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Unocal envisions the creation of a Central Asian Oil Pipeline Consortium. The pipeline would become an integral part of a regional oil pipeline system that will utilize and gather oil from existing pipeline infrastructure in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia.

The 1,040-mile-long oil pipeline would begin near the town of Chardzhou, in northern Turkmenistan, and extend southeasterly through Afghanistan to an export terminal that would be constructed on the Pakistan coast on the Arabian Sea. Only about 440 miles of the pipeline would be in Afghanistan.

This 42-inch-diameter pipeline will have a shipping capacity of one million barrels of oil per day. Estimated cost of the project - which is similar in scope to the Trans Alaska Pipeline - is about US$2.5 billion.

There is "considerable international and regional political interest" in this pipeline. A recent study for the World Bank states that the proposed pipeline from Central Asia across Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea would provide more favorable netbacks to oil producers through access to higher value markets than those currently being accessed through the traditional Baltic and Black Sea export routes.
.....Posted by BernieW,11/15

Bush v. Taliban: More on the Oil Angle

The truth: How hard it is to hide — and that’s bad news for the Bush administration.

America’s so-called “New War” in Afghanistan is fueled by public perception that our primary goal is to emerge victorious from a struggle to the death with terrorists who despise American freedoms, and the battle begins by destroying the Al-Queda terrorist network and its supporters. The secondary goal of the war is purportedly liberating the people of Afghanistan from their brutal Taliban rulers. End of story — you can keep waving that flag.

But that’s only 2/3 of the story, there’s yet another goal; one that has received sparse attention and mostly in the foreign or alternative press: Access to oil deposits in central Asia.

While Afghanistan itself is relatively oil-poor, its neighbors in the Caspian region are quite the opposite. To quote Dick Cheney in 1998, back when he was just a humble oil baron: “I can’t think of a time when we’ve had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian.” Given the unimpeachable integrity of the Bush administration, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that:

n Cheney used to serve on the Kazakhstan Oil Advisory Board with executives from Chevron and Texaco.

n The Federal Trade Commission announced that it had approved a merger between Chevron and Texaco only days before the bombs began to fall on Afghanistan. The resulting company, ChevronTexaco, will have a 45 percent interest in Kazakhstan’s huge Tengiz oil field near its border with Afghanistan (ExxonMobil has a 25 percent interest).

n Bush the Elder, also cozy with Texas oilmen, is a member of the $12 billion private equity firm the Carlyle Group, which invests heavily in defense contractors, according to journalist Nina Burleigh in an 10/11 article for tompaine.com. This worries Charles Lewis, who works for the Center for Public Integrity in Washington D.C. Lewis told Burleigh that “in a really peculiar way, George W. Bush could, some day, benefit financially from his own administration’s decisions, through his father’s investments. And that to me is a jaw-dropper.”

These “coincidences” are relevant to the current conflict in Afghanistan, and not just because of its proximity to an oil-rich region. Afghanistan occupies a critical strategic position in a grand plan for U.S. oil companies to control Caspian oil.

For years, U.S. oil interests have drooled over the prospects of building a $4 billion, 1,000-mile long pipeline across Afghanistan that would pump Caspian oil to Karachi, Pakistan, thereby allowing U.S. firms to sell it in the lucrative South Asian market. All that is needed is a ruling government in Afghanistan friendly to U.S. corporate interests, not necessarily the Afghan people; that is why U.S. firms — and recently even the U.S. government —were warming up to the Taliban right up until Sept. 11.

When Taliban troops rolled into Kabul in 1996, the California firm Unocal began wooing Taliban leaders until “long after the movement’s bloody brutality and ties to terrorism became the commonest knowledge” according to a story by Michael Daly in last Sunday’s New York Daily News. Daly goes on to describe in detail how Unocal flew Taliban Mullahs to the United States and entertained them lavishly. When Bill Clinton sent cruise missiles into Al-Queda training camps in 1998, Unocal suspended its plans for a trans-Afghanistan pipeline.

“Lest anyone think the company had taken a moral stand, a spokesman insisted that Unocal had not been influenced by protests over its dealings with the Taliban. The real reason was that oil had dropped to a paltry $12 a barrel,” explains Daly.

Clinton’s cruise missile adventure was a setback for Unocal but, as a Sept. 29 article in the Toronto Star elaborates, right-wingers in Washington still saw a lot of money to be made in a U.S./Taliban partnership. With the Bush administration’s arrival in Washington, there was talk of returning to the good old days between 1994 and 1997 when “American policy toward the Taliban was driven by fear of Iran and support of Unocal.”

These suggestions were bolstered by concern in right-wing policy circles that isolating the Taliban would force companies to transport Caspian oil through Russia, thereby increasing Russia’s influence in the world unnecessarily. When the Taliban banned opium production in 2000, the U.S. gave $43 million in aid to Afghanistan through the United Nations and independent aid agencies. U.S. Secretary of State Collin Powell even suggested publicly that the U.S. should reconsider its economic sanctions against Afghanistan.

There are two direct implications of this information to the events that are unfolding before our eyes on CNN. The first implication is that access to oil might be the reason why our government refuses to enter into good-faith negotiations with the Taliban for bin Laden — even if doing so will cause thousands or even millions of Afghans to starve in the harsh Central Asian winter that starts in two weeks (see my 10/17/01 column).

The second implication of the “oil angle” is that it contradicts the administration’s position that this war is a struggle between good and evil, indeed for America’s very existence. But, as Mark Danner observed in a 10/16/01 op-ed piece in The New York Times, “Unfortunately, as we know from the last quarter-century or more, political support thus purchased tends to be built on emotion and brittle and weak. In the days and hours following the next terrorist Spectacular, or the next, Americans may well begin to ask themselves why exactly they are being targeted and what exactly it is they are risking their lives for.”

Bush had better hope Danner is wrong. When this war turns into what some commentators fear will be “Vietnam with snow,” and dead 19-year olds start coming home en-masse, I doubt most Americans (or at least American students) will decide the war is an acceptable price to pay just so they can continue driving gas-guzzling SUVs.

....Nick Woomer,  nwoomer@umich.edu.
  http://www.themichigandaily.com/articles.php?uniqid=20011031e2

Recently I attended one of those legendary Washington dinner parties, attended by British cosmopolites and Americans in the know. A few courses in, people were gossiping about the Bush family's close and enduring friendship with the Saudi ambassador, Prince Bandar, dean of the diplomatic corps in Washington. By the end of the evening, everyone was talking about how the unfolding events were going to affect the flow of oil out of Central Asia.

I left wondering whether 6,000 Americans might prove to have died in New York for the royal family of Saud, or oil, or both. But I didn't have much more than insider dinner gossip to go on. I get my analysis from the standard all-American news outlets. And they've been too focused on a) anthrax and smallpox, or b) the intricacies of Muslim fanaticism, to throw any reporters at the murky ways in which international oil politics and its big players have a stake in what's unfolding. 

A quick Nexis search brought up a raft of interesting leads that would keep me busy for 10 years if the economics of this war was my beat. But only two articles in the American media since September 11 have tried to describe how Big Oil might benefit from a cleanup of terrorists and other anti-American elements in the Central Asia region. One was by James Ridgeway of the Village Voice. The other was by a Hearst writer based in Paris and it was picked up only in the San Francisco Chronicle. 

In other words, only the Left is connecting the dots of what the Russians have called "The Great Game" -- how oil underneath the 'stans' fits into the new world order. Here's just a small slice of what ought to provoke deeper research by American reporters with resources and talent. Start with father Bush. The former president and ex-CIA director is not unemployed these days. He's been globetrotting as a member of Washington's Carlyle Group, a $12 billion private equity firm which employs a motorcade of former ranking Republicans, including Frank Carlucci, Jim Baker and Richard Darman. George Bush senior and colleagues open doors overseas for The Carlyle Group's "access capitalists." 

Bush specializes in Asia and has been in and out of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait (countries that revere him thanks to the Gulf War) often on business since his presidency. Baker, the pin-striped midwife of 'Election 2000' was working his network in the 'stans' before the ink was dry on Clinton's first inaugural address. The Bin Laden family (presumably the friendly wing) is also invested in Carlyle. Carlyle's portfolio is heavy in defense and telecommunications firms, although it has other holdings including food and bottling companies. 

The Carlyle connection means that George Bush Senior is on the payroll from private interests that have defense business before the government, while his son is president. Hmmm. As Charles Lewis of the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity has put it, "in a really peculiar way, George W. Bush could, some day, benefit financially from his own administration's decisions, through his father's investments. And that to me is a jaw-dropper." 

Why can we assume that global businessmen like Bush Senior and Jim Baker care about who runs Afghanistan and NOT just because it's home base for lethal anti-Americans? Because it also happens to be situated in the middle of that perennial vital national interest -- a region with abundant oil. By 2050, Central Asia will account for more than 80 percent of our oil. On September 10, an industry publication, Oil and Gas Journal, reported that Central Asia represents one of the world's last great frontiers for geological survey and analysis, "offering opportunities for investment in the discovery, production, transportation, and refining of enormous quantities of oil and gas resources." 

It's assumed we need unimpeded access in the 'stans' for our geologists, construction workers and pipelines if we are going to realize the conservation-free, fossil-fueled future outlined recently by Vice President Cheney. A number of pipeline projects to carry Central Asia's resources west are already under way or have been proposed. They would go through Russia, through the Caucasus or via Turkey and Iran. Each route will be within easy reach of the Taliban's thugs and could be made much safer by an American vanquishment of Muslim terrorism. 

There's also lots of oil beneath the turf of our politically precarious newest best friend, Pakistan. "Massive untapped gas reserves are believed to be lying beneath Pakistan's remotest deserts, but they are being held hostage by armed tribal groups demanding a better deal from the central government," reported Agence France Presse just days before September 11. So many business deals, so much oil, all those big players with powerful connections to the Bush administration. It doesn't add up to a conspiracy theory. But it does mean there is a significant MONEY subtext that the American public ought to know about as "Operation Enduring Freedom" blasts new holes where pipelines might someday be buried.

 This is Nina Burleigh for TomPaine.com. 

....JH, 10/30

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Is an Oil Pipeline Behind the War in Afghanistan? by Bill Sardi

[Title 17 U.S.C. section 107]

Testimony before the US Congress is circulating on the internet. It pertains to a proposed oil pipeline through Central Asia that is applicable to the current war in Afghanistan.

On February 12, 1998, John J. Maresca, vice president, international relations for UNOCAL oil company, testified before the US House of Representatives, Committee on International Relations. Maresca provided information to Congress on Central Asia oil and gas reserves and how they might shape US foreign policy. UNOCAL's problem? As Maresca said: "How to get the region's vast energy resources to the markets." The oil reserves are in areas north of Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia. Routes for a pipeline were proposed that would transport oil on a 42-inch pipe southward thru Afghanistan for 1040 miles to the Pakistan coast. Such a pipeline would cost about $2.5 billion and carry about 1 million barrels of oil per day.

Maresca told Congress then that: "It's not going to be built until there is a single Afghan government. That's the simple answer."

Dana Rohrbacher, California congressman, then identified the Taliban as the ruling controllers among various factions in Afghanistan and characterized them as "opium producers."

Then Rorhbacher asked Maresca: "There is a Saudi terrorist who is infamous for financing terrorism around the world. Is he in the Taliban area or is he up there with the northern people?"

Maresca answered: "If it is the person I am thinking of, he is there in the Taliban area." This testimony obviously alluded to Osama bin Laden.

Then Rorhbacher asked: "... in the northern area as compared to the place where the Taliban are in control, would you say that one has a better human rights record toward women than the other?"

Maresca responded by saying: "With respect to women, yes. But I don't think either faction here has a very clean human rights record, to tell you the truth."

So women's rights were introduced into Congressional testimony by Congressman Rohrbacher as the wedge for UNOCAL to build its pipeline through Afghanistan. Three years later CNN would be airing its acclaimed TV documentary "Under The Veil," which displayed the oppressive conditions that women endure in Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban (a propaganda film for the oil pipeline?).

Rohrbacher then went on to say that a democratic election should take place in Afghanistan and "if the Taliban are not willing to make that kind of commitment, I would be very hesitant to move foreward on a $2.5 billion investment because without that commitment, I don't think there is going to be any tranquility in that land."

Beginning in 1998 UNOCAL was chastized, particularly by women's rights groups, for discussions with the Taliban, and headed in retreat as a worldwide effort mounted to come to the defense of the Afghani women. This forced UNOCAL to withdraw from its talks with the Taliban and dissolve its multinational partnership in that region. In 1999 Alexander's Gas & Oil Connections newsletter said: "UNOCAL company officials said late last year (1998) they were abandoning the project because of the need to cut costs in the Caspian region and because of the repeated failure of efforts to resolve the long civil conflict in Afghanistan." [Volume 4, issue #20 - Monday, November 22, 1999]

Three days following the attack on the World Trade Centers in New York City, UNOCAL issued a statement reconfirming it had withdrawn from its project in Afghanistan, long before recent events. [www.unocal.com September 14, 2001 statement]

UNOCAL was not the only party positioning themselves to tap into oil and gas reserves in central Asia. UNOCAL was primary member of a multinational consortium called CentGas (Central Asia Gas) along with Delta Oil Company Limited (Saudi Arabia), the Government of Turkmenistan, Indonesia Petroleum, LTD. (INPEX) (Japan), ITOCHU Oil Exploration Co., Ltd. (Japan), Hyundai Engineering & Construction Co., Ltd. (Korea), the Crescent Group (Pakistan) and RAO Gazprom (Russia).

Just because CentGas had dissolved does not mean that the involved parties have totally abandoned their interest in building an oil pipeline out of Central Asia. There is also talk of another pipeline thru Iran. India and Pakistan are bidding to be the pipeline terminal ocean port since they would obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in fees.

So, in 1998 Osama bin Laden was identified as the villain behind the Taliban, Afghanistani women the victims of an oppressive Taliban regime, and the stage was set for a future stabilization effort (i.e. a war). Was all this a cover story for a future oil pipeline?

In November 2000, Bruce Hoffman, director of the Rand Institute office in Washington DC, indicated that the next US President would have to face up to the growing threat is Islamic terrorism. Hoffman: "The next administration must turn its immediate attention to knitting together the full range of US counterterrorist capabilities into a cohesive plan." [Los Angeles Times, November 12, 2000]

All that was needed was a triggering event.

.....BernieW, 10/16

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Bush Sr. Could Profit From War

Larry Klayman likes suing the United States government. Over the last seven years as chairman and general counsel of Judicial Watch, a public interest law firm in Washington, he has filed over 150 lawsuits against the feds, including more than 80 against former president Bill Clinton himself. Called the Ralph Nader of the right, Klayman has litigation habits considered by some Beltway insiders as wildly ambitious. Others think he's just plain crazy.