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Page added on September 9, 2013
Natural Gas: What the War in Syria is Really About
The US President is currently undertaking a massive sales pitch for war. We heard on the radio this morning that President Obama was set to front about six different media outlets today to make his case for war with Syria.
He’ll be out perpetuating the lie that it’s all about chemical weapons and defending the national interest and blah blah blah.
The more plausible story is that it’s about natural gas. A Middle East conflict is always about energy…or religion. But this upcoming war over Syria is about energy. We don’t pretend to know what it’s all about, but we do think you’ll find all this a little more convincing that the West’s ‘do-gooding’ rhetoric about chemical weapons and humanitarianism.
The West (and Saudi Arabia) clearly wants regime change in Syria…probably because Syrian President Assad counts Russia and Iran amongst his mates.
But it’s more than that. As far as we can tell, it’s about the politics of natural gas. And it starts in the largest natural gas reservoir in the world – the South Pars/North Dome field in the Persian Gulf, a resource shared by Qatar and Iran.
Now, Qatar and Iran are hardly allies. Qatar is Sunni and Iran is Shiite. Qatar hosts the US and British military presence in the region.
A few years ago there was talk of a new gas pipeline running through Iran and Iraq to Damascus…and then possibly onto Europe via LNG ports off the Syrian coast. Coincidentally enough, this was around the time when the Syrian civil war started.
Qatar, for one, didn’t like the sound of this. It was more interested in sending its share of the South Pars field into Europe via a gas pipeline through Syria and into Turkey, where it could link up with the major Eastern European gas pipelines. It’s no surprise then to see that Qatar is a major supplier of funds to rebel groups in Syria, reportedly funnelling in US$3 billion to support the overthrow of Assad since the conflict began.
But this doesn’t explain why Saudi Arabia wants Assad out too. The Saudis are not on friendly terms with the Qataris. They rejected a Qatari plan to put a gas pipeline through their territory and they bankrolled the Egyptian’s military’s recent overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood, who Qatar supported.
But we know Russia wouldn’t like the prospect of a gas pipeline linking with Europe, as it supplies over one-third of Europe’s gas needs and draws a great deal of strategic influence via its energy supply dominance. The prospect of suddenly having Persian Gulf gas competing with Russian gas is not appealing for them.
Hence Russian President Putin’s lack of support for a US attack. Interestingly, China seems to be on Russia’s side.
So where does all this leave the US? Why is it so eager to attack Syria and bring down Assad’s regime, opening up the possibility of a power vacuum and destabilising violence in the region?
We can only guess. Once elected, politicians deem certain things too delicate to tell their electors. And the real reason behind war is certainly too delicate to tell the people about.
So we guess that perhaps the US are acting on behalf of long term ally the Saudis, who see this as a real opportunity to consolidate their power in the region.
Having just put the military back in power in Egypt, the Saudis now have a chance to dictate who the next ruler of Syria will be, and perhaps obtain a strategic position in the energy of the 21st century – natural gas.
But we don’t really know. The only thing we can say confidently is that this upcoming war is not about chemical weapons or morality. It’s about politicians taking actions that ‘we the people’ are too simple to understand and too passive to endorse.
That’s why democracy is a farce. We elect ‘smiling faces’, who in the end are just puppets for darker forces to control and manipulate. The upcoming debacle in Syria will confirm just that.
Regards,
Greg Canavan+
for The Daily Reckoning Australia
7 Comments on "Natural Gas: What the War in Syria is Really About"
BillT on Mon, 9th Sep 2013 10:50 am
The War in Iraq, Libya, and now Syria
Iran is about the Petro Dollar and maintaining it’s world reserve currency status. All else is negotiable. When a country threatens to leave the Petro Dollar for another currency, it is attacked and destroyed. Problem is: now the big nuclear powers are going away from the Petro dollar and the Empire cannot attack then without being destroyed. Interesting times.
bobinget on Mon, 9th Sep 2013 3:02 pm
Worse yet, when that ‘petro dollar’ leaves you.
Australia is a free country. Greg Canavan can publish his opinions, we are also free to page mark this little piece, in particular the last paragraph and hold it up for ridicule in coming years.
Almost every off the wall theory has some basis in truth. When four of world’s most powerful oil producing nations; KSA, Iran, Russia now the USA, pour billion$ into a proxy war, willing to fight to the last Syrian, Greg’s point, there is more to this conflict then sectarian differences, holds water. Where his thinking gets fuzzy must have to do with those on the front lines doing the killing and sacrificing everything in the process. There are 100,000 dead Syrians who up to recently, few gave a hoot about. There are four million penniless refugees inside Syria and in Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey and Jordan. This is a humanitarian disaster of enormous proportions. Just getting basic food (grains) will strain world food surplus to it’s limits.
I urge everyone to go to your National Geographic Atlas and just stare. Then call, email, your congress
person and express your opinions.
DC on Mon, 9th Sep 2013 3:51 pm
Here Is how the math works on this
-The US controls the GCC states.
-The US seeks to tighten its grip on the EU, or more specifically, to destroy it as a reality.
-The EU currently buys a lot of NG from Russia, which provides important ForeX earnings to Russia. Kill 2 birds with one stone. Place Europe’s energy supply under US control, and weaken\undermine Russia at the same time. Two longstanding goals of uS imperial policy.
-The US seeks to control the energy supply of the EU through its GCC proxies by running pipelines up to Europe. Syria was under no obligation to accept any US controlled pipelines running through its territory.
-‘Civil War’ mysteriously breaks out in peaceful, secular Syria and suddenly the country is full of ‘ anti-gov’t rebels’ 95% of whom, don’t even live in Syria.
-President Assad declared the new ‘Hitler’, by the serial war-monger B. Obomber.
actioncjackson on Mon, 9th Sep 2013 6:15 pm
Since the US is located comparatively far away from the oil mecca (haha pun intended) that is the Middle East there’s pressure to establish a presence in the area, to place stake on the oil claim. What better way to continue to justify that presence than under the guise of humanitarian benevolence? The US needs the petro-dollar, the binding of the US dollar to the price of oil, to maintain its standing among nations. Their worst fear would be that, despite the negative economic consequences that would ensue if other nations chose to abandon the petro-dollar, it would be abandoned leaving the US as a second rate power, a washed up has been.
BillT on Tue, 10th Sep 2013 1:18 am
Action: I don’t think the Us would be a second rate anything. It would drop into 3rd world status in a heartbeat without the ability to print unlimited amounts of dollars and have foreign suckers to buy them up. If the Us suddenly had to have Yuan or Rubles or even gold, they would be in the position of the lowliest island nation. They would have to buy that currency at going rates, set, not by the Us but, by that country or the rest of the world.
And with nothing to export, where would they get the money? It gets complicated when you are not the top dog any more.
GregT on Tue, 10th Sep 2013 4:12 am
BillT,
I would not wish that on Americans, or any other people on this planet. Canadians, like myself, would be adversely affected by the collapse of the US. As would all ‘Western Nations’.
The sad fact of the matter is, you are correct. People need to start planning accordingly.
BillT on Tue, 10th Sep 2013 2:27 pm
GregT, it is coming and soon. China is tired of supporting the US at the expense of it’s own people. Russia wants more power and they too can take it easily. The US is less than 18% of China’s exports. And without China, there will be no I-toys anyway. Nor any rare earths for ‘renewables’ and weapons.
If it will end the Empire’s power, so be it.