeschlossen, weil seine beiden jüngeren Brüder Haroun und Karim kurz hintereinander von US-Scharfschützen auf offener Straße erschossen worden waren.
Staunen über wirklichkeitsfremde Berichterstattung im Westen
Seither bekämpft er die Besatzer ebenso entschlossen wie die ausländischen Al-Qaida-Terroristen, die die US-Invasion ins Land geschwemmt hat. Und er staunt über die wirklichkeitsfremde westliche Irak-Berichterstattung, die er aus Internet und Fernsehen kennt und die das Land meist nur aus Sicht der "Sieger" zeigt.
Auch mir war bei meinem Irak-Besuch aufgefallen, wie weit in den Berichten über den "befreiten Irak" Dichtung und Wahrheit, Außenansicht und Innenansicht auseinanderklaffen. Das US-Verteidigungsministerium nutzt sein Informationsmonopol gnadenlos aus. Journalisten bekommen meist nur das zu sehen, was ihnen das Pentagon zeigen will.
Und das ist selten die Wahrheit. Über einen gemeinsamen schiitischen Freund schilderte mir der junge Sunnit Zaid, wie er die Lage im Irak des Sommers 2008 sieht: In Anbar gibt es trotz der mit Millionen Dollar gesponserten Kooperation einiger sunnitischer Stämme mit den Besatzern weiter schwere Kämpfe. Ende Juni lagen deren Schwerpunkte bei Ramadi, Falluja, Haditha, Ruthba und Heet.
Die Zahl der amerikanischen Bombenangriffe, Razzien und Schießereien in der Provinz liegt bei 35 pro Woche, die Zahl der getöteten Zivilisten bei 25. Der irakische Widerstand führt wöchentlich 20 bis 30 Militäraktionen gegen die US-Truppen.
Al-Qaida nur noch eine Splittergruppe
Al-Qaida ist auch in Anbar nur noch eine Splittergruppe. Die Bevölkerung hat die ausländischen Terroristen aus ihrer früheren Hochburg - wie aus den meisten übrigen irakischen Provinzen - weitgehend verjagt. Um nicht auch noch den angeblichen Kriegsgrund "Kampf gegen al-Qaida" aufgeben zu müssen, bezeichnet das Pentagon nun alle bekanntwerdenden Angriffe des irakischen Widerstands gegen die US-Armee als Al-Qaida-Angriffe.
Außerdem sorgt es dafür, dass über die ein bis zwei täglichen Al-Qaida-Anschläge möglichst breit berichtet wird, obwohl diese weniger als ein Hundertstel der Militäraktionen im Irak darstellen.
Inflation und Arbeitslosigkeit sind in Anbar auf fast 50 Prozent gestiegen. Neue Jobs gibt es nur noch bei Armee, Polizei und bei den von den USA bezahlten Milizen. Dort erhalten sie mit 500 Dollar pro Monat doppelt so viel Geld wie Lehrer. Einige lösen die dadurch entstehenden sozialen Konflikte, indem sie tagsüber in den amerikanisch finanzierten Sicherheitskräften arbeiten und nachts im irakischen Widerstand kämpfen.
Das Erziehungssystem in Anbar zerfällt. Zahlreiche Schulen in Ramadi wurden zerstört, keine einzige wurde neu erbaut. Trotz Schulpflicht geht nur noch die Hälfte der Kinder zur Schule. Studenten brechen aus Geldnot und mangels Perspektiven ihr Studium ab und gehen zur Polizei. Die Lebensmittelversorgung in Anbar verschlechtert sich weiter. Nahrungsmittelrationen werden nur noch unregelmäßig verteilt. Sie sind kleiner und qualitativ noch miserabler als früher.
Strom gibt es nur noch zwei Stunden pro Tag, vor dem Krieg waren es trotz Sanktionen zwölf Stunden. Das Telefonfestnetz funktioniert nicht mehr, die Müllabfuhr ist zusammengebrochen, auch sauberes Trinkwasser ist knapp.
Durchfallkrankheiten bei Kindern haben ein gefährliches Ausmaß erreicht. Den Krankenhäusern von Ramadi fehlt es an einfachsten Medikamenten sowie an spezialisierten Ärzten. Viele Ärzte sind geflohen oder tot. Die Kindersterblichkeit ist eine der höchsten der Welt - in einem Land, das durch sein Öl zu den reichsten der Welt gehören könnte.
Zaid, der durch die US-Invasion fast alles verloren hat, was er liebt, empfindet die positiven Stellungnahmen westlicher Politiker zur Lage im Irak als Verhöhnung seines Landes. Täglich sterben noch immer 100 bis 120 irakische Zivilisten in diesem völkerrechtswidrigen, sinnlosen Krieg, die Hälfte durch amerikanische Angriffe.
Die weltweite Terrorgefahr wächst von Tag zu Tag
Gleichzeitig geht die weltweite Terrorgefahr nicht etwa zurück, sondern sie wächst von Tag zu Tag. Mit jedem irakischen Kind, das durch westliche Waffen getötet wird, erhält al-Qaida im Westen (nicht im Irak!) mehr Zulauf. Der Krieg im Zweistromland verhindert den weltweiten Terrorismus nicht, im Gegenteil, er fördert ihn. Letztlich führen die USA im Irak Krieg gegen sich selbst und gegen die Glaubwürdigkeit der westlichen Werte.
Wir müssen aufhören mit Bombardieren und anfangen mit Verhandeln. Auch der Ost-West-Konflikt wurde nicht durch Gewalt, sondern mit Härte und Gerechtigkeit, durch Verhandlungen im Rahmen des KSZE-Prozesses gelöst - durch Staatsmänner wie Ronald Reagan und Michail Gorbatschow. Die 1975 begründete KSZE (Konferenz über Sicherheit und Zusammenarbeit in Europa) ist auch ein Modell zur Lösung der Konflikte des Mittleren Ostens und des Terrorismus.
Selbst Henry Kissinger sieht das so. Der Westen muss die muslimische Welt genauso großzügig und fair behandeln, wie er zu Recht Israel behandelt. Muslime sind genauso viel wert wie Juden und Christen. Der Westen muss aufhören, sie zu dämonisieren und wie Halbaffen zu behandeln. Nach der Aussöhnung von Christentum und Judentum müssen wir auch die Aussöhnung zwischen westlicher und muslimischer Welt schaffen. Wenn wir sie wirklich wollen, ist sie sehr wohl möglich.
Was immer die Zukunft bringt - den Tod seiner Brüder wird Zaid nie überwinden. Manchmal schickt er ihnen wie früher auf seinem uralten Nokia-Handy eine SMS und erzählt ihnen, was er gerade treibt. Er wird nie mehr eine Antwort bekommen. Niemand wird das Leid wieder gut machen können, das der amerikanische Präsident den Menschen im Irak zugefügt hat - den unzähligen Zaids, ihren Müttern und ihren Vätern.
Jürgen Todenhöfer ist stellvertretender Vorstandschef von Burda. Mit den Erlösen seiner Bücher über den Irak und Afghanistan finanziert er Hilfsprojekte in Afghanistan, im Kongo und im Nahen Osten.
(SZ vom 15. Juli 2007/dmo)
Dienstag, Juli 01, 2008
The Independent
Sunday, 22 June 2008
Hope springs eternal but the oil won't: a Russian lament
BP should have seen strife coming, but more pressing is the exhaustion of fields on which we've come to depend, says David Strahan
Hope springs eternal but the oil won't: a Russian lament
BP should have seen strife coming, but more pressing is the exhaustion of fields on which we've come to depend, says David Strahan
Sunday, 22 June 2008
It must be lonely being Tony Hayward. As the oil price continues to soar, there is a gathering consensus that global production of the black stuff is nearing fundamental geological limits. Yet BP's chief executive continues to argue valiantly that the causes of the current oil shock are "not so much below ground as above it, and not geological but political".
Since his company's Russian joint venture, TNK-BP, is under ferocious assault from both its Russian shareholders and the Russian state, Mr Hayward can be forgiven for thinking the industry's problems are man-made rather than natural. But this is a false distinction, and closer analysis suggests BP's predicament is itself evidence of looming geological constraints to global production, or "peak oil".
On the face of it, BP's problems in Russia are entirely above ground, even if the company claims its tormentors are far from above board. TNK-BP is owned 50:50 between BP and AlfaAccessRenova, a consortium of Russian billionaire tycoons led by Mikhail Fridman. The two sides are now locked in a vicious dispute. BP claims the Russians are trying to seize control; the oligarchs insist they are only defending their rights. Last week Mr Fridman said the British company's allegations were "in the best traditions of Goebbels' propaganda".
Wherever the truth lies, there is not much doubt how the dispute will end. The Russian shareholders have resorted to law both in their own country and Sweden, but the real pressure on BP comes from the state. In recent months TNK-BP has been subjected to raids by the FSB security service investigating claims of industrial espionage, along with the launch of an environmental probe into its largest oil field. Meanwhile, the company's BP-appointed chief executive has been questioned by the interior ministry over alleged corporate tax evasion, and summonsed by the Moscow prosecutor's office over suspected labour code violations.
It all seems wearily familiar. In 2006 Gazprom, Russia's state-owned gas giant, took control of Shell's Sakhalin 2 project after a campaign of official harassment by environmental agencies. And last year TNK-BP was forced to sell a majority stake in its plum Kovykta gas field in east Siberia, also to Gazprom, after government claims that it had broken the terms of its licence.
Many observers interpret the latest campaign against TNK-BP as a similar softening-up exercise, intended eventually to deliver control of the company to Gazprom or Rosneft, the state-owned oil group.
This would be a major blow for BP, but the company should have known the risks all along – not least because when Mr Hayward's predecessor, Lord Browne, formed TNK-BP in 2003, he had already done business with Mr Fridman and come off worst.
The earlier encounter began in 1997 when BP spent $500m (£250m) on a 10 per cent stake in the Siberian oil firm Sidanco – and then lost much of it when the company promptly went bust. Shareholder Mikhail Fridman manipulated the arcane insolvency process to his own advantage: BP was first forced to write off $200m and then to invest another $375m just to protect its position. Asked why BP hadn't simply cut a deal with Mr Fridman, one executive reportedly said: "You don't talk to someone who's stolen your wallet."
Yet just a few years later Lord Browne committed $7bn to Mr Fridman and his associates to form TNK-BP. (During the negotiations, he felt compelled to ask his new friends: "Are you going to take the money and run?" Yet still he signed the contract.) It was a fabulously risky deal but what propelled him was the fact that nowhere else on earth could BP have secured reserves and production potential on such a scale. This was fundamentally due to petroleum geology around the world.
The basic problem for BP was that international oil companies (IOCs) are largely excluded from the countries that control most of the world's known oil: the 13 members of Opec. In the rest of the world, by contrast, oil resources were already far more depleted. Most prospective regions had been thoroughly explored and exploited, and in most non-Opec countries output had already gone into decline. Opportunities for growth were severely limited, but Russia was an exception.
With the fall of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s, the Russian economy had slumped and oil production collapsed from 11.5 million barrels per day in 1987 to just over six million in 1998, as fields were mothballed or simply not maintained. But as confidence returned so did the necessary investment, and output began to recover – rising almost 60 per cent by 2007. It was this wave that Lord Browne wanted to ride.
The TNK-BP deal quickly boosted BP's oil production by half a million barrels per day, and growth in Russian output continued to offset declines in the British company's operations in the North Sea, Europe and America. A glance at BP's quarterly figures shows that had Lord Browne flinched and not done the deal, the company's output would by now have fallen by almost as much. Instead of averaging 2.4 million barrels per day in 2007, BP's output would have been less than 1.6 million. Given the absence of such opportunities elsewhere, it seems Lord Browne had little choice.
But still that gamble is poised to backfire, with BP now looking set to lose up to a third of its oil production capacity in the fight with TNK-BP's Russian shareholders backed by their government. However, this is not simply an example, as Mr Hayward might like to imagine, of the oil industry's man-made tribulations above ground; it is a direct consequence of the tightening constraints below.
Those constraints are starting to emerge in Russia itself – where the decade-long boom came to a halt last year and production has now begun to fall. Some pundits blame the high level of tax levied on oil profits by Russia, but the deeper cause is that the easy gains achieved by refurbishing existing fields have now been exhausted. Future increases in production capacity will require the development of new fields in frontier provinces such as east Siberia and the Arctic, where working conditions are especially hostile. Analysts agree that it gets very much harder from now on.
But Russia's faltering production should come as no surprise. As long ago as 2005, the then oil minister Victor Khristenko predicted that output would plateau at just over 10 million barrels per day – slightly higher than today's level – from about 2010. More recently Leonid Fedun, a vice-president with the independent oil firm Lukoil, declared that Russian production would not exceed current levels in his lifetime.
This matters hugely because it was only the rise in Russian output over the past decade that satisfied soaring demand from Asia. Now this rapid growth is over and it is widely expected that aggregate non-Opec output will peak by around the end of this decade. From then on, the only thing standing between us and global peak oil is the Opec cartel, and many analysts doubt whether even they have the oil resources to raise production by much.
This weekend all eyes will be on the oil summit in Saudi Arabia, perhaps more in hope than expectation.
Sunday, 22 June 2008
Hope springs eternal but the oil won't: a Russian lament
BP should have seen strife coming, but more pressing is the exhaustion of fields on which we've come to depend, says David Strahan
Hope springs eternal but the oil won't: a Russian lament
BP should have seen strife coming, but more pressing is the exhaustion of fields on which we've come to depend, says David Strahan
Sunday, 22 June 2008
It must be lonely being Tony Hayward. As the oil price continues to soar, there is a gathering consensus that global production of the black stuff is nearing fundamental geological limits. Yet BP's chief executive continues to argue valiantly that the causes of the current oil shock are "not so much below ground as above it, and not geological but political".
Since his company's Russian joint venture, TNK-BP, is under ferocious assault from both its Russian shareholders and the Russian state, Mr Hayward can be forgiven for thinking the industry's problems are man-made rather than natural. But this is a false distinction, and closer analysis suggests BP's predicament is itself evidence of looming geological constraints to global production, or "peak oil".
On the face of it, BP's problems in Russia are entirely above ground, even if the company claims its tormentors are far from above board. TNK-BP is owned 50:50 between BP and AlfaAccessRenova, a consortium of Russian billionaire tycoons led by Mikhail Fridman. The two sides are now locked in a vicious dispute. BP claims the Russians are trying to seize control; the oligarchs insist they are only defending their rights. Last week Mr Fridman said the British company's allegations were "in the best traditions of Goebbels' propaganda".
Wherever the truth lies, there is not much doubt how the dispute will end. The Russian shareholders have resorted to law both in their own country and Sweden, but the real pressure on BP comes from the state. In recent months TNK-BP has been subjected to raids by the FSB security service investigating claims of industrial espionage, along with the launch of an environmental probe into its largest oil field. Meanwhile, the company's BP-appointed chief executive has been questioned by the interior ministry over alleged corporate tax evasion, and summonsed by the Moscow prosecutor's office over suspected labour code violations.
It all seems wearily familiar. In 2006 Gazprom, Russia's state-owned gas giant, took control of Shell's Sakhalin 2 project after a campaign of official harassment by environmental agencies. And last year TNK-BP was forced to sell a majority stake in its plum Kovykta gas field in east Siberia, also to Gazprom, after government claims that it had broken the terms of its licence.
Many observers interpret the latest campaign against TNK-BP as a similar softening-up exercise, intended eventually to deliver control of the company to Gazprom or Rosneft, the state-owned oil group.
This would be a major blow for BP, but the company should have known the risks all along – not least because when Mr Hayward's predecessor, Lord Browne, formed TNK-BP in 2003, he had already done business with Mr Fridman and come off worst.
The earlier encounter began in 1997 when BP spent $500m (£250m) on a 10 per cent stake in the Siberian oil firm Sidanco – and then lost much of it when the company promptly went bust. Shareholder Mikhail Fridman manipulated the arcane insolvency process to his own advantage: BP was first forced to write off $200m and then to invest another $375m just to protect its position. Asked why BP hadn't simply cut a deal with Mr Fridman, one executive reportedly said: "You don't talk to someone who's stolen your wallet."
Yet just a few years later Lord Browne committed $7bn to Mr Fridman and his associates to form TNK-BP. (During the negotiations, he felt compelled to ask his new friends: "Are you going to take the money and run?" Yet still he signed the contract.) It was a fabulously risky deal but what propelled him was the fact that nowhere else on earth could BP have secured reserves and production potential on such a scale. This was fundamentally due to petroleum geology around the world.
The basic problem for BP was that international oil companies (IOCs) are largely excluded from the countries that control most of the world's known oil: the 13 members of Opec. In the rest of the world, by contrast, oil resources were already far more depleted. Most prospective regions had been thoroughly explored and exploited, and in most non-Opec countries output had already gone into decline. Opportunities for growth were severely limited, but Russia was an exception.
With the fall of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s, the Russian economy had slumped and oil production collapsed from 11.5 million barrels per day in 1987 to just over six million in 1998, as fields were mothballed or simply not maintained. But as confidence returned so did the necessary investment, and output began to recover – rising almost 60 per cent by 2007. It was this wave that Lord Browne wanted to ride.
The TNK-BP deal quickly boosted BP's oil production by half a million barrels per day, and growth in Russian output continued to offset declines in the British company's operations in the North Sea, Europe and America. A glance at BP's quarterly figures shows that had Lord Browne flinched and not done the deal, the company's output would by now have fallen by almost as much. Instead of averaging 2.4 million barrels per day in 2007, BP's output would have been less than 1.6 million. Given the absence of such opportunities elsewhere, it seems Lord Browne had little choice.
But still that gamble is poised to backfire, with BP now looking set to lose up to a third of its oil production capacity in the fight with TNK-BP's Russian shareholders backed by their government. However, this is not simply an example, as Mr Hayward might like to imagine, of the oil industry's man-made tribulations above ground; it is a direct consequence of the tightening constraints below.
Those constraints are starting to emerge in Russia itself – where the decade-long boom came to a halt last year and production has now begun to fall. Some pundits blame the high level of tax levied on oil profits by Russia, but the deeper cause is that the easy gains achieved by refurbishing existing fields have now been exhausted. Future increases in production capacity will require the development of new fields in frontier provinces such as east Siberia and the Arctic, where working conditions are especially hostile. Analysts agree that it gets very much harder from now on.
But Russia's faltering production should come as no surprise. As long ago as 2005, the then oil minister Victor Khristenko predicted that output would plateau at just over 10 million barrels per day – slightly higher than today's level – from about 2010. More recently Leonid Fedun, a vice-president with the independent oil firm Lukoil, declared that Russian production would not exceed current levels in his lifetime.
This matters hugely because it was only the rise in Russian output over the past decade that satisfied soaring demand from Asia. Now this rapid growth is over and it is widely expected that aggregate non-Opec output will peak by around the end of this decade. From then on, the only thing standing between us and global peak oil is the Opec cartel, and many analysts doubt whether even they have the oil resources to raise production by much.
This weekend all eyes will be on the oil summit in Saudi Arabia, perhaps more in hope than expectation.
Sonntag, Juni 29, 2008
Intimate Enemies; Frankreichs Anti-Terror Aktion in Algerien (Film)
The Film holds some insights into so called Wars on Terror.
French Film about the Algerian War 1954 - 1962
Read a review of Intimate Enemies from Channel 4 Film.
French Film about the Algerian War 1954 - 1962
Read a review of Intimate Enemies from Channel 4 Film.
Freitag, Juni 27, 2008
NYT: Paul Krugman on the price of oil
The New York Times
June 27, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Fuels on the Hill
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Congress has always had a soft spot for “experts” who tell members what they want to hear, whether it’s supply-side economists declaring that tax cuts increase revenue or climate-change skeptics insisting that global warming is a myth.
Right now, the welcome mat is out for analysts who claim that out-of-control speculators are responsible for $4-a-gallon gas.
The New York Times
June 27, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Fuels on the Hill
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Congress has always had a soft spot for “experts” who tell members what they want to hear, whether it’s supply-side economists declaring that tax cuts increase revenue or climate-change skeptics insisting that global warming is a myth.
Right now, the welcome mat is out for analysts who claim that out-of-control speculators are responsible for $4-a-gallon gas.
Back in May, Michael Masters, a hedge fund manager, made a big splash when he told a Senate committee that speculation is the main cause of rising prices for oil and other raw materials. He presented charts showing the growth of the oil futures market, in which investors buy and sell promises to deliver oil at a later date, and claimed that “the increase in demand from index speculators” — his term for institutional investors who buy commodity futures — “is almost equal to the increase in demand from China.”
Many economists scoffed: Mr. Masters was making the bizarre claim that betting on a higher price of oil — for that is what it means to buy a futures contract — is equivalent to actually burning the stuff.
But members of Congress liked what they heard, and since that testimony much of Capitol Hill has jumped on the blame-the-speculators bandwagon.
Somewhat surprisingly, Republicans have been at least as willing as Democrats to denounce evil speculators. But it turns out that conservative faith in free markets somehow evaporates when it comes to oil. For example, National Review has been publishing articles blaming speculators for high oil prices for years, ever since the price passed $50 a barrel.
And it was John McCain, not Barack Obama, who recently said this: “While a few reckless speculators are counting their paper profits, most Americans are coming up on the short end — using more and more of their hard-earned paychecks to buy gas.”
Why are politicians so eager to pin the blame for oil prices on speculators? Because it lets them believe that we don’t have to adapt to a world of expensive gas.
Indeed, this past Monday Mr. Masters assured a House subcommittee that a return to the days of cheap oil is more or less there for the asking. If Congress passed legislation restricting speculation, he said, gasoline prices would fall almost 50 percent in a matter of weeks.
O.K., let’s talk about the reality.
Is speculation playing a role in high oil prices? It’s not out of the question. Economists were right to scoff at Mr. Masters — buying a futures contract doesn’t directly reduce the supply of oil to consumers — but under some circumstances, speculation in the oil futures market can indirectly raise prices, encouraging producers and other players to hoard oil rather than making it available for use.
Whether that’s happening now is a subject of highly technical dispute. (Readers who want to wonk themselves out can go to my blog, krugman.blogs.nytimes.com, and follow the links.) Suffice it to say that some economists, myself included, make much of the fact that the usual telltale signs of a speculative price boom are missing. But other economists argue, in effect, that absence of evidence isn’t solid evidence of absence.
What about those who argue that speculative excess is the only way to explain the speed with which oil prices have risen? Well, I have two words for them: iron ore.
You see, iron ore isn’t traded on a global exchange; its price is set in direct deals between producers and consumers. So there’s no easy way to speculate on ore prices. Yet the price of iron ore, like that of oil, has surged over the past year. In particular, the price Chinese steel makers pay to Australian mines has just jumped 96 percent. This suggests that growing demand from emerging economies, not speculation, is the real story behind rising prices of raw materials, oil included.
In any case, one thing is clear: the hyperventilation over oil-market speculation is distracting us from the real issues.
Regulating futures markets more tightly isn’t a bad idea, but it won’t bring back the days of cheap oil. Nothing will. Oil prices will fluctuate in the coming years — I wouldn’t be surprised if they slip for a while as consumers drive less, switch to more fuel-efficient cars, and so on — but the long-term trend is surely up.
Most of the adjustment to higher oil prices will take place through private initiative, but the government can help the private sector in a variety of ways, such as helping develop alternative-energy technologies and new methods of conservation and expanding the availability of public transit.
But we won’t have even the beginnings of a rational energy policy if we listen to people who assure us that we can just wish high oil prices away.
June 27, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Fuels on the Hill
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Congress has always had a soft spot for “experts” who tell members what they want to hear, whether it’s supply-side economists declaring that tax cuts increase revenue or climate-change skeptics insisting that global warming is a myth.
Right now, the welcome mat is out for analysts who claim that out-of-control speculators are responsible for $4-a-gallon gas.
The New York Times
June 27, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Fuels on the Hill
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Congress has always had a soft spot for “experts” who tell members what they want to hear, whether it’s supply-side economists declaring that tax cuts increase revenue or climate-change skeptics insisting that global warming is a myth.
Right now, the welcome mat is out for analysts who claim that out-of-control speculators are responsible for $4-a-gallon gas.
Back in May, Michael Masters, a hedge fund manager, made a big splash when he told a Senate committee that speculation is the main cause of rising prices for oil and other raw materials. He presented charts showing the growth of the oil futures market, in which investors buy and sell promises to deliver oil at a later date, and claimed that “the increase in demand from index speculators” — his term for institutional investors who buy commodity futures — “is almost equal to the increase in demand from China.”
Many economists scoffed: Mr. Masters was making the bizarre claim that betting on a higher price of oil — for that is what it means to buy a futures contract — is equivalent to actually burning the stuff.
But members of Congress liked what they heard, and since that testimony much of Capitol Hill has jumped on the blame-the-speculators bandwagon.
Somewhat surprisingly, Republicans have been at least as willing as Democrats to denounce evil speculators. But it turns out that conservative faith in free markets somehow evaporates when it comes to oil. For example, National Review has been publishing articles blaming speculators for high oil prices for years, ever since the price passed $50 a barrel.
And it was John McCain, not Barack Obama, who recently said this: “While a few reckless speculators are counting their paper profits, most Americans are coming up on the short end — using more and more of their hard-earned paychecks to buy gas.”
Why are politicians so eager to pin the blame for oil prices on speculators? Because it lets them believe that we don’t have to adapt to a world of expensive gas.
Indeed, this past Monday Mr. Masters assured a House subcommittee that a return to the days of cheap oil is more or less there for the asking. If Congress passed legislation restricting speculation, he said, gasoline prices would fall almost 50 percent in a matter of weeks.
O.K., let’s talk about the reality.
Is speculation playing a role in high oil prices? It’s not out of the question. Economists were right to scoff at Mr. Masters — buying a futures contract doesn’t directly reduce the supply of oil to consumers — but under some circumstances, speculation in the oil futures market can indirectly raise prices, encouraging producers and other players to hoard oil rather than making it available for use.
Whether that’s happening now is a subject of highly technical dispute. (Readers who want to wonk themselves out can go to my blog, krugman.blogs.nytimes.com, and follow the links.) Suffice it to say that some economists, myself included, make much of the fact that the usual telltale signs of a speculative price boom are missing. But other economists argue, in effect, that absence of evidence isn’t solid evidence of absence.
What about those who argue that speculative excess is the only way to explain the speed with which oil prices have risen? Well, I have two words for them: iron ore.
You see, iron ore isn’t traded on a global exchange; its price is set in direct deals between producers and consumers. So there’s no easy way to speculate on ore prices. Yet the price of iron ore, like that of oil, has surged over the past year. In particular, the price Chinese steel makers pay to Australian mines has just jumped 96 percent. This suggests that growing demand from emerging economies, not speculation, is the real story behind rising prices of raw materials, oil included.
In any case, one thing is clear: the hyperventilation over oil-market speculation is distracting us from the real issues.
Regulating futures markets more tightly isn’t a bad idea, but it won’t bring back the days of cheap oil. Nothing will. Oil prices will fluctuate in the coming years — I wouldn’t be surprised if they slip for a while as consumers drive less, switch to more fuel-efficient cars, and so on — but the long-term trend is surely up.
Most of the adjustment to higher oil prices will take place through private initiative, but the government can help the private sector in a variety of ways, such as helping develop alternative-energy technologies and new methods of conservation and expanding the availability of public transit.
But we won’t have even the beginnings of a rational energy policy if we listen to people who assure us that we can just wish high oil prices away.
Sonntag, Juni 22, 2008
Ex-British Army Chief in Iraq Confirms Peak Oil as Motive for War
Headlined on 6/17/08:
Ex-British Army Chief in Iraq Confirms Peak Oil as Motive for War; Praises Fraudulent Reconstruction Programmes
Headlined on 6/17/08:
Ex-British Army Chief in Iraq Confirms Peak Oil as Motive for War; Praises Fraudulent Reconstruction Programmes
http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/Ex-British-Army-Chief-in-I-by-Nafeez-Mosaddeq-Ah-080617-625.html
by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
http://www.opednews.com
Ex-British Army Chief in Iraq Confirms Peak Oil as Motive for War;
Praises Fraudulent Reconstruction Programmes
© Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Brigadier-General James Ellery CBE, the Foreign Office's Senior Adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad since 2003, confirmed the critical role of Iraqi oil reserves in potentially alleviating a "world shortage" of conventional oil. The Iraq War has helped to head off what Brigadier Ellery described as "the tide of Easternisation" – a shift in global political and economic power toward China and India, to whom goes "two thirds of the Middle East's oil."
After the 2004 transfer of authority to an interim Iraqi civilian administration, Brigadier Ellery set up and ran the 700-strong security framework operation in support of the US-funded Reconstruction of Iraq. His remarks were made as part of a presentation at the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), University of London, sponsored by the Iraqi Youth Foundation, on 22nd April.
World Oil Shortage
"The reason that oil reached $117 a barrel last week", he said, "was less to do with security of supply... than World shortage." He went on to emphasise the strategic significance of Iraqi petroleum fields in relation to the danger of production peaks being breached in major oil reserves around the world. "Russia's production has peaked at 10 million barrels per day; Africa has proved slow to yield affordable extra supplies – from Sudan and Angola for example. Thus the only near-term potential increase will be from Iraq," he said. Whether Iraq began "favouring East or West" could therefore be "de-stabilizing" not only "within the region but to nations far beyond which have an interest."
Last month geological surveys and seismic data compiled by several international oil companies exploring Iraqi oil reserves showed that Iraq has the world's largest proven oil reserves, with as much as 350 billion barrels, significantly exceeding Saudi Arabia's 264 billion barrels, according to a report in the London Times. Former Bush administration energy adviser Matthew Simmons, author of the book Twilight in the Desert, says that Saudi oil production has probably already peaked, with production rates declining consecutively each year. This month the UK Treasury Department warned of the danger of an oil supply crunch by 2015, due to rocketing demand from China and India.
The Threat of Easternisation
Brigadier Ellery's career in the British Army has involved stints in the Middle East, Africa, Bosnia, Germany and Northern Ireland. "Iraq holds the key to stability in the region," he said, "unless that is you believe the tide of 'Easternisation' is such that the USA and the West are in such decline, relative to the emerging China and India, that it is the East – not the West – which is more likely to guarantee stability. Incidentally, I do not." Iraq's pivotal importance in the Middle East, he explained, is because of its "relatively large, consuming population" at 24 million, its being home to "the second largest reserve of oil – under exploited", and finally its geostrategic location "on the routes between Asia, Europe, Arabia and North Africa - hence the Silk Road."
Oil production peaks when a given petroleum reserve is depleted by half, after which oil is geophysically increasingly difficult to extract, causing production to plateau, and then steadily decline. US oil production peaked by 1970, while British production in the North Sea peaked by 2000, converting both countries from exporters into net importers of oil and gas.
Oil industry experts and petroleum geologists increasingly believe that world oil production is precariously close to peaking. According to an October 2007 report by the German-based Energy Watch Group, run by an international network of European politicians and scientists, world oil production peaked in 2006. According to BP's annual statistical review of world energy supply and demand for 2008, released on 11th June, world oil production fell last year for the first time since 2002, by 130,000 barrels per day last year to 81.53 million. Yet world consumption continued to rise by 1.1 per cent to 85.22 million barrels per day, outweighing production by nearly 5 per cent.
Iraqi Reconstruction Corruption Whitewash
Brigadier-General James Ellery is currently Director of Operations at AEGIS Defence Services Ltd., a private British security firm and US defence contractor since June 2004. In April this year, the same month as Ellery's SOAS lecture, AEGIS won the renewal of its US defence department (DoD) contract for two more years, which at $475 million is the single largest security contract brokered by the DoD. The contract is to provide security services for reconstruction projects in Iraq conducted by mostly American companies.
A US government audit by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, released exactly two years before Brigadier Ellery's SOAS presentation, concluded that AEGIS could not prove it had properly trained or vetted several armed Iraqi employees. For a random sample of 20 armed guards, no training documentation was found for 14 of them. For 125 other employees, AEGIS reportedly failed to document background checks. The auditors concluded that "there is no assurance that Aegis is providing the best possible safety and security for government and reconstruction contractor personnel and facilities."
During his April presentation at SOAS, AEGIS director Ellery declared, "Iraq promises a degree of prosperity in the region as it embarks on massive Iraqi-funded reconstruction, a part of which will raise Iraqi's oil production from 2.5 million bpd today to 3 million by next year and maybe ultimately 6 million barrels per day." He added, "With a budget of $187 billion over 4 years, Iraq is poised to have a considerable impact on the economies of countries whose technologies can fill the skills gap left by the latter years of Saddam Hussein's regime." During the UN sanctions regime imposed primarily by the US and Britain, Iraq was banned from importing thousands of household goods, including food, medicines, clothes and books, from 1991 to 2003, purportedly to prevent Saddam from developing weapons of mass destruction. It is now widely recognized that the sanctions led to massive socio-economic deprivation, the break-down of civilian infrastructure, large-scale unemployment, and de-industrialisation, resulting in the deaths of up to 1.8 million Iraqis, half of whom were children. The humanitarian crisis led United Nations officials such as Dennis Halliday, former UN Assistant Secretary-General, and Hans von Sponeck, former Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, to resign in protest.
Tell A Friend
Today, those profiting most from reconstruction projects in Iraq are not Iraqis, but private contractors based primarily in the United States and Britain, according to a new report out last month by Stuart Bowen Jr, incumbent Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The Bowen Report found that at least 855 contracts valued at billions of dollars were cancelled before completion. Another 112 agreements were cancelled because of poor performance, while still more projects recorded as completed never happened. In one case, a $50 million children's hospital in Basra is listed as completed although the contract was stopped when only 35 percent of the work was finished.
During Brigadier Ellery's tenure at the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad, under Paul Bremer's leadership $8.8 billion of reconstruction funds were unaccounted for, and a further $3.4 billion was re-directed for "security" purposes. A UN body to audit the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), by which the CPA Programme Review Board managed Iraqi oil revenues until June 2004, found "gross irregularities by CPA officials in their management of the DFI," and condemned the United States for "lack of transparency" and providing the opportunity for "fraudulent acts."
Under American- and British-administered Iraqi reconstruction programmes, Iraqi agriculture has been devastated. In 2004, the Coalition Provision Authority imposed a hundred economic orders designed to open Iraq's economy to foreign investment, including Order 12 for tax- and tariff-free imports of foreign products. The Order allowed the giant American agribusiness conglomerate Cargill to flood Iraq with hundreds of thousands of tonnes of cheap wheat, undercutting local food prices, and wiping out the livelihoods of Iraqi farmers.
As an executive director of AEGIS, one of the most prominent US defence contractors in Iraq, Brigadier Ellery is a personal beneficiary of the privatisation of the Iraqi economy. In the conclusions of his April address, he said, "Iraq has resources aplenty: not just oil, of which there is a prodigious quantity", but especially "the capacity to rebuild a balanced economy including agriculture - for which Iraq was a legend."
www.nafeez.blogspot.com
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development in London. He teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in International Relations, Globalisation, Empire, and 20th Century History, at Brunel University in West London and the University of Sussex in Brighton. Since 9/11, he has authored a critically acclaimed trilogy of books revealing the realpolitik behind the rhetoric of the "War on Terror", The War on Freedom, Behind the War on Terror, and The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism. His fourth book is ,"The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry" (Duckworth, 2006). In summer 2005, he testified as an expert witness in US Congress about his research on international terrorism. His work has been featured in the Sunday Times, The Independent, The Observer, Sky News, and Channel 4, among other outlets.
Ex-British Army Chief in Iraq Confirms Peak Oil as Motive for War; Praises Fraudulent Reconstruction Programmes
Headlined on 6/17/08:
Ex-British Army Chief in Iraq Confirms Peak Oil as Motive for War; Praises Fraudulent Reconstruction Programmes
http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/Ex-British-Army-Chief-in-I-by-Nafeez-Mosaddeq-Ah-080617-625.html
by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
http://www.opednews.com
Ex-British Army Chief in Iraq Confirms Peak Oil as Motive for War;
Praises Fraudulent Reconstruction Programmes
© Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Brigadier-General James Ellery CBE, the Foreign Office's Senior Adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad since 2003, confirmed the critical role of Iraqi oil reserves in potentially alleviating a "world shortage" of conventional oil. The Iraq War has helped to head off what Brigadier Ellery described as "the tide of Easternisation" – a shift in global political and economic power toward China and India, to whom goes "two thirds of the Middle East's oil."
After the 2004 transfer of authority to an interim Iraqi civilian administration, Brigadier Ellery set up and ran the 700-strong security framework operation in support of the US-funded Reconstruction of Iraq. His remarks were made as part of a presentation at the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), University of London, sponsored by the Iraqi Youth Foundation, on 22nd April.
World Oil Shortage
"The reason that oil reached $117 a barrel last week", he said, "was less to do with security of supply... than World shortage." He went on to emphasise the strategic significance of Iraqi petroleum fields in relation to the danger of production peaks being breached in major oil reserves around the world. "Russia's production has peaked at 10 million barrels per day; Africa has proved slow to yield affordable extra supplies – from Sudan and Angola for example. Thus the only near-term potential increase will be from Iraq," he said. Whether Iraq began "favouring East or West" could therefore be "de-stabilizing" not only "within the region but to nations far beyond which have an interest."
Last month geological surveys and seismic data compiled by several international oil companies exploring Iraqi oil reserves showed that Iraq has the world's largest proven oil reserves, with as much as 350 billion barrels, significantly exceeding Saudi Arabia's 264 billion barrels, according to a report in the London Times. Former Bush administration energy adviser Matthew Simmons, author of the book Twilight in the Desert, says that Saudi oil production has probably already peaked, with production rates declining consecutively each year. This month the UK Treasury Department warned of the danger of an oil supply crunch by 2015, due to rocketing demand from China and India.
The Threat of Easternisation
Brigadier Ellery's career in the British Army has involved stints in the Middle East, Africa, Bosnia, Germany and Northern Ireland. "Iraq holds the key to stability in the region," he said, "unless that is you believe the tide of 'Easternisation' is such that the USA and the West are in such decline, relative to the emerging China and India, that it is the East – not the West – which is more likely to guarantee stability. Incidentally, I do not." Iraq's pivotal importance in the Middle East, he explained, is because of its "relatively large, consuming population" at 24 million, its being home to "the second largest reserve of oil – under exploited", and finally its geostrategic location "on the routes between Asia, Europe, Arabia and North Africa - hence the Silk Road."
Oil production peaks when a given petroleum reserve is depleted by half, after which oil is geophysically increasingly difficult to extract, causing production to plateau, and then steadily decline. US oil production peaked by 1970, while British production in the North Sea peaked by 2000, converting both countries from exporters into net importers of oil and gas.
Oil industry experts and petroleum geologists increasingly believe that world oil production is precariously close to peaking. According to an October 2007 report by the German-based Energy Watch Group, run by an international network of European politicians and scientists, world oil production peaked in 2006. According to BP's annual statistical review of world energy supply and demand for 2008, released on 11th June, world oil production fell last year for the first time since 2002, by 130,000 barrels per day last year to 81.53 million. Yet world consumption continued to rise by 1.1 per cent to 85.22 million barrels per day, outweighing production by nearly 5 per cent.
Iraqi Reconstruction Corruption Whitewash
Brigadier-General James Ellery is currently Director of Operations at AEGIS Defence Services Ltd., a private British security firm and US defence contractor since June 2004. In April this year, the same month as Ellery's SOAS lecture, AEGIS won the renewal of its US defence department (DoD) contract for two more years, which at $475 million is the single largest security contract brokered by the DoD. The contract is to provide security services for reconstruction projects in Iraq conducted by mostly American companies.
A US government audit by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, released exactly two years before Brigadier Ellery's SOAS presentation, concluded that AEGIS could not prove it had properly trained or vetted several armed Iraqi employees. For a random sample of 20 armed guards, no training documentation was found for 14 of them. For 125 other employees, AEGIS reportedly failed to document background checks. The auditors concluded that "there is no assurance that Aegis is providing the best possible safety and security for government and reconstruction contractor personnel and facilities."
During his April presentation at SOAS, AEGIS director Ellery declared, "Iraq promises a degree of prosperity in the region as it embarks on massive Iraqi-funded reconstruction, a part of which will raise Iraqi's oil production from 2.5 million bpd today to 3 million by next year and maybe ultimately 6 million barrels per day." He added, "With a budget of $187 billion over 4 years, Iraq is poised to have a considerable impact on the economies of countries whose technologies can fill the skills gap left by the latter years of Saddam Hussein's regime." During the UN sanctions regime imposed primarily by the US and Britain, Iraq was banned from importing thousands of household goods, including food, medicines, clothes and books, from 1991 to 2003, purportedly to prevent Saddam from developing weapons of mass destruction. It is now widely recognized that the sanctions led to massive socio-economic deprivation, the break-down of civilian infrastructure, large-scale unemployment, and de-industrialisation, resulting in the deaths of up to 1.8 million Iraqis, half of whom were children. The humanitarian crisis led United Nations officials such as Dennis Halliday, former UN Assistant Secretary-General, and Hans von Sponeck, former Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, to resign in protest.
Tell A Friend
Today, those profiting most from reconstruction projects in Iraq are not Iraqis, but private contractors based primarily in the United States and Britain, according to a new report out last month by Stuart Bowen Jr, incumbent Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The Bowen Report found that at least 855 contracts valued at billions of dollars were cancelled before completion. Another 112 agreements were cancelled because of poor performance, while still more projects recorded as completed never happened. In one case, a $50 million children's hospital in Basra is listed as completed although the contract was stopped when only 35 percent of the work was finished.
During Brigadier Ellery's tenure at the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad, under Paul Bremer's leadership $8.8 billion of reconstruction funds were unaccounted for, and a further $3.4 billion was re-directed for "security" purposes. A UN body to audit the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), by which the CPA Programme Review Board managed Iraqi oil revenues until June 2004, found "gross irregularities by CPA officials in their management of the DFI," and condemned the United States for "lack of transparency" and providing the opportunity for "fraudulent acts."
Under American- and British-administered Iraqi reconstruction programmes, Iraqi agriculture has been devastated. In 2004, the Coalition Provision Authority imposed a hundred economic orders designed to open Iraq's economy to foreign investment, including Order 12 for tax- and tariff-free imports of foreign products. The Order allowed the giant American agribusiness conglomerate Cargill to flood Iraq with hundreds of thousands of tonnes of cheap wheat, undercutting local food prices, and wiping out the livelihoods of Iraqi farmers.
As an executive director of AEGIS, one of the most prominent US defence contractors in Iraq, Brigadier Ellery is a personal beneficiary of the privatisation of the Iraqi economy. In the conclusions of his April address, he said, "Iraq has resources aplenty: not just oil, of which there is a prodigious quantity", but especially "the capacity to rebuild a balanced economy including agriculture - for which Iraq was a legend."
www.nafeez.blogspot.com
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development in London. He teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in International Relations, Globalisation, Empire, and 20th Century History, at Brunel University in West London and the University of Sussex in Brighton. Since 9/11, he has authored a critically acclaimed trilogy of books revealing the realpolitik behind the rhetoric of the "War on Terror", The War on Freedom, Behind the War on Terror, and The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism. His fourth book is ,"The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry" (Duckworth, 2006). In summer 2005, he testified as an expert witness in US Congress about his research on international terrorism. His work has been featured in the Sunday Times, The Independent, The Observer, Sky News, and Channel 4, among other outlets.
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