**** China's recent converting of US paper into real assets:
6Sept09 China National Petroleum Corporation has struck oil at the Ahdab field in Wasit Province, southeast of Baghdad. … All oil revenues go directly to the government in Baghdad and are the foundation of the national budget. … The Iraqi government has so far rejected the locals’ demands,… “No one would have dared to ask for such a thing during Saddam’s regime; if he did, he would definitely be executed,” said Ghassan Ali, a 43-year-old farmer who lives near the oil field.
The basis of the complaints here is that, aside from the hiring of a few hundred residents as laborers and security guards at salaries of less than $600 a month, the Ahdab field — a roughly
$3 billion development project — has provided no local benefit. China National Petroleum says it needs relatively few workers because it is still in the exploration phase of its
23-year project at the Ahdab field. Oil production is not scheduled to begin for two and a half years.
From:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/world/middleeast/06iraqoil.html?hpw
Note China also has been granted oil rights in the NE of Iraq (Kurdistan part)
5Sept09 100USD million (foot in Qatar’s door) Qatar Petroleum (QP) and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) have signed an exploration and production sharing agreement …The
25-year agreement will start-off with a five-year exploration program consisting of technical studies, 2D and 3D seismic acquisition, processing, reprocessing and interpretation and drilling of exploration wells. Block BC, which covers
5,649 square kilometers offshore acreage, is located off Qatar’s east coast. The
first agreement by Qatar dedicated to explore and produce hydrocarbon from the deep pre-Khuff reservoirs. From the 1:55AM link at:
http://thenumbers.marketplace.org/about/?Page=CHANNELINFO&ChannelID=5270
18Aug09/~41USD Billion (from Singapore Straight Times, SST): ExxonMobil Corp had inked a deal to sell liquefied natural gas from its share of an LNG project in Australia to PetroChina in a deal worth about A$50 billion (S$59 billion). … The agreement is Australia's largest ever trade deal with China, the fastest-growing major economy in the world. Two-way trade last year was worth US$53 billion. SST quoted at:
http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cach...nd+china+$15+billion&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
{The project, located near Barrow Island 30 miles off Austrailia’s north-west coast, is expected to produce 40 trillion cubic feet of gas during the 20 years of the contract. Australia is going to process and ship some 15 million metric tons of LNG fuel each year. Development of the project is expected to create 6,000 jobs initially, with another 3,000 to follow.}
7Sept09“Japan Steel Works is spending 80 billion yen ($864 million) at its Muroran plant in the country’s northern island of Hokkaido by March 2012 to increase capacity to make parts for 12 nuclear reactors a year, compared with 5.5 units now, the president said. … Japan Steel Works Ltd. …
more than doubled its forecast for China’s nuclear plant construction because of stimulus spending and environmental pressures.
{China} may build about 22 reactors in the five years ending 2010 and 132 units thereafter, compared with a company estimate last year for a total 60 reactors, President Ikuo Sato said in an interview”
From:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a2lUkzmYNGWI
This is also a way to get real energy assets, and reduce pollution, for dropping value dollars. (
154 nuclear power plants ain't cheap.) Most of world's power generating wind mills and electric cars are also now being sold in China. China is world's largest producer of solar cells and now building solar cell power staions too. (In part because export demand has fallen.) China is serious about getting pollution problems under control but growing as fast as it is, it will be a decade or so before they turn the corner on the problem.
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**** Note this map also shows why Saddam invaded Kuwait. Kuwait was originally, (I.e. in first British division of the Ottoman empire), a part of Iraq and Iraq had about 50 to 100 times more coast line on the Gulf. At that time Kuwait was not of much interest to anyone, except as some desert one tried to get thru as quickly as possible. (Its oil not known). When oil was discovered there and Iraqi government was getting more difficult to control, The Brits re-defined the borders of Iraq to make Kuwait a separate nation, not just a worthless state within Iraq.
The greatly reduced coast of the newly defined Iraq could be controlled by a single British gun ship. Iraq was too weak to do anything but make international protests, until Saddam ceased power. In some sense (a very limited one) Saddam was trying to do what Abraham Lincoln did - re-unify the country. (He of course want the oil as well as his original coast line back.)
Iraq, of course, was no match for GHB's invasion force, but GWB's father wisely stopped without going to Baghdad. The Iraq/Iran war was also largely due to Iraq's need for more coast line, if only the economics are considered. During that war, Saddam was the US's hero -punishing the Iranians who held US citizens for nearly a year at end of Jimmy Carter's term as POTUS. Then US spy satellites gave Saddam the locations of Iranian troop contrations in almost real time so he could hit them with posion gas strikes.
When you get down to the modern truth of the region, if it is not about religion, then it is about oil.
