ProgressiveTrail.org, OR
Oct 8 2004
Oil Wars and the American Military
by Michael Klare
published by Tom Dispatch
In the first U.S. combat operation of the war in Iraq, Navy commandos
stormed an offshore oil-loading platform. “Swooping silently out of
the Persian Gulf night,” an overexcited reporter for the New York
Times wrote on March 22, “Navy Seals seized two Iraqi oil terminals
in bold raids that ended early this morning, overwhelming
lightly-armed Iraqi guards and claiming a bloodless victory in the
battle for Iraq’s vast oil empire.”
A year and a half later, American soldiers are still struggling to
maintain control over these vital petroleum facilities — and the
fighting is no longer bloodless. On April 24, two American sailors
and a coastguardsman were killed when a boat they sought to
intercept, presumably carrying suicide bombers, exploded near the
Khor al-Amaya loading platform. Other Americans have come under fire
while protecting some of the many installations in Iraq’s “oil
empire.”
Indeed, Iraq has developed into a two-front war: the battles for
control over Iraq’s cities and the constant struggle to protect its
far-flung petroleum infrastructure against sabotage and attack. The
first contest has been widely reported in the American press; the
second has received far less attention. Yet the fate of Iraq’s oil
infrastructure could prove no less significant than that of its
embattled cities. A failure to prevail in this contest would
eliminate the economic basis upon which a stable Iraqi government
could someday emerge. “In the grand scheme of things,” a senior
officer told the New York Times, “there may be no other place where
our armed forces are deployed that has a greater strategic
importance.” In recognition of this, significant numbers of U.S.
soldiers have been assigned to oil-security functions.
Top officials insist that these duties will eventually be taken over
by Iraqi forces, but day by day this glorious moment seems to recede
ever further into the distance. So long as American forces remain in
Iraq, a significant number of them will undoubtedly spend their time
guarding highly vulnerable pipelines, refineries, loading facilities,
and other petroleum installations. With thousands of miles of
pipeline and hundreds of major facilities at risk, this task will
prove endlessly demanding – and unrelievedly hazardous. At the
moment, the guerrillas seem capable of striking the country’s oil
lines at times and places of their choosing, their attacks often
sparking massive explosions and fires.
Guarding the pipelines
It has been argued that our oil-protection role is a peculiar feature
of the war in Iraq, where petroleum installations are strewn about
and the national economy is largely dependent on oil revenues. But
Iraq is hardly the only country where American troops are risking
their lives on a daily basis to protect the flow of petroleum. In
Colombia, Saudi Arabia, and the Republic of Georgia, U.S. personnel
are also spending their days and nights protecting pipelines and
refineries, or supervising the local forces assigned to this mission.
American sailors are now on oil-protection patrol in the Persian
Gulf, the Arabian Sea, the South China Sea, and along other sea
routes that deliver oil to the United States and its allies. In fact,
the American military is increasingly being converted into a global
oil-protection service.
The situation in the Republic of Georgia is a perfect example of this
trend. Ever since the Soviet Union broke apart in 1992, American oil
companies and government officials have sought to gain access to the
huge oil and natural gas reserves of the Caspian Sea basin —
especially in Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. Some
experts believe that as many as 200 billion barrels of untapped oil
lie ready to be discovered in the Caspian area, about seven times the
amount left in the United States. But the Caspian itself is
landlocked and so the only way to transport its oil to market in the
West is by pipelines crossing the Caucasus region — the area
encompassing Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and the war-torn Russian
republics of Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, and North Ossetia.
American firms are now building a major pipeline through this
volatile area. Stretching a perilous 1,000 miles from Baku in
Azerbaijan through Tbilisi in Georgia to Ceyhan in Turkey, it is
eventually slated to carry one million barrels of oil a day to the
West; but will face the constant threat of sabotage by Islamic
militants and ethnic separatists along its entire length. The United
States has already assumed significant responsibility for its
protection, providing millions of dollars in arms and equipment to
the Georgian military and deploying military specialists in Tbilisi
to train and advise the Georgian troops assigned to protect this
vital conduit. This American presence is only likely to expand in
2005 or 2006 when the pipeline begins to transport oil and fighting
in the area intensifies.
Or take embattled Colombia, where U.S. forces are increasingly
assuming responsibility for the protection of that country’s
vulnerable oil pipelines. These vital conduits carry crude petroleum
from fields in the interior, where a guerrilla war boils, to ports on
the Caribbean coast from which it can be shipped to buyers in the
United States and elsewhere. For years, left-wing guerrillas have
sabotaged the pipelines — portraying them as concrete expressions of
foreign exploitation and elitist rule in Bogota, the capital — to
deprive the Colombian government of desperately needed income.
Seeking to prop up the government and enhance its capacity to fight
the guerrillas, Washington is already spending hundreds of millions
of dollars to enhance oil-infrastructure security, beginning with the
Cano-Limon pipeline, the sole conduit connecting Occidental
Petroleum’s prolific fields in Arauca province with the Caribbean
coast. As part of this effort, U.S. Army Special Forces personnel
from Fort Bragg, North Carolina are now helping to train, equip, and
guide a new contingent of Colombian forces whose sole mission will be
to guard the pipeline and fight the guerrillas along its 480-mile
route.
Oil and instability
The use of American military personnel to help protect vulnerable oil
installations in conflict-prone, chronically unstable countries is
certain to expand given three critical factors: America’s
ever-increasing dependence on imported petroleum, a global shift in
oil production from the developed to the developing world, and the
growing militarization of our foreign energy policy.
America’s dependence on imported petroleum has been growing steadily
since 1972, when domestic output reached its maximum (or “peak”)
output of 11.6 million barrels per day (mbd). Domestic production is
now running at about 9 mbd and is expected to continue to decline as
older fields are depleted. (Even if some oil is eventually extracted
from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, as the Bush
administration desires, this downward trend will not be reversed.)
Yet our total oil consumption remains on an upward course; now
approximating 20 mbd, it’s projected to reach 29 mbd by 2025. This
means ever more of the nation’s total petroleum supply will have to
be imported — 11 mbd today (about 55% of total U.S. consumption) but
20 mbd in 2025 (69% of consumption).
More significant than this growing reliance on foreign oil, an
increasing share of that oil will come from hostile, war-torn
countries in the developing world, not from friendly, stable
countries like Canada or Norway. This is the case because the older
industrialized countries have already consumed a large share of their
oil inheritance, while many producers in the developing world still
possess vast reserves of untapped petroleum. As a result, we are
seeing a historic shift in the center of gravity for world oil
production — from the industrialized countries of the global North
to the developing nations of the global South, which are often
politically unstable, torn by ethnic and religious conflicts, home to
extremist organizations, or some combination of all three.
Whatever deeply-rooted historical antagonisms exist in these
countries, oil production itself usually acts as a further
destabilizing influence. Sudden infusions of petroleum wealth in
otherwise poor and underdeveloped countries tend to deepen divides
between rich and poor that often fall along ethnic or religious
lines, leading to persistent conflict over the distribution of
petroleum revenues. To prevent such turbulence, ruling elites like
the royal family in Saudi Arabia or the new oil potentates of
Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan restrict or prohibit public expressions of
dissent and rely on the repressive machinery of state security forces
to crush opposition movements. With legal, peaceful expressions of
dissent foreclosed in this manner, opposition forces soon see no
options but to engage in armed rebellion or terrorism.
There is another aspect of this situation that bears examination.
Many of the emerging oil producers in the developing world were once
colonies of and harbor deep hostility toward the former imperial
powers of Europe. The United States is seen by many in these
countries as the modern inheritor of this imperial tradition. Growing
resentment over social and economic traumas induced by globalization
is aimed at the United States. Because oil is viewed as the primary
motive for American involvement in these areas, and because the giant
U.S. oil corporations are seen as the very embodiment of American
power, anything to do with oil — pipelines, wells, refineries,
loading platforms — is seen by insurgents as a legitimate and
attractive target for attack; hence the raids on pipelines in Iraq,
on oil company offices in Saudi Arabia, and on oil tankers in Yemen.
Militarizing energy policy
American leaders have responded to this systemic challenge to
stability in oil-producing areas in a consistent fashion: by
employing military means to guarantee the unhindered flow of
petroleum. This approach was first adopted by the Truman and
Eisenhower administrations after World War II, when Soviet
adventurism in Iran and pan-Arab upheavals in the Middle East seemed
to threaten the safety of Persian Gulf oil deliveries. It was given
formal expression by President Carter in January 1980, when, in
response to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the Islamic
revolution in Iran, he announced that the secure flow of Persian Gulf
oil was in “the vital interests of the United States of America,” and
that in protecting this interest we would use “any means necessary,
including military force.” Carter’s principle of using force to
protect the flow of oil was later cited by President Bush the elder
to justify American intervention in the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91,
and it provided the underlying strategic rationale for our recent
invasion of Iraq.
Originally, this policy was largely confined to the world’s most
important oil-producing region, the Persian Gulf. But given America’s
ever-growing requirement for imported petroleum, U.S. officials have
begun to extend it to other major producing zones, including the
Caspian Sea basin, Africa, and Latin America. The initial step in
this direction was taken by President Clinton, who sought to exploit
the energy potential of the Caspian basin and, worrying about
instability in the area, established military ties with future
suppliers, including Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, and with the pivotal
transit state of Georgia. It was Clinton who first championed the
construction of a pipeline from Baku to Ceyhan and who initially took
steps to protect that conduit by boosting the military capabilities
of the countries involved. President Bush junior has built on this
effort, increasing military aid to these states and deploying
American combat advisers in Georgia; Bush is also considering the
establishment of permanent U.S. military bases in the Caspian region.
Typically, such moves are justified as being crucial to the “war on
terror.” A close reading of Pentagon and State Department documents
shows, however, that anti-terrorism and the protection of oil
supplies are closely related in administration thinking. When
requesting funds in 2004 to establish a “rapid-reaction brigade” in
Kazakhstan, for example, the State Department told Congress that such
a force is needed to “enhance Kazakhstan’s capability to respond to
major terrorist threats to oil platforms” in the Caspian Sea.
As noted, a very similar trajectory is now under way in Colombia. The
American military presence in oil-producing areas of Africa, though
less conspicuous, is growing rapidly. The Department of Defense has
stepped up its arms deliveries to military forces in Angola and
Nigeria, and is helping to train their officers and enlisted
personnel; meanwhile, Pentagon officials have begun to look for
permanent U.S. bases in the area, focusing on Senegal, Ghana, Mali,
Uganda, and Kenya. Although these officials tend to talk only about
terrorism when explaining the need for such facilities, one officer
told Greg Jaffe of the Wall Street Journal in June 2003 that “a key
mission for U.S. forces [in Africa] would be to ensure that Nigeria’s
oil fields, which in the future could account for as much as 25
percent of all U.S. oil imports, are secure.”
An increasing share of our naval forces is also being committed to
the protection of foreign oil shipments. The Navy’s Fifth Fleet,
based at the island state of Bahrain, now spends much of its time
patrolling the vital tanker lanes of the Persian Gulf and the Strait
of Hormuz — the narrow waterway connecting the Gulf to the Arabian
Sea and the larger oceans beyond. The Navy has also beefed up its
ability to protect vital sea lanes in the South China Sea — the site
of promising oil fields claimed by China, Vietnam, the Philippines,
and Malaysia — and in the Strait of Malacca, the critical sea-link
between the Persian Gulf and America’s allies in East Asia. Even
Africa has come in for increased attention from the Navy. In order to
increase the U.S. naval presence in waters adjoining Nigeria and
other key producers, carrier battle groups assigned to the European
Command (which controls the South Atlantic) will shorten their future
visits to the Mediterranean “and spend half the time going down the
west coast of Africa,” the command’s top officer, General James
Jones, announced in May 2003.
This, then, is the future of U.S. military involvement abroad. While
anti-terrorism and traditional national security rhetoric will be
employed to explain risky deployments abroad, a growing number of
American soldiers and sailors will be committed to the protection of
overseas oil fields, pipeline, refineries, and tanker routes. And
because these facilities are likely to come under increasing attack
from guerrillas and terrorists, the risk to American lives will grow
accordingly. Inevitably, we will pay a higher price in blood for
every additional gallon of oil we obtain from abroad.
Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies
at Hampshire College. This article is based on his new book, Blood
and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Petroleum
Dependency (Metropolitan / Henry Holt).