Accidental
By Fred Pearce | 01.02.2003 11:17
Two articles in New Scientist asking is the war on Iraq about oil, and what is the likely cost going to be.
By Fred Pearce
Iraq has the second largest proven reserves of oil in the world, behind only Saudi Arabia. 112 billion barrels lie below the country's desert sands, together with another probable 220 billion barrels of unproven reserves. What's more, the US Department of Energy says, "Iraq's true resource potential may be far greater, as the country is relatively unexplored due to years of war and sanctions."
This, plus the fact that "Iraq's oil production costs are among the lowest in the world, makes it a highly attractive oil prospect," says the department's latest country analysis. No wonder many critics believe that the campaign to topple Saddam Hussein is really a battle for Iraq's oil.
Iraq is peppered with oil fields. The biggest are in the far south around Basra and in the Kurdish north. Military strategists predict that troops entering Iraq from the Gulf and overland from Turkey would first aim to secure these fields. The goal would be both to cut off supplies to Saddam's military and to keep the oil safe for future use by preventing sabotage by a desperate Saddam or capture by warring factions emerging from Saddam's shadow.
The oil fields and pipelines are in a bad state. Many were bombed during the last Gulf war and have never been repaired. UN sanctions mean many have no markets in any case. According to the Iraqi government a third are not in production.
All that would change if Saddam were overthrown and UN sanctions ended. The world is likely to grow increasingly thirsty for Iraqi oil. "The US in particular is ever more dependent on oil imports, especially from the Middle East, which has 70% of world reserves," says Paul Rogers of the University of Bradford's department of peace studies. "Thirty years ago, the US was virtually self-sufficient in oil, but it now imports over 60 per cent of its needs."
With fears about global warming barely registering inside the Bush administration, the US Department of Energy says it expects US oil consumption to rise by a staggering 48 per cent between now and 2020. "There is a deep and pervading recognition at the heart of the Bush administration that the most significant future vulnerability for the US is its steadily growing dependence on Gulf oil," says Rogers.
Rogers says securing foreign oil supplies has been a central goal of US foreign policy for 30 years. The Iraq war, from this perspective, represents a ratcheting-up of this strategy. Some hawks in Washington, such as the influential Heritage Foundation, also see it as a chance to break the grip of, or even destroy, OPEC and permanently lower oil prices by raising supplies.
This strategic insecurity is fed by growing fears about Saudi oil supplies, should radicals unseat the current regime there, and increasingly pessimistic predictions of future world oil supplies from US oil companies. Last year, Exxon admitted that new oil discoveries were falling badly behind rising demand. Worldwide, existing oilfields can only meet half the demand for oil expected by 2010, said Exxon director Harry Longwell in the journal World Energy.
Certainly, US oil companies look forward to 'privatising' the Iraqi oil industry after Saddam's fall. They have already held talks with leaders of the Iraqi National Congress, the main opposition group. They are not alone in eyeing Iraqi oil.
French, Russian, Chinese and other oil companies have established oil links with Saddam, in the expectation of cashing in once UN sanctions are over. But many are severing those links and cosying up to the Iraqi National Congress. They will have heard CIA director James Woolsey say last autumn, "France and Russia... should be told that if they are of assistance in moving Iraq toward decent government, we'll do the best we can to ensure that the new government and American companies work closely with them."
That could be bad news for British oil chiefs who may expect a payback for the UK's support for the war. Recently Lord Browne, chief executive of British oil giant BP, claimed that his company was being squeezed out in deals between US oil companies and the Iraqi National Congress and called for a "level playing field for the selection of oil companies to go in there if Iraq changes its regime."
By Fred Pearce
War in Iraq will not be like war in Kuwait. The latter conflict threw out Iraqi invaders who could live to fight another day. Now that day seems imminent. Fighting on their own territory, Saddam's troops will have nowhere left to run. And they will face the technological superiority of US-led forces.
MEDACT, a UK-based organisation of doctors set up to look at the health consequences of conflicts, puts the most likely death toll in a war with Iraq at between 10 000 and 50 000, half of them civilians. Most would die in a "battle for Baghdad", which would likely involve carpet-bombing and street-by-street fighting that could go on for some time.
MEDACT predicts that with some 80 000 core troops defending the Iraqi capital "occupation will be extremely difficult without causing numerous civilian causalities among its five million people."
But other phases of the war could take major casualties, it says. These include the initial bombardment of military and communications infrastructure by high-precision but still lethal air assaults, the likely land invasions in both the south and the Kurdish north, and any final "scorched earth" policy as Saddam flees.
"This will not be another Vietnam, but casualties could be significantly greater on all sides that in the 1991 Gulf War," agrees Michael O'Hanlon, a foreign policy analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
And weapons of mass destruction would make matters much worse. Iraqi chemical, biological or nuclear weapons could kill anything up to 20 000 people, MEDACT warns. Aid agencies have said they are "completely unprepared" for the consequences of a chemical attack.
A "worst case" figure of half a million dead is possible, MEDACT says, if the body-count includes post-war famines; if a protracted war causes oil prices to soar and trigger global recession; and if an Iraqi strike against Israel brings possible nuclear retaliation on Baghdad.
Environmental issues may also be significant. As a final gesture of defiance, Saddam might sabotage Iraqi oil wells - either detonating or booby-trapping them with radioactive or chemical materials. Fears at the time of the Kuwait conflict that smoke from burning wells could impact on global climate proved far-fetched. But local smog impacts could still be serious. And many Iraqi wells contain gas at pressure, so fires would be much harder to put out even than those in Kuwait.
During the last Gulf War, oil spills permanently damaged 350 square kilometres of Kuwaiti desert by creating a hard crust of sand and oil, according to a Kuwaiti report to the UN. The digging of trenches and the heavy machinery of war created sand dunes that could still be moving across the desert in hundreds of years' time.
There are also concerns about the long-term effects of depleted uranium from munitions used in air bombardments or heavy artillery attacks. The toxicological potential of this military fallout is still disputed, but potentially serious
Iraq is one of the original cradles of civilisation and contains some of our greatest archaeological treasures. They include Ur, among the earliest cities in the world, which lies close to a major airbase at Tallil. Bombing is not the only threat. "In southern Iraq, the highest ground is often on top of archaeological sites. If you have bulldozers creating earthworks on these sites, that's going to destroy things," says John Malcolm Russell, an archaeologist at the Massachusetts College of Art.
Warfare also creates the kind of chaos where ethnic strife can thrive. After Saddam's fall, simmering disputes between Kurds, Tajiks and Arabs "will unleash latent, uncontrollable forces," triggering civil war that might spread to neighbouring countries, warns Faleh a Jabar, a political scientist at Birkbeck College, London.
And terrorist groups can prosper amid such lawlessness, either joining the fighting or gathering arms. Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington warned last autumn that both weapons and the scientists who develop them could slip out of Iraq and into the murky world of terrorism.
Besides arms, Al-Qaida might also win hearts and minds. Few Iraqi civilians may mourn Saddam's departure, and as a secular leader, he is no friend of fundamentalist Muslims. But large-scale civilian casualties may anger many ordinary Arabs. That could nourish anti-Western feeling in the Middle East and act as a recruiting call for future terrorists. Might bin Laden be the unlikely beneficiary of a war with Iraq?
Iraq has the second largest proven reserves of oil in the world, behind only Saudi Arabia. 112 billion barrels lie below the country's desert sands, together with another probable 220 billion barrels of unproven reserves. What's more, the US Department of Energy says, "Iraq's true resource potential may be far greater, as the country is relatively unexplored due to years of war and sanctions."
This, plus the fact that "Iraq's oil production costs are among the lowest in the world, makes it a highly attractive oil prospect," says the department's latest country analysis. No wonder many critics believe that the campaign to topple Saddam Hussein is really a battle for Iraq's oil.
Iraq is peppered with oil fields. The biggest are in the far south around Basra and in the Kurdish north. Military strategists predict that troops entering Iraq from the Gulf and overland from Turkey would first aim to secure these fields. The goal would be both to cut off supplies to Saddam's military and to keep the oil safe for future use by preventing sabotage by a desperate Saddam or capture by warring factions emerging from Saddam's shadow.
The oil fields and pipelines are in a bad state. Many were bombed during the last Gulf war and have never been repaired. UN sanctions mean many have no markets in any case. According to the Iraqi government a third are not in production.
All that would change if Saddam were overthrown and UN sanctions ended. The world is likely to grow increasingly thirsty for Iraqi oil. "The US in particular is ever more dependent on oil imports, especially from the Middle East, which has 70% of world reserves," says Paul Rogers of the University of Bradford's department of peace studies. "Thirty years ago, the US was virtually self-sufficient in oil, but it now imports over 60 per cent of its needs."
With fears about global warming barely registering inside the Bush administration, the US Department of Energy says it expects US oil consumption to rise by a staggering 48 per cent between now and 2020. "There is a deep and pervading recognition at the heart of the Bush administration that the most significant future vulnerability for the US is its steadily growing dependence on Gulf oil," says Rogers.
Rogers says securing foreign oil supplies has been a central goal of US foreign policy for 30 years. The Iraq war, from this perspective, represents a ratcheting-up of this strategy. Some hawks in Washington, such as the influential Heritage Foundation, also see it as a chance to break the grip of, or even destroy, OPEC and permanently lower oil prices by raising supplies.
This strategic insecurity is fed by growing fears about Saudi oil supplies, should radicals unseat the current regime there, and increasingly pessimistic predictions of future world oil supplies from US oil companies. Last year, Exxon admitted that new oil discoveries were falling badly behind rising demand. Worldwide, existing oilfields can only meet half the demand for oil expected by 2010, said Exxon director Harry Longwell in the journal World Energy.
Certainly, US oil companies look forward to 'privatising' the Iraqi oil industry after Saddam's fall. They have already held talks with leaders of the Iraqi National Congress, the main opposition group. They are not alone in eyeing Iraqi oil.
French, Russian, Chinese and other oil companies have established oil links with Saddam, in the expectation of cashing in once UN sanctions are over. But many are severing those links and cosying up to the Iraqi National Congress. They will have heard CIA director James Woolsey say last autumn, "France and Russia... should be told that if they are of assistance in moving Iraq toward decent government, we'll do the best we can to ensure that the new government and American companies work closely with them."
That could be bad news for British oil chiefs who may expect a payback for the UK's support for the war. Recently Lord Browne, chief executive of British oil giant BP, claimed that his company was being squeezed out in deals between US oil companies and the Iraqi National Congress and called for a "level playing field for the selection of oil companies to go in there if Iraq changes its regime."
By Fred Pearce
War in Iraq will not be like war in Kuwait. The latter conflict threw out Iraqi invaders who could live to fight another day. Now that day seems imminent. Fighting on their own territory, Saddam's troops will have nowhere left to run. And they will face the technological superiority of US-led forces.
MEDACT, a UK-based organisation of doctors set up to look at the health consequences of conflicts, puts the most likely death toll in a war with Iraq at between 10 000 and 50 000, half of them civilians. Most would die in a "battle for Baghdad", which would likely involve carpet-bombing and street-by-street fighting that could go on for some time.
MEDACT predicts that with some 80 000 core troops defending the Iraqi capital "occupation will be extremely difficult without causing numerous civilian causalities among its five million people."
But other phases of the war could take major casualties, it says. These include the initial bombardment of military and communications infrastructure by high-precision but still lethal air assaults, the likely land invasions in both the south and the Kurdish north, and any final "scorched earth" policy as Saddam flees.
"This will not be another Vietnam, but casualties could be significantly greater on all sides that in the 1991 Gulf War," agrees Michael O'Hanlon, a foreign policy analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
And weapons of mass destruction would make matters much worse. Iraqi chemical, biological or nuclear weapons could kill anything up to 20 000 people, MEDACT warns. Aid agencies have said they are "completely unprepared" for the consequences of a chemical attack.
A "worst case" figure of half a million dead is possible, MEDACT says, if the body-count includes post-war famines; if a protracted war causes oil prices to soar and trigger global recession; and if an Iraqi strike against Israel brings possible nuclear retaliation on Baghdad.
Environmental issues may also be significant. As a final gesture of defiance, Saddam might sabotage Iraqi oil wells - either detonating or booby-trapping them with radioactive or chemical materials. Fears at the time of the Kuwait conflict that smoke from burning wells could impact on global climate proved far-fetched. But local smog impacts could still be serious. And many Iraqi wells contain gas at pressure, so fires would be much harder to put out even than those in Kuwait.
During the last Gulf War, oil spills permanently damaged 350 square kilometres of Kuwaiti desert by creating a hard crust of sand and oil, according to a Kuwaiti report to the UN. The digging of trenches and the heavy machinery of war created sand dunes that could still be moving across the desert in hundreds of years' time.
There are also concerns about the long-term effects of depleted uranium from munitions used in air bombardments or heavy artillery attacks. The toxicological potential of this military fallout is still disputed, but potentially serious
Iraq is one of the original cradles of civilisation and contains some of our greatest archaeological treasures. They include Ur, among the earliest cities in the world, which lies close to a major airbase at Tallil. Bombing is not the only threat. "In southern Iraq, the highest ground is often on top of archaeological sites. If you have bulldozers creating earthworks on these sites, that's going to destroy things," says John Malcolm Russell, an archaeologist at the Massachusetts College of Art.
Warfare also creates the kind of chaos where ethnic strife can thrive. After Saddam's fall, simmering disputes between Kurds, Tajiks and Arabs "will unleash latent, uncontrollable forces," triggering civil war that might spread to neighbouring countries, warns Faleh a Jabar, a political scientist at Birkbeck College, London.
And terrorist groups can prosper amid such lawlessness, either joining the fighting or gathering arms. Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington warned last autumn that both weapons and the scientists who develop them could slip out of Iraq and into the murky world of terrorism.
Besides arms, Al-Qaida might also win hearts and minds. Few Iraqi civilians may mourn Saddam's departure, and as a secular leader, he is no friend of fundamentalist Muslims. But large-scale civilian casualties may anger many ordinary Arabs. That could nourish anti-Western feeling in the Middle East and act as a recruiting call for future terrorists. Might bin Laden be the unlikely beneficiary of a war with Iraq?
By Fred Pearce