http://money.cnn.com/2007/11/08/news...ion=2007110912

__________________
Your representatives on Philadelphia's City Council are at odds with our new mayor over whether many reforms he has proposed should become law. Please write to them and tell them what your priorities are.

Indict State Senator Vince Fumo into The Crooked Pol Hall of Fame.

Right what this story misses almost misses entirely is how the distribution of oil fields plays into the ethnic rivlaries plagueing Iraq. Look at the graphic.


The oil fields are clustered in the SE around Shiia dominated Basrah or up in the North around Mosul and Kirkuk aka Iraqui Kurdistan. In the central part of the country and in the west where Sunnis hold sway - Tikrit, Ramadi, Fallujah - no oil. Under Saddam Hussein the Sunni dominated government controlled the oil industry and reaped teh benefits both in terms of payment extracted from foreign oil companies and in terms of patronage jobs. Saddam had an official policy of forcibly turning Kurds around Kirkuk out of their homes and moving Sunnis from around his hometown of Tikrit in there place. It was called "Arabization".

So essentially the biggest stumbling block to political concilaition in Iraq is how federalism (local regional control in the various ethnic enclaves) is going to interact with distribution of funds from production. The Shiia want regional control of oil money so that funds from their base in the SE as do the Kurds in the north. Meanwhile the Kurds have enacted a policy of letting dispossed Kurds from Kirkuk reclaim their old houses (the Kurdish government funded by the US this time pays the Sunnis to leave, eminent domain style). Some Kurdish politicians speak openly of trying to actively "re-Kurdicize" oil rich Kirkuk, others just couch it in terms of returning the dispossessed to their homes.

It should not really surprise anyone who paid attention to the long simmering ethnic rivalries in Saddam's Iraq that writing the "oil law" is now the most controversial and divisive issue in the Iraqui parliament. Once again the Bush administration's claim that oil revenue would be able to pay for the bulk of reconstruction in Iraq going to the war ignored basic geo-political realities of the country we were invading. Bush was able to sell a policy that many experts on the region said was inherently flawed, based on most Americans lack of geographical and cultural knowledge about the country we were invading. It is one of those situations where its debateable whether the plan was intentionally misleading to the Americna public or just a monumental example of incompetance. I tend to fall in the former camp, "Bush lied . . ." well you know.

__________________
Barack Obama on security, Iraq and Afghanistan. We need a Commander in Chief who knows the differences between Shii'a and Sunni.

Will there ever be a time when someone says, "well, let's just dig for our own"?

Is common sense really that dead?

While the US certainly probably has some unrealized oil fields, there is no indication that there would be enough in or off the coast of the continental US or Alaska that could keep up our demand. Its not even close. We may figure out how to grow enough fuel (biodiesel, ethanol, etc.) but there's not enough petroleum in the ground to feed our tremendous appetite for more than a decade or so even if we tapped it all. People talk about natural gas from coal but the process is prohibitively expensive and very polluting at this point.

Ultimately I think it will be a combination of improved economy and grown not fossil fuels.

__________________
Barack Obama on security, Iraq and Afghanistan. We need a Commander in Chief who knows the differences between Shii'a and Sunni.

With an atrocious foreign policy that leaves us beholden to dictators and despots the world over, it sure as hell is worth a shot though, ain't it?

I'm not saying we run on oil forever, but until we can figure out a real way to be self-sufficient without oil, we should get as much of our own as possible. The Saudis are known criminals, terrorists, misogynists and back-stabbers, but we'll trip over our own d's to make sure they're still our friends, because--let's face it--we need their oil and that of their friends.

The ethanol debate has been had...it's not as efficient as oil, it's more intense to create and it burns OUR FOOD SUPPLY. So, right now, it makes more sense to burn our food supply and deny new nuclear or oil facilities, continue to buy oil from criminals who would've killed us already if we weren't such pigs for their oil, all when we could export our own (if the reserves are large enough)?

I mean, seriously, is this all for being "green" or something? Maybe we should worry about one of those bigger issues out there, like our sovereignty or something, you know? I love the planet too, don't get me wrong, but we're not going to disturb 1,000 acres of a 19 million acre refuge for some caribou? Some plant-life? Call me selfish, but I'm thinking the welfare of 300,000,000 American citizens means a whole lot more to me than fulfilling an environmentalist's wet dream.

All the oil in Alaska was estimated to be about 5 or 6 years of US consumption from what I've read so whether we preserve those natural environments or not its not a real long term solution.

In terms of grown fuels, maybe fuel is supposed to be expensive. the other elephant in the corner is global warming. If you burn only material that was grown recently, there is still polution (particulate matter, etc) but there is no net gain in CO2. All the carbon released in in consumption was pulled out of the atmosphere by the plant while it was alive. Zero global warming effect in the ballance.

We aren't in Iraq just to get the oil for ourselves anyway. We are also there to influence other nations access as well. Even if everyone in the US all rode nuclear power jet packs, oil would be a global "strategic resource" for the rest of the developing world.

__________________
Barack Obama on security, Iraq and Afghanistan. We need a Commander in Chief who knows the differences between Shii'a and Sunni.

What people don't realize is we get most of our oil from Canada Mexico, not the middle east. Saudi Arabia is the only supplier of any significance from the Middle East and Nigeria the only other one of significance outside the Western Hemisphere.

Yes the middle East affects the global market which drives up prices, but they are not a direct affect on our supply.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/p...nt/import.html

So technically, if we want to be as self sufficient as possible on petroleum, it involves working relationships with Canada and Mexico.

__________________

One issue in Iraq that needs resolving: lagging oil production

Iraq is quietly pumping a lot of oil now: and the Israelis are getting quite a bit of it...refer to 2 postings I made on the Iraq war about 10 days ago in the 'Iraq War is A Nightmare' thread...also, the Bush administration has plans to give it to certain Globalists & their bankers...I don't understand the morality
behind this discussion: these are sovereign assets of the Iraqi people, and you are talking about how to 'cut them up' and not
mentioning a thing about our gangster plundering & looting of their country...there is plenty oil in the US...the 'Globalists' are sitting on it, and letting the price go up & up.

It doesn't matter who our #1 and #2 importers are because A) I'd hardly call Mexico a friend these days and B) numbers 3 to 5 on that list are Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Venezuela.

Why can't people understand the concept of hoping for the best but expecting the worst? The Strategic Oil Reserve is the best we can do? We should be drilling for our own oil in order to hasten energy independence. I'm not saying we should burn more, or ignore cleaner technologies, but it's not like the cure for fossil fuels is around the corner, so until then, why be beholden to anyone? At the same time, the whole world is making a play for more oil, but we're sitting smug in neat-o idealistic visions of never needing oil again by Hillary's 2nd month in office. Come on now.

How many times has this bitten us in the ass and how many times will we continue to let it? Everyone hopes that Iran has built 3,000 centrifuges for power or peaceful "deterrence", yet no one wants to expect them to follow through with their promises of proliferation? Everyone hopes that it's just people who are down on their luck and looking to feed and educate their children that are crossing over from Mexico, but no one expects that this same back door will be exploited by our enemies? Everyone hoped that a storm like Katrina would graze by us, but no one expected it to be one of the worst disasters ever at 7' below sea level on the Gulf of Mexico? Everyone hoped the housing bubble would just shrink on it's own, but no one expected it to explode in our faces like every other economic cycle driven by greed has?

So we're going to sit here, and hope to not need oil in the future but not expect that when we need it bad enough, the whole world will hold us hostage for it? All for what? Environmental friendliness? A friendliness that apparently only WE see a need for? How many trees has China planted during their industrial blitz? What has Iran done in their blitz for nuclear "power" to cancel out their carbon footprint created while building their plants?

Could somebody please wake the f- up and realize that we're just about the only ones out there trying to make nice with everyone? I'm not saying let's start a war with everyone, but damn, let's watch our own asses for once, eh?

Listen, you need to read a book called the 'Energy Non-Crisis' by
Lindsey Williams, who was a chaplain on the original ARCO/Alaska
Prudhoe Bay project/pipeline...there is plenty of oil up there that has not even been touched...also, there are many viable energy
alternatives, including bio-diesel, but the 'big corporations' have no
interest in developing any of these alternate technologies...Henry
Kissinger made a statement a few years ago about $120 a barrel
oil being 'acceptable'...of course it's acceptable, just not to the average American consumer, or to industries that depend on petroleum products...but, to put this in perspective, you must determine who actually 'owns' the oil.

Go to: http://www.reformation.org/energy-non-crisis.html