More blood for less oil?

By Nicolas J S Davies

On Monday, April 11, the Financial Times printed a letter from Ian Rutledge, the author of “Addicted to Oil,” in which he explained that the United States government and U.S. oil companies had counted on the invasion and occupation of Iraq to quickly boost Iraqi oil production by 2 million barrels per day, easing a projected shortfall in global oil supplies. Instead the war has had the opposite effect, reducing Iraqi exports by 1 million barrels per day, and the result is now evident at gas stations from Baghdad to Boston.

In his excellent book, “Resource Wars,” Michael Klare warned in 2000 that misguided efforts to secure the world’s diminishing supply of oil and other resources by military force could have precisely this effect. Turning one of the few parts of the world that still has abundant oil reserves into a war zone just when we really need the oil certainly seems like lunacy. What led the Bush administration to take such a risk?

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submitted by CombatRaccoon