Re: David Harvey: It is about oil

Everytime there is a huge change in the price of oil,
the world goes wild and the results are quite often
violent. This time around Iraq got invaded, but look
at the turmoil in Venezuela and Nigeria and Indonesia
as well. In the early 90s when oil was cheap,Iraq
invaded Kuwait and the US invaded Iraq. 

Even if worldwide oil production has reached a peak
and we could verify this, we can not expect capital to
somehow manage this decline and scarcity with anything
other than pricing power and profits in mind.

However, I maintain that in the 90s the problem was
exactly the opposite. There was too much oil on the
world markets for many oil interests to enjoy profits,
so many of these interests converged around policies
to make oil more expensive. Even Greenspan thought
this was a good idea because he felt cheap oil was
contributing to deflation.

The single best expensive oil policy they could come
up with was to deal with the 'terrorist' threat and
WMD held by the evil Baathists in Iraq. It really
worked, too. Iraqi oil production is off the market
(though this hurts the thieves at the UN and its
food-for-oil program). Just look at how Halliburton
imports oil into Iraq and sells it to the US
occupation for huge profits. Now that is how capital
really works!

And oil is up to 30 dollars a barrel and for the most
part holding at that level. When the price of oil goes
up, Bush says he wants to expand the US strategic
reserves still further. 

Meanwhile, the global oil companies, many of them
burned by billion dollar gambles in Enron and Dynegy,
are making lots of money off their old oil businesses.
And the price we pay at the pump finances future
exploitation of Caspian and Iraqi oil and gas. There's
no rush for that, though, since there is far too much
money to be made getting there. 

C. Jannuzi
Fukui, Japan  

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