[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index
][Thread Index
]
Unocal, US, oil, Afghanistan and t
- Subject: Unocal, US, oil, Afghanistan and t
- From: cd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 12:01:00
Subject: Unocal, US, oil, Afghanistan and the Caucasus..
The following story gives insight into Unocal, current world
developments by Unocal and their friends. You may wish to check out the
press releases of TOTAL, <http://www.total.com>, and see their projects
in the region.It is clear that TOTAL is using the Yadana pipeline to
increase their foothold in the region, already well-planted in
Indonesia, and now with extensive exploration throughout asia south
pacific.
Dawn Star
Worldwide TOTAL Boycott
http://www-uvi-eunet.fr/asia/euro-burma/total/
> Dear Lists,
> Sending two extremely interesting articles on Afghanistan and the Caucasus..
>
> #13
> The Philadelphia Inquirer
> 13 August 1997
> [for personal use only]
> The perils may be many, but interest in the Caucasus and Central Asia is
> high.
> Oilmen and U.S. hope dollars and diplomacy will yield a big payoff
> By Peter Slevin
> INQUIRER WASHINGTON BUREAU
>
> WASHINGTON -- Afghanistan, at war with itself, is not exactly a hospitable
> place these days. Its rugged, mountainous turf is plagued by kidnapping,
> corruption, and nearly 10 million land mines. Travel by Americans, the
> State Department warns, is ill-advised.
> Marty Miller, a can-do Texas oilman, is just back from there. He
> chartered a plane into bomb-battered Mazar-e Sharif and Kandahar to pitch a
> pipeline deal worth billions to rival Afghan chieftains.
> The Unocal executive is willing to place a large bet on long odds. He
> has calculated that the smell of money will inspire warring Afghan leaders
> to build a working government in a land that has known only war for nearly
> 20 years.
> ``It's not for the faint of heart. A lot of our associates in the
> industry still don't think we're playing with a full deck,'' Miller
> admitted from Sugar Land, Texas. ``Certainly the political risk is very
> high, but oil companies are used to dealing with risk and large sums of
> money.''
> Large sums, indeed. Lured by analysts' estimates that there is more oil
> under the Caspian Sea than there is in Kuwait -- with a potential value of
> $4 trillion -- oil companies around the world are racing to invest in the
> surrounding nations of the Caucasus and Central Asia. At last count, U.S.
> companies had committed $65 billion to just Kazakstan and Azerbaijan.
> And U.S. policymakers are newly alert to the possibilities and the
> perils of the region.
> In search of energy security far from Middle Eastern intrigues,
> President Clinton and Vice President Gore have urged Caucasus and Central
> Asian leaders to back American projects. Three Caspian region presidents
> have visited the White House this summer, and U.S. senators and
> representatives are adding the area to their itineraries.
> The administration's goals for the nations in this suddenly lucrative
> region are independence, stability and democracy, and a level playing field
> for American companies. Failure would carry a high price.
> ``If economic and political reform in the countries of the Caucasus and
> Central Asia does not succeed . . . the region could become a breeding
> ground of terrorism, a hotbed of religious and political extremism, and a
> battleground for outright war,'' Strobe Talbott, deputy secretary of state,
> warned July 21 in a speech that defined U.S. policy.
> Among the high-powered consultants working with the oil companies are
> former Secretary of State James Baker and former national security advisers
> Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft.
> Baker is the honorary chairman of the United States-Kazakstan Council, a
> business promotion organization. The five honorary advisers to the
> U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce are Baker, Brzezinski, former Secretary
> of State Henry Kissinger, former Defense Secretary Richard Cheney and
> former White House chief of staff John Sununu.
> ``If these countries didn't have the oil resources to tap into, they'd
> be worthless, and we wouldn't be paying much attention,'' said Robert Ebel
> of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonprofit
> public-policy research organization in Washington and author of a new book
> on the subject. ``Oil is a very powerful magnet. It attracts entrepreneurs,
> and it attracts nations.''
> The region is made up largely of former Soviet republics and client
> states, many of them bitter rivals or riven with internal dissension.
> Getting the oil out will mean negotiating contracts in landlocked countries
> rife with fiefs and feuds, and only the most haphazard legal systems.
> ``We used to joke that the good news and the bad news was that there was
> no law yet,'' Pennzoil executive Frank Verrasto said. ``There's huge
> resource potential, but the real trick is going to be to get the oil to
> market.''
> Oil executives and policymakers are counting on a potent combination of
> dollars and diplomacy to make the region safe for oil. By strengthening the
> countries born of the collapse of the Soviet empire, the thinking goes, the
> United States will project influence over a strategic region while limiting
> the reach of Russia and Iran.
> ``A political vacuum would only give Iran the opportunity to fill it,''
> Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat told the Senate Foreign Relations
> Committee last month. ``As long as the Caucasus and Central Asia remain
> vulnerable to internal instability and ethnic conflict, the danger of
> external dominance exists, compounded by the presence of a militant
> fundamentalist regime in Iran intent on destabilizing its neighbors.''
> To that end, the Clinton administration this year is seeking a 34
> percent increase to $900 million in foreign aid to the eight countries in
> the region that were once part of the Soviet Union. Talbott called it a
> ``prudent investment in our nation's future.'' Since 1992, the United
> States has delivered $2.2 billion in assistance to the eight (Azerbaijan,
> Armenia, Georgia, Kazakstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and
> Kyrgyzstan).
> Clinton has endorsed dual pipelines for the first streams of oil, a
> tactic to spread wealth and preserve options for the oil producers and
> their buyers.
> Among the projects and the pipe dreams, the most outlandish may be the
> idea of shipping oil and gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan.
> The civil war continues. The country is a wreck, and skepticism abounds,
> but Miller and his Unocal colleagues and their Saudi Arabian partners persist.
> ``These guys are used to moving very fast,'' Washington academic S.
> Frederick Starr said of the energy companies. ``They're used to rolling the
> dice.''
>
> *******
>
> #14
> Zavtra Claims U.S. Wants International Forces in Caucasus
>
> Zavtra, No. 31
> August 1997
> [translation for personal use only]
> Item by the "Den Security Services Agents' Reports" column,
> under the "Bulletin Board" rubric
>
> Information is coming in from Washington confirming that the biggest
> U.S. oil magnates have given Aliyev (who was in the United States on an
> official visit) a guarantee that Clinton would soon forcefully deliver
> "instructions" about bringing international troops into the conflict areas
> in the Caucasus instead of the Russian Armed Forces. The aim is to
> encircle Karabakh, isolating it from Armenia, and to deploy subunits in
> Abkhazia and South Ossetia -- and subsequently in the Ossetia-Chechnya
> zone. Similar actions were also being planned at secret talks with
> Shevardnadze, who will soon put forward a number of "significant diplomatic
> initiatives." During closed meetings, it was suggested that officials from
> Azerbaijan's security services "plan and carry out, in collaboration with
> their Caucasian ally [Georgia], some sort of galvanizing actions that would
> trigger a new outburst, attesting to the inability of the Russian
> Federation to control the sit