http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/featur ⦠71641.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/busin ⦠d=all&_r=0
http://www.economist.com/node/21556977
http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/19/opinion/i ⦠oil-juhasz
http://www.carbonweb.org/documents/crud ⦠_large.pdf
Yes really. From a narrowly selfish point of view, it didn't make sense to fight war for oil. Here's where economics kicks in. There is a world market for oil. There is no danger that a country that wants to keep the United States from getting oil can do so simply by restricting sales to the United States. The reason is that it will then want to sell its oil elsewhere. That means that someone who buys that newly freed-up oil will then want to buy less from his suppliers. Those suppliers then have oil to sell and Americans can buy that oil. It's a game of musical chairs in which the number of chairs equals the number of players. The game would be awfully boring, but in international trade, boring is good.
The only way a country's government can hurt the United States using the 'oil weapon' is to reduce its own production. But then, that country, unless it produces a huge amount of the world's supply, will hurt itself as well. And that country will hurt its oil-consuming allies and help its oil-producing enemies.
As recently as December 2012, Iraq provided the United States with approximately 14.3 million barrels of oil out of a total of about 298 million barrels imported, or 4.8 percent of our total imports. And as
this chart indicates, the US was importing the highest amount of oil from Iraq before they went to war to oust Saddam Hussein.
Furthermore, the United States fully supported the United Nationsâ oil embargo against Iraq, imposed when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990. They continued to support it even when it was revealed that the eventual softening of those sanctions, known as the oil for food program, revealed that Russia, France and a number of other nations were collaborating with Saddam Hussein to violate sanctions in return for billions of dollars of ill-gotten gains. Of the 52 countries named in a report compiled by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker detailing the scandal, only 28 even wanted the evidence, and the United States led the way in prosecuting those implicated.
In fact, it can be argued that the US didn't benefit that much from Iraq opening up; many other international bidders have
won contracts. Furthermore, the first postwar oil license awarded by the Iraqi government in 2008 was to the state-run China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), in the form of a $3.5 billion development contract for Iraqi oil field Al-Ahdab. In December 2009, in the second round of bids to develop Iraqâs vast untapped oil reserves (following a June auction allowing foreign companies the chance to increase production at existing fields), China and Russia emerged with the lionâs share of the contracts.
Furthermore, using simple math, one can overturn such arguments. The best survey of possible costs before the war, by William D Nordhaus, was that the simplest, quickest American victory would have cost $99 billion, with an upper limit of $1.9 trillion âif the US has a string of bad luck or misjudgments during or after the warâ.
On that basis, the cheapest war would have taken 8 years to pay for itself, assuming that the entire profits of the Iraqi oil industry could be confiscated by the Americans to pay for their invasion (about which international law might also have something to say). Rupert Murdoch was famously hopeful that the oil price would fall to $20 a barrel as result of the war, in which case Iraqi oil profits would take 30 years to pay for it. If one takes instead the actual cost of the war, it soaks up 250 years of oil profits, while Iraqâs oil reserves will be exhausted in about 100 years. Quite simply, there isn't enough oil in Iraq to justify the huge cost of invading it.
