Monday, April 18, 2011

It is OIL, OIL, OIL !!! The Fuel for WWW III

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China & US: Game on Oil in Libya

This topic has been sticky by szh at 2011-4-18 12:24.

China & US: Game on Oil in Libya




'US to recoup Libya oil from China'

Libyan ruler Muammar Qaddafi has made two mistakes: It blocked the US Africa Command by not joining it and let China into Libya with major energy investments instead, says a former US official.


Press TV has interviewed Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former assistant secretary of US Treasury from Panama City, who gives his insight on the revolution in Libya and why US President Barack Obama needs to overthrow Qaddafi when no other US presidents did.


Press TV: Russia has criticized NATO for going far beyond its UN mandate. In other news a joint Op Ed is going to be written by Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy who have said that “leaving Qaddafi in power would be an unconscionable betrayal to the Libyan people”.


We do know that the mandate does not call for regime change; the Obama administration has been saying they are not in there for regime change; but things seem a little different now don't they?


Roberts: Yes they do. First of all, notice that the protests in Libya are different from the ones in Egypt or Yemen or Bahrain or Tunisia and the difference is that this is an armed rebellion.


There are more differences: another is that these protests originated in the eastern part of Libya where the oil is - they did not originate in the capital cities. And we have heard from the beginning, credible reports that the CIA is involved in the protests and there have been a large number of press reports that the CIA has sent back to Libya its Libyan asset to head up the Libyan rebellion.


In my opinion, what this is about is to eliminate China from the Mediterranean. China has extensive energy investments and construction investments in Libya. They are looking to Africa as a future energy source.


The US is countering this by organizing the United States African Command (USAC), which Qaddafi refused to join. So that's the second reason for the Americans to want Qaddafi out.


And the third reason is that Libya controls part of the Mediterranean coast and it's not in American hands.


Press TV: Who are the revolutionaries. The US say they don't know who they're dealing with, but considering the CIA is on the ground in contact with revolutionaries - Who are the people under whom Libya will function in any post-Qaddafi era?


Roberts: Whether or not Libya functions under revolutionaries depends if the CIA wins - we don't know that yet. As you said earlier, the UN resolution puts constraints on what the European and American forces can achieve in Libya. They can have a no fly zone, but they are not supposed to be in there fighting together with the rebels.


But of course the CIA is. So we do have these violations of the UN resolution. If NATO, which is now the cover for the world community, succeeds in overthrowing Qaddafi the next target will be Syria because Syria has already been demonized.


Why are they targeting Syria? - Because the Russians have a very large naval base in Syria. And it gives the Russian navy a presence in the Mediterranean; the US and NATO do not want that. If there is success in overthrowing Qaddafi, Syria is next.


Already, they are blaming Iran for Syria and Libya. Iran is a major target because it is an independent state that is not a puppet of the Western colonialists.


Press TV: With regards to the expansionist agenda of the West, when the UN mandate on Libya was debated in the UN Security Council, Russia did not veto it. Surely Russia must see this expansionist policy of the US, France and Britain.


Roberts: Yes they must see that; and the same for China. It's a much greater threat to China because it has 50 major investment projects in eastern Libya. So the question is why did Russia and China abstain rather than veto and block? We don't know the answer.


Possibly the countries are thinking let the Americans get further over extended or they may not have wanted to confront them with a military or diplomatic position and have an onslaught of Western propaganda against them. We don't know the reasons, but we know they did abstain because they did not agree with the policy and they continue to criticize it.


Press TV: A sizeable portion of Qaddafi's assets have been frozen in the US as well as some other countries. We also know that the Libyan revolutionaries have set up a central bank and that they have started limited production of oil and they are dealing with American and other Western firms. It begs the question that we've never seen something like this happen in the middle of a revolution. Don't you find that bizarre?


Roberts: Yes it's very bizarre and very suggestive. It brings back the fact of all the reports that the CIA is the originator of this so-called revolt and protest and is fomenting it and controlling it in a way that excludes China from its own Libyan oil investments.


In my opinion, what is going on is comparable to what the US and Britain did to Japan in the 1930s. When they cut Japan off from oil, from rubber, from minerals like ore; that was the origin of World War II in the pacific. And now the Americans and the British are doing the same thing to China.


The difference is that China has nuclear weapons and it also has a stronger economy than do the Americans. And so the Americans are taking a very high risk not only with themselves, but with the rest of the world. The entire world is now at stake on American over-reach; American huberus - the drive for American hegemony over the world is driving the rest of the world into a World War.


Press TV: In the context of America's expansionist policies, how far do you think the US will stretch beyond the UN mandate? Are we going to see boots on the ground?


Roberts: Most likely - unless they can find some way of defeating Qaddafi without that. Ever since we've had Bill Clinton, George W Bush and now Obama, what we've learned is law means nothing to the executive branch in the US. They don't obey our own laws; they don't obey international law; they violate all the civil liberties and buried the principal of habeas corpus - no crime without intent; of the ability for a defendant to be legally represented.


They don't pay any attention to law so they're not going to pay any attention to the UN. The UN is an American puppet organization and they will use it as a cover. So yes if they cannot run Qaddafi out they will put troops on the ground - that's why we have the French and the British involved. We're using the French elsewhere in Africa also; we use the British in Afghanistan - they're puppets.


These countries are not independent. Sarkozy doesn't report to the French people - he reports to Washington. The British PM doesn't report to the English people he reports to Washington. These are puppet rulers of an empire; they have nothing to do with their own people and we put them in office.


Press TV: So these other countries would welcome having NATO troops on the ground?


Roberts: Of course. They are in the CIAs pocket. It's a CIA operation, not a legitimate protest of the Libyan people. It's an armed rebellion that has no support in the capital city. It's taking place in the east where the oil is and is directed at China.


Press TV: Where do you see the situation headed? There seems to be a rift between NATO countries with Britain and France wanting to increase the momentum of these air strikes, but the US saying no, there is no need.


Roberts: The rift is not real. The rift is just part of the cover, just part of the propaganda. Qaddafi has been ruling for 40 years - he goes back to Gamal Abdel Nasser (before Anwar Sadat) who wanted to give independence to Egypt.
He (Qaddafi) was never before called a brutal dictator that has to be removed. No other president has ever said Qaddafi has to go. Not even Ronald Reagan who actually bombed Qaddafi's compound and tried to kill him. But all of a sudden he has to go. Why?


Because he's blocking the US African Command, he controls part of the Mediterranean and he has let China in to find its energy needs for the future. We (the US) are trying to cripple our main rival, China by denying it energy. That's what this is really about; a reaction by the US.


If the US was concerned about humanitarianism, it wouldn't be killing all these people in Afghanistan and Pakistan with their drones and military strikes. Almost always it's civilians that are killed. And the US is reluctant to issue apologies about any of it. They say we thought we were killing Taliban or some other made-up enemy.


Press TV: Who will benefit from all of this other than the US? The other countries that comply with US wishes- What do they stand to gain from this?


Roberts: We are only talking about NATO countries, the American puppet states. Britain, France, Italy, Germany, all belong to the American empire. We've had troops stationed in Germany since 1945. You're talking about 66 years of American occupation of Germany. The Americans have military bases in Italy - how is that an independent country? France was somewhat independent until we put Sarkozy in power. So they all do what they're told.


America wants to rule Russia, China, Iran, and Africa, all of South America. They want hegemony over the world. That's what the word hegemony means. And they will pursue it at all costs.



China's Interests in Gaddafi


What a sight. Chinese president Hu Jintao pulling a vintage John Lennon performance in Beijing and telling self-styled Arab liberator and French neo-Napoleonic president Nicolas Sarkozy to "give peace a chance" in Libya.


The top four BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) all abstained at the voting of UN Security Council Resolution 1973. In his subtle address to Sarkozy, Hu also implied his displeasure that the African Union, which was overwhelmingly against a foreign intervention in Libya, had their proposals totally sidelined by the West.


Only three days before UN Resolution 1973 was voted on, Gaddafi met with the ambassadors of BRICS members China, Russia and India, and told them, according to the JANA news agency: "We are ready to bring Chinese and Indian companies to replace Western ones." That may go a long way to explain the BRICS abstentions.


It would be tempting to see the Beijing leadership merrily watching Washington walk into another open-ended quagmire in a Muslim nation – part of a Chinese grand strategy of letting the US be distracted in peripheral Muslim countries in the arc from northern Africa to Central Asia.


Well, it is slightly more complicated than that.


Shopping for suppliers


China has 50 large-scale projects in Libya, but still invests less than in Angola and Zambia. From a Libyan point of view, China is a major Gaddafi financial partner – the third-largest buyer of Libyan oil behind Italy and France, with the added bonus of following its world-famous "non-interventionism" policy.


Yet in energy terms, China's top African oil suppliers are Angola, Sudan and Nigeria – all ahead of Libya.


Around 80 per cent of Libya's oil reserves, of roughly 44 billion barrels, are in the Sirte basin – spread out between Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, a great deal of it under on and off rebel control.


Some 70 per cent of Libya's GDP is connected to oil. Beijing would hate to contemplate a balkanisation of Libya along Korea's lines – an impoverished, oil-less, Gaddafi-ruled west/North Korea opposed to an affluent, oil-rich, Western-aligned Cyrenaica/South Korea.


Beijing never really worried about a Western embargo on Libyan oil. Who would dare strike a tanker navigating under the Chinese flag?


What Beijing wanted was for the rebels to collapse, with Gaddafi back in charge of the whole country and no "regime change".


Now with a Libyan stalemate as the most possible scenario, Beijing is factoring its influence in the price of oil. Oil consumption in China is about 4 per cent of GDP. Each $10 increase in the price of a barrel dangerously increases that proportion by 0.4 per cent.


Chinese reaction to the complex Sunni/Shia tumult in Bahrain has been silence. Why? That may be a good question for Saudi foreign minister Saud bin Faisal bin Abdul-Aziz, who repositioned the House of Saud post-Cold War to a preferential footing with China.


Saudi Arabia is China's top oil supplier (1.1 million barrels a day; the Middle East as a whole exports a total of 2.9 million); that limits Beijing's leverage to really influence the Arab world.


Africa is absolutely crucial for China's energy strategy. Let's take a look at China's top oil suppliers: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Angola, Russia, Oman and Sudan.


At the strait of Hormuz – through which transits Saudi, Iranian and Omani oil – China is hostage of the local policeman, the US 5th Fleet, which also patrols the Bab el-Mandeb, the gateway to the Red Sea and the naval highway for Sudan's oil to reach the Indian Ocean.


Then there's the strait of Malacca, between Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, patrolled by the US 7th Fleet – the key chokepoint for oil navigating towards China.


China also has to worry about Iran, its number two supplier (of oil and also natural gas), under severe sanctions that have shrunk its energy production.


So it is no surprise Beijing has connected the dots between Libya being bombed and Bahrain and Yemen getting away with repression of pro-democracy protests. The 5th Fleet calls Bahrain home, and Aden, in Yemen, is the key to the Red Sea.


Whichever the latitude, Beijing finds the Pentagon's mighty machine interfering with most of its key sources of energy; half of China's oil imports in 2011 came from MENA (Middle East/ Northern Africa). The threat is graphic, as Beijing sees it.


Iran News/Al jazeera


As the foreign affairs and defense issues, the U.S. and China seem hardly to exactly agree with each others over the energy issue - so does the Libya's oil business.

The longer U.S. trapped in Libya, the weaker the veins it controls over the domestic anti-war calls, but ironically, it equally means more possibilities that U.S. to "recoup" Libya oil back from China.

So where exactly will U.S. decide to ahead ? And what kind of possible deals would be made between U.S. and China in the Game? This time, not the ideological vacuum only, but the OIL.
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Beijing really has that much stake out there?? can't believe it..
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True...remember the commercial code of keeping silent, it has reasons
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Bah! Angola! Africa is very different from the middle east, infrastructure is really poor, you will know when you get there. China don't have to intervene in their politics, "petroleo for infrastructure" is enough.
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interesting point! so your prediction about the next step? if by any chance could you please share it with us..
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Gracias! One day when infrastructure is almost there, the next step could be financial aids, educational or comercial, or just some arm deals done under the table if there is any "tradicional frendship" with the local lidership, if no, time for the Chinese manufacturers, flood'em with "made in China", from underwear to cellphone, globalization, you're welcome.
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Thursday, April 7, 2011

Protecting Trade Routes (from People's Daily)

When the land power overlooks the oceans






With the rapid decline of Europe navy strength and the cut of U.S. Navy forces, China is to shoulder the way to oceans. Beijing emerges a heated debate for the first time in history: Is China a land power or sea power?


Building a navy requires a particularly long lead time. The designing, financing and building of ships requires thinking in terms of at least two decades. Providing experienced commanders and trained crews takes longer.



People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has altered its inward-looking stance and is expanding strongly in parallel with China’s emergence as a world superpower. It is not necessarily a preparation to being an aggressor, but as a predictable ‘gearing up’ to defending its expanding trade routes, strategic raw material imports and export pipeline. It is now an active participator in the Combined Naval Task Force.


The Chinese Navy's expansion program began in the 1990s, as China's fleet began to venture away from China's coast and develop blue water (open ocean) capabilities. Now Chinese submarines encounter U.S. Navy task forces, and Chinese warships turn up in the Indian Ocean. China may launch its first aircraft carrier in 2011. It will take years to produce carrier pilots and crew comparable to those in the Navy, but acquiring the technology is a huge step.


What does China intend to do with its carrier? The rest of Asia, from India to Japan, wants to know. For example, Chinese maritime claims in the South China Sea conflict sharply with those of Vietnam and the Philippines. A carrier extends China's offensive reach in this contested sea zone.



The carrier is one piece of a complex puzzle that includes new surface ships, aircraft and missiles.
The DF-21D gives Chinese land forces a weapon that can sink a U.S. carrier at long range. This means U.S. naval forces supporting South Korea or Japan face higher risks as they approach the mainland, which U.S. analysts conclude is China's intention.


The Chinese economic miracle requires Middle Eastern energy and African minerals. The Indian Navy could quickly cut the supply chain, unless China has a navy capable of protecting it.


The naval budget also is crucial, and China appears to be growing its naval budget quickly. Budget isn't everything, as the country has to grow its naval/industrial complex to deliver. Take aircraft carriers, where they are building their construction capability - they purchased the uncompleted Varyag carrier from the Ukraine and have been refurbishing it for years. They now have several conventional and nuclear powered carriers in their plans, but it's likely to take at least another fifteen years before they are operational.




Defence electronics is a critical area too, but given China's aerial electronics current capability, then 'technology drag' is less likely to be an issue.


Which leads to another line of analysis: China does not seek a war, but it wants to guarantee its own maritime trade security. Hence, the increase in capabilities.