US buys up Iraqi oil to stave off crisis
Seizing reserves will be an allied priority if forces go in
By Faisal Islam and Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow for The Observer.

Facing its most chronic shortage in oil stocks for 27 years, the US has this month turned to an unlikely source of help – Iraq.
Weeks before a prospective invasion of Iraq, the oil-rich state has doubled its exports of oil to America, helping US refineries cope with a debilitating strike in Venezuela.
After the loss of 1.5 million barrels per day of Venezuelan production in December the oil price rocketed, and the scarcity of reserves threatened to do permanent damage to the US oil refinery and transport infrastructure. To keep the pipelines flowing, President Bush stopped adding to the 700m barrel strategic reserve.
But ultimately oil giants such as Chevron, Exxon, BP and Shell saved the day by doubling imports from Iraq from 0.5m barrels in November to over 1m barrels per day to solve the problem. Essentially, US importers diverted 0.5m barrels of Iraqi oil per day heading for Europe and Asia to save the American oil infrastructure.
The trade, though bizarre given current Pentagon plans to launch around 300 cruise missiles a day on Iraq, is legal under the terms of UN’s oil for food programme…
But, in the run-up to war, the US oil majors will this week report a big leap in profits. ChevronTexaco is to report a 300 per cent rise. Chevron used to employ the hawkish Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s National Security Adviser, as a member of its board.
Five years ago the then Chevron chief executive Kenneth Derr, a colleague of Rice, said: ‘Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas – reserves I’d love Chevron to have access to.’

Continue reading →

My bad — I missed this last week and didn’t even realize there was a saga.
The Daily Show covered it last week — and it was stupid, sure, but it seemed like such easy pickens, I didn’t bother.
Now I suppose I’ll have to go dig up the tape… Let me know if you care. (I’m still crowd estimating and state of the unioning and things…)
All this article tells me is that they’ve found a scapegoat for this latest gaffe of pure shrubbery.
This one’s so easy there’s no fun in it, so I’m going to rush to the Shrub’s defense: “It’s not his fault! How was the Shrub to know that those pieces of tape covering up the area where “Made In _____” always goes was something other than “Made In America” — and that the powers that be hadn’t simply chosen to cover up the “Made In America’s” for some complex reason? Who knows why “they” do the things the way they do. This man is the “President” of the United States? Is he supposed to start paying attention to his surroundings at every single press conference? Should he be expected to single-handedly ensure that there are no contradictions between his speech and his props?”
I guess you’re right. He’s got more important things on his mind. (Like remembering to take the medication that causes his pupils to be so dialated…)
President Bush spoke behind a stack of boxes with tape over the words “Made in China.”

Remember “Boxgate,” the incident last week at a St. Louis warehouse in which President Bush touted small business and things made in America? And the problem was, he was standing behind a bunch of boxes that had tape over the words “Made in China”?
Seems the person who did this, said by the White House to be an “overzealous volunteer,” may have committed a federal offense.
Covering up the “Made In” labels is against the law, a violation of venerable Title 19, Chapter 4, Subtitle II, Part 1, Sec. 134.11, which “requires that every article of foreign origin (or its container) imported into the United States shall be marked in a conspicuous place as legibly, indelibly and permanently” as possible, “in such manner as to indicate to an ultimate purchaser . . . [the] name of the country of origin of the article.”

Continue reading →

Just got a link to the actual video here that I mention in an earlier post. (Thanks Danny!)