this page last updated: 12 September 2017
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Myanmar is positioned between countries that have long eyed its resources, such as China and India. Since the 1990s, Chinese companies have exploited timber, rivers and minerals in Shan State in the North.
Secret cable and Dutch government official confirm that Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen is partly motivated by an ambitious US-backed pipeline fantasy.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia executed Shiite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr on Saturday. Hours later, Iranian protestors set fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran. On Sunday, the Saudi government, which considers itself the guardian of Sunni Islam, cut diplomatic ties with Iran, which is a Shiite Muslim theocracy.
It’s buried more than three kilometres underground, but it could be the key to finally ending the world’s deadliest conflict.
‘Shocking’ revelation finds $5.3tn subsidy estimate for 2015 is greater than the total health spending of all the world’s governments.
Whoever controls the price of oil can play god with the global economy — that’s why the US and Saudi Arabia are leading the way to smash OPEC and re-create a new global oil cartel.
Israel’s ambitions to conquer the Golan Heights and western hopes to topple Assad raise questions around the discovery of oil in the Golan.
The fundamental obstacle to the ‘peace package’ and Israel's interests in becoming a regional energy hegemony is the continued existence of Hamas in Gaza.
Jess Worth’s oil-sponsored stalker is just the tip of the surveillance iceberg.
The details are emerging of a new secret and quite stupid Saudi-US deal on Syria and the so-called IS. It involves oil and gas control of the entire region and the weakening of Russia and Iran by Saudi Arabian flooding the world market with cheap oil. Details were concluded in the September meeting by US Secretary of State John Kerry and the Saudi King. The unintended consequence will be to push Russia even faster to turn east to China and Eurasia.
Is it just my imagination or is there a global oil war underway pitting the United States and Saudi Arabia on one side against Russia and Iran on the other?
Massacres of civilians are being exploited for narrow geopolitical competition to control Mideast oil, gas pipelines.
Afghanistan said on Sunday it had discovered an oilfield with an estimated 1.8 billion barrels in the north of the war-ravaged country, where U.S. and other foreign forces are trying to tame a Taliban-led insurgency.
A U.S-backed pipeline would be an inviting target for the Taliban and al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan, and the planned project would run directly through Kandahar, the volatile region that Canada has promised to defend through 2011.
Afghanistan has informed Pakistan that it will clear all landmines from the proposed route of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline within two years, sources within the Pakistan Petroleum Ministry told Daily Times on Friday.
The International Energy Agency has predicted a supply crunch in the world's oil markets that could send prices soaring and place a severe dent in global growth.
Scientists challenge major review of global reserves and warn that supplies will start to run out in four years' time.
BP executives working for Lord Browne spent millions of pounds on champagne fuelled sex parties to help secure lucrative international oil contracts. The company also worked with MI6 to help bring about changes in foreign governments, according to an astonishing account of life inside the oil giant.
Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, the four partners of a proposed $3.3 billion pipeline, have vowed to accelerate work on the four-nation project to bring natural gas from Turkmenistan to India.
A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 — something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress.
As growing concerns about dwindling global reserves help maintain oil prices close to the $50 a barrel mark, a major supply route linking newly developed oil and gas fields in the Caspian Sea with western markets is due to be opened.
The world's oil reserves are running out much faster than industry and governments are admitting, a conference in Edinburgh has been told.
Speculation over the actual size of Saudi Arabia's oil reserves is reaching fever pitch as a major bank says the kingdom's — and the world's — biggest field, Gharwar, is in irreversible decline.
Four years ago, the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences described Azerbaijan as “the focal point of the next round in the Great Game of Nations, a dangerous, hot-headed place with a Klondike of wealth beneath it. It is Bosnia with oil.”
It is its citizens' need for oil that drives the US's crusade in the Middle East, Margo Kingston writes.
The oil industry has been gripped by scandal since Royal Dutch/Shell twice this year downgraded its proven oil reserves by 20 per cent, or nearly 4bn barrels. Shell may not be alone.
Just as certain as death and taxes is the knowledge that we shall one day be forced to learn to live without oil. Exactly when that day will dawn nobody knows, but people in middle age today can probably expect to be here for it.
“Civilization as we know it will come to an end sometime in this century unless we can find a way to live without fossil fuels.”
The US$2.9bn, 1,760km pipeline, known as the BTC, is intended to be the main conduit for Caspian Sea oil to western Europe, cutting Russian and Iranian influence in the energy-rich Caspian.
Oil and politics make an intoxicating cocktail addictive, but with deadly consequences. It has always been so.
OPEC is considering a move away from using the U.S. dollar — and to the euro — to set its price targets for crude oil, the highest-profile manifestation of the debilitating effect of depreciation on the greenback's standing as the currency of international commerce.
The United States considered using force to seize oilfields in the Middle East during an oil embargo by Arab states in 1973, according to British government documents just made public.
The United States seriously considered sending airborne troops to seize oilfields in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi during the 1973 Arab oil embargo, according to a top-secret British intelligence memorandum released yesterday.
The world is running out of oil — so why do politicians refuse to talk about it?
The government is helping the US to secure a guaranteed supply of oil from new sources in Africa and elsewhere, official documents obtained by the Guardian reveal.
A controversial scheme led by the oil giant BP to build a huge, strategically important pipeline is about to win crucial backing, according to a leaked document.
It is a story of empire-building, intrigue, espionage, double-dealing and arm-twisting that Rudyard Kipling would have been proud to write.
In November 2001 President Hugo Chavez-Frias of Venezuela passed fifty laws, one of which was the Hydro Carbon Law. These fifty laws were the catalyst for the launch of the covert/overt strategy to remove President Hugo Chavez-Frias from state power by any means necessary.
Russia is to start pricing its huge oil and gas exports in euros instead of dollars as part of a strategic shift to forge closer ties with the European Union.
World oil and gas supplies are heading for a “production crunch” sometime between 2010 and 2020 when they cannot meet supply, because global reserves are 80 per cent smaller than had been thought, new forecasts suggest.
Global warming will never bring a “doomsday scenario” a team of scientists says — because oil and gas are running out much faster than thought.
Conservative front group may have thanked White House for help in suing EPA.
Pipeline Politics, beginning 15 September, questions whether America's requirement for oil determines its foreign policy.
The Texan oil billionaire Jean Paul Getty was at the heart of a conspiracy to provide support to Hitler's Germany early in the Second World War, according to newly released intelligence documents.
A recently declassified CIA document casts new light on some of the most significant geopolitical events of the past quarter century. This document, an Intelligence Memorandum titled “The Impending Soviet Oil Crisis (ER 77-10147),” was issued in March 1977 by the Office of Economic Research and classified “Secret” until its public release in January 2001 in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. (1) Until now, the document has prompted little discussion.
President George W Bush is in Africa to launch HIV/Aids, development and anti-terrorism initiatives. But his visit has also highlighted the growing importance of oil imports for the United States.
Intelligence reports say that while the US was able to pull the wool over the international community and ally with Britain's Blair to bulldoze action against former Iran War ally Hussein, the situation with Venezuela is proving more difficult.
Washington's determination to find an alternative energy source to the Middle East is leading to a new oil rush in sub-Saharan Africa which threatens to launch a fresh cycle of conflict, corruption and environmental degradation in the region, campaigners warn today.
Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of Kazakhstan, has denied involvement in alleged bribery by a former trusted aide and blames a storm about the allegations in the US on “false charges” by a former prime minister.
The euro is finally taking its place alongside the US dollar as a new global reserve currency. This has been further enhanced by the euro's recent gains against the dollar. But what would happen to the US economy if Opec decides to use euro, instead of dollar, to price oil?
CNOOC, China's second biggest oil company, said on Monday it had been blocked by western oil companies from buying a $615m stake from BG in the North Caspian Sea Production Sharing Agreement.
BP's partner in its $6.75 billion (£4.3bn) Russian oil venture is facing claims of extortion and racketeering in a United States court.
The president of Russia's premier state oil producer has stormed out of Britain, snubbing invitations with senior officials, after accusing UK immigration officers of prejudice.
When it comes to the global oil trade, the dollar reigns supreme. But it has a challenger, writes Faisal Islam.
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami has urged India to join in the construction of a multibillion-dollar pipeline that would bring Iranian gas to the subcontinent.
Who is the United States' number one opponent in its quest for imperialism? Forget about Osama Bin Laden, George Dubya certainly has. And don't fret about Saddam Hussein, he is simply an excuse for intervention. Never mind looking down the road to see when Russia or China will step into the fray. Our no. 1 opposition is a business cartel with the power to strangle the U.S. economically. As global oil production begins to decline, OPEC could become the most powerful organization on the planet, providing that George Dubya Bush does not smash it first.
An agreement has been signed in the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat, paving the way for construction of a gas pipeline from the Central Asian republic through Afghanistan to Pakistan.
Ali Naimi, the most influential man in Opec, has said the cartel should reduce the amount of oil being pumped into the world marketplace.
Perhaps the World's Foremost Expert on Oil and the Oil Business Confirms the Ever More Apparent Reality of the Post-9-11 World.
The United States has denied persistent reports that it intends to build a military base on the tiny west African island state of Sao Tome — but said it will expand co-operation with the former Portuguese colony.
As the United States prepares for war with Iraq, a report commissioned early in George Bush's presidency has surfaced, showing that the US knew it was running out of oil and foreshadowing the possible need for military intervention to secure supplies.
The unifying element in an often-contradictory US foreign policy is the dream of toppling OPEC and controlling the world oil market. And Iraq is the key, writes Paul McGeough from Riyadh.
Oil is lubricating a potentially historic shift in United States' relations with Africa. Bountiful hydrocarbon deposits are luring the US closer to nations along the Gulf of Guinea, from Nigeria in the north to Angola in the south.
Is The Empire About Oil? — A Response to the Naysayers, by Dale Allen Pfeiffer.
The US is trying to quash a human rights lawsuit launched by Indonesian villagers against Exxon Mobil, claiming it could undermine the war on terrorism.
Following President Bush's demand for more corporate accountability, public interest group Judicial Watch, Inc., filed suit against Vice President Cheney and the Halliburton Company, alleging accounting fraud during Cheney's stewardship of Halliburton in the 1990s. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is also investigating Halliburton's accounting practices.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had advance warning from Opec of last month's failed coup attempt against him.
This week, Saparmurat Niyazov, the president-for-life of Turkmenistan, a California-sized former Soviet republic just northwest of Afghanistan, met with officials from Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan in an attempt to divide one of the world's richest oil and gas regions — at the bottom of the Caspian Sea.
Persian Gulf Oil and Gas Exports Fact Sheet.
Just four years ago Taleban officials were at the Texas headquarters of the US energy company Unocal to discuss building a gas pipeline across Afghanistan to Pakistan.
We have synthesized a number of current analyses into some key facts about how oil ties into the US government's long time involvement in Central Asia and its hopes of accessing the oil and gas riches of the area. Oil is clearly not the only force operating, and this is not a comprehensive analysis, but it is an important piece of a complicated political and economic struggle.
With world-wide demand for oil increasing and the Gulf States — in particular Saudi Arabia — vulnerable to instability the United States is desperate to tap the vast untapped fields of Kazakhstan and the other Central Asian states. And as Liam Halligan explains Afghanistan is central to trying to move oil from there to the west.
East and west are jockeying for influence in the Caucasus. The prize is oil and gas.
British Gas has been searching for natural gas near Gaza for the past six months, and last month discovered a vast field Palestinian officials say could provide electricity to Palestinians for generations, and could perhaps even be exported.
With oil prices riding at 10-year highs and commercial stocks of crude and heating oil remaining dangerously low ahead of winter, politicians in the United States have been debating their next move.
The United States and Turkey have spent years lobbying for the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, linking oil fields in the Caspian Sea with the Mediterranean.
Testimony from Unocal's vice president John Maresca on the role Central Asian oil and natural gas plays on shaping US policy.
American government officials have told a delegation from the Taleban faction in Afghanistan that the United States would support plans to construct of an oil pipeline across Afghanistan if the country were at peace.
