PUMP DREAMS
by JOHN CASSIDY
Is energy independence an impossible goal?
Issue of 2004-10-11
Posted 2004-10-04
The decision to invade Iraq represented one way to deal with the oil-dependency dilemma: direct American intervention. President Bush, a former Texas wildcatter, and Vice-President Cheney, the former chief executive of Halliburton, the world’s biggest oil-services company, both have an acute understanding of energy issues. In 1999, when Cheney was still at Halliburton, he gave a speech at London’s Institute of Petroleum in which he pointed out that by 2010 the world would probably need another fifty million barrels of oil a day. “So where is the oil going to come from?” Cheney asked. “While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East, with two-thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies.”
As Vice-President, Cheney was put in charge of the National Energy Policy Development Group, which, in its May, 2001, report, pointed out that the Persian Gulf region would “remain vital to U.S. interests.” The Bush Administration hadn’t publicly raised the possibility of invading Iraq, but in August, 2002, seven months before the war started, Cheney warned that Saddam would be able to seize control of the world’s economic lifeline if he acquired weapons of mass destruction: “Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror, and seated atop ten per cent of the world’s oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world’s energy supplies, directly threaten America’s friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail.”
rest of the article:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?041011fa_fact
by JOHN CASSIDY
Is energy independence an impossible goal?
Issue of 2004-10-11
Posted 2004-10-04
The decision to invade Iraq represented one way to deal with the oil-dependency dilemma: direct American intervention. President Bush, a former Texas wildcatter, and Vice-President Cheney, the former chief executive of Halliburton, the world’s biggest oil-services company, both have an acute understanding of energy issues. In 1999, when Cheney was still at Halliburton, he gave a speech at London’s Institute of Petroleum in which he pointed out that by 2010 the world would probably need another fifty million barrels of oil a day. “So where is the oil going to come from?” Cheney asked. “While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East, with two-thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies.”
As Vice-President, Cheney was put in charge of the National Energy Policy Development Group, which, in its May, 2001, report, pointed out that the Persian Gulf region would “remain vital to U.S. interests.” The Bush Administration hadn’t publicly raised the possibility of invading Iraq, but in August, 2002, seven months before the war started, Cheney warned that Saddam would be able to seize control of the world’s economic lifeline if he acquired weapons of mass destruction: “Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror, and seated atop ten per cent of the world’s oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world’s energy supplies, directly threaten America’s friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail.”
rest of the article:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?041011fa_fact