Nightline tonight: Cheney's Halliburton Corp.

Title: Message

Cheney and Bush's Halliburton Oil Company will be discussed on Nightline tonight.  You might recall that Scowcroft also held stock in the company as he was involved in BNL and formerly employed in Kissinger Associates, per my article a few weeks ago.

TONIGHT'S SUBJECT: (with apologies to the Beverly Hillbillies) It's all about oil… black gold… Texas tea.  As we talk about war with Iraq, the question of oil looms over it all. What will war do to prices? And perhaps most important, who will control the Iraqi oil fields after a war?

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Think back to the Gulf War, and the image that probably comes to mind first is the burning oil fields in Kuwait. It was an amazing sight. There was a huge black cloud over the fields, and there was so much smoke in the air that the rain came down black. And when you got close to the fires, it was incredibly hot. Thinking back to that time, in the weeks and months prior to the war, there were a number of reasons given for the necessity of going to war. At one point, it was all about jobs. It was also about principle, not letting an invasion stand. But it was also all about oil. Saddam could not be allowed to control both his own, and Kuwait's oil reserves. That would just give him too much power.

Now, a decade later, the U.S. is one of Iraq's best customers. Iraqi oil, sold under UN supervision, is a key part of the world market. It's also smuggled out overland to Turkey and sold at a huge discount to Jordan. If there is a war, there are great fears that Saddam may try to attack the oil fields in neighboring countries, or somehow sabotage his own facilities. But after a war, the U.S. would find itself in control of Iraq's oil industry. The Iraqi opposition, which assumes that it will end up in charge, already has an Oil Minister. The State Dept. has an oil working group. Now there are a number of foreign companies already in there, and others that want to be in there. The British, French, Russians, and Chinese all have oil interests in Iraq, or their own oil production would be affected by any major change in Iraq's production. If we're in charge, who gets the oil? Would old contracts be honored? And if we have greater access to Iraqi oil, how will that affect our relationship with the Saudis for instance?

Dick Cheney's Halliburton Co. had interests in Iraqi oil production after the war. Would American oil companies get favorable treatment from their former colleagues who now run the White House? Increasing Iraqi production would require millions of dollars of investment to bring the fields back up to full production. But what would happen to oil prices? While some may have dreams of cheap gas and even bigger SUV's, a real drop in oil prices would also affect domestic oil production.

There are lots of questions here, and tonight Deb Amos will lay out some of the history, and also explore what experts expect to happen if and when there is a war, and then what happens afterwards. There has been  lots of talk about weapons of mass destruction and connections to terrorism and regime change, but there hasn't been a lot of talk about oil. We thought it was time to bring it up.

Wednesday, October 2, 2002

Leroy Sievers and the Nightline Staff
Nightline Offices
Washington, D.C.

Elson Boles
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Sociology
Saginaw Valley State University
University Center
Saginaw MI, 48710