<The Stability of IraqThe Oil DrumDrumBeat: July 12, 2006>

55 comments on "Deeply Troubling" (or, wanna have a laugh/cry...?)

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HongKong Trader on July 12, 2006 - 1:27am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
Hi Everyone.

I am new to this and I have a question that may have been asked before:

I understand that the Americans and Brits have satelites capable of reading the headline on a newspaper. Why don't we just put them over Saudi Arabia and have a look at where the rigs are, what they are doing and how fast they are moving across the oil fields? Would this even help?

Chris.

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smekhovo on July 12, 2006 - 4:06am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
If they had such satellites, wouldn't they have found that nasty Osama by now?
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Euan Mearns on July 12, 2006 - 4:10am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Hello HKT - I'm pretty new to this too.

A week or so back TODers started posting lots of links to satellite images - mainly on Google Earth - where you could see some of the KSA and Kuwait oil fields - easy to spend weeks analyisng this stuff.  If you have time, look back through the posts from around 4th July.

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HongKong Trader on July 12, 2006 - 4:48am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Cry Wolf - thanks very much.
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HongKong Trader on July 12, 2006 - 4:51am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
although the point I was trying to make is - wouldn't our governments have systematically monitored this and have a good idea of what is going on?
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Vintermann on July 12, 2006 - 4:57am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Not necessarily. We don't always do the obvious...
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Euan Mearns on July 12, 2006 - 5:56am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I think national governments and oil super majors have a very clear idea of what is going on.  However, rather than offending Arab pride, they continue to pretend that all is well with the world economy -  in the hope that they may get invited to explore for and develop oil and gas in the ME at some future point - even though oil production is probably right at or just past peak and U mining may go over the energy cliff around 2066.
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HongKong Trader on July 12, 2006 - 6:27am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I tend to agree - the governments would have an idea. It's also hard to believe that they didn't go through the oil records in Iraq over the last couple years and also kuwait in the first gulf war...
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john milton on July 12, 2006 - 8:47am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Considering the strategic importance of oil it would be almost impossible for me to belive that any state with an intel. svc. would not be using whatever means it had at it's disposal to figure out "the truth".

This would not only include sat. images of fields, rigs, and tanker traffic, but could also include, in the case of the U.S. for example:

Human assets i.e. spies, within Aramco and its contractors, the SA Gov't etc.

Sigint i.e. they can listen in on all the cell phone, sat. phone, and telefax conversations in the oil fields and elsewhere

We also know that they have access to SWIFT and most other banking networks, so they can track the financial flows that support the industry  

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tstreet on July 12, 2006 - 9:55am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
We learned how sophisticated our Government is at intelligence shortly before the Iraqi war.  Colin Powell, I believe brillaintly demonstrated our ability to see what was going on in tractor trailers, for Chrissakes.
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AlanfromBigEasy on July 12, 2006 - 9:56am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
A decade ago I heard of an old agreement between the Saudis and the US that the US agreed not to snoop on Sadui oil.  Seems *VERY( odd, and why would the US agree, or keep the agreement ?

But I did hear of this, then old, agreement, before oil became a hot topic.

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Don Sailorman on July 12, 2006 - 9:15pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
For obvious reasons, I cannot mentions sources.

However:
The U.S. snoops on everything, everybody, everywhere, all the time.

We may never get Osama (or Usama) because he lives in caves and moves by night, when we cannot see him. This pisses off Rummy and crowd no end.

BTW, Castro also figured out in 1962 that satellites have greatly reduced vision at night. It is SO easy to fool satellites (and also reconaissance aircraft).

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HongKong Trader on July 12, 2006 - 10:38pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Thanks Everyone. It is pretty clear the governments know more than they let on. It's a little dissapointing though that they haven't been warning and preparing us. I guess in general, if isn't happening before the next election they probably don't care. The Chinese seem to be getting more serious about replacing oil than we are.
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GreyZone on July 12, 2006 - 10:29am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
What I am about to say is complete speculation, so take it with a huge grain of salt. I have heard that Valerie Plame was not working on WMD issues in the Middle East when her cover was blown by the infamous White House leak. Rather, what I have heard is that she was actually involved with a front company getting hard data on whether Matthew Simmons charges against Saudi Arabia's reserves were true or not. Blowing her cover was then not an attack on Joe Wilson but rather, Valeria Plame was thrown to the winds by the Bush administration when the Saudis discovered she was leading spy activities against them by the CIA. However, by that point, the Bush administration had most of the data necessary to determine that Saudi Arabia was indeed lying about reserves and future production. So, in short, Valerie Plame was sacrificed, along with whatever in-country contacts she made inside Saudi Arabia, in order for the Bush administration to pretend that they did not know what the CIA had been doing and to show the Saudis that they did not approve. Joe Wilson just was convenient political collateral damage according to this line of thinking.

As I said, I have never seen this mentioned elsewhere but it came to me through the grapevine of friends who still live and work in Washington, DC, and who I believe have a reasonable chance to be telling me the truth. I certainly cannot prove it so I would urge you to not necessarily believe it outright but to possibly consider it as an alternative explanation for events we have seen in recent years.

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Leanan on July 12, 2006 - 10:33am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I think Mike Ruppert of FTW has claimed something similar, though not as detailed.  He had an article at his site claiming that Plame was not a WMD expert.  Instead, she was working on trying to figure out Saudi Arabia's true oil reserves.  
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