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 3rd July 07 - Dilip Hiro, Yale Centre for the Study of Globalisation
The fast rising demand for oil by China and India, sharply declining fresh discoveries, and high prices are empowering the countries with large reserves of black gold as never before. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez provides a striking example of how petroleum has emboldened leaders of oil-rich states to thumb their noses at the giant neighbor in the north - the US. |
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17th June 07 - Michael T. Klare, Truthdig.com
Sixteen gallons of oil. That’s how much the average American soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan consumes on a daily basis—either directly, through the use of Humvees, tanks, trucks and helicopters, or indirectly, by calling in air strikes. Multiply this figure by 162,000 soldiers in Iraq, 24,000 in Afghanistan and 30,000 in the surrounding region (including sailors aboard U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf) and you arrive at approximately 3.5 million gallons of oil: the daily petroleum tab for U.S. combat operations in the Middle East war zone. |
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15th June 07 - Daniel Howden, The Independent (UK) Scientists have criticised a major review of the world's remaining oil reserves, warning that the end of oil is coming sooner than governments and oil companies are prepared to admit. |
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 30th May 07, Stephanie Nieuwoudt, IPS/The Progress ReportAfrica's abundance in natural resources, especially oil, has been called a curse because of the fierce global thirst that exists for these assets. Oil and other mineral resources have led to conflict and corruption in countries like Sierra Leone (diamonds), Nigeria (oil), Equatorial Guinea (oil), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (diamonds, timber, rare fauna), Gabon (oil) and Angola (oil). Meanwhile, the citizens of those countries live in poverty. |
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 9th May 07 - Dave Lindorff ~ STWR MemberIn case you’re wondering why crude oil prices are down from last year, hanging around at about $60 a barrel, while gasoline prices have soared past $3.10/gallon nationwide, just check out the latest profit reports from the oil companies. They are at record levels.
The answer for this seeming contradiction is simple: Americans are being robbed blind by the oil industry.
Sure, the oil companies, and their PR and lobbying agency, the American Petroleum Institute, will give you all kinds of reasons for higher gasoline prices at a time of falling crude prices: problems at two refineries in Texas and Oklahoma, rising demand or whatever. But the real answer is that there is simply no competitive market in this industry.
As Tim Hamilton, a researcher and petroleum industry consultant with the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, observes, the oil companies all store their crude oil and refined gasoline in the same tanks, and all know exactly how much inventory each other company has, so they don’t have to meet and collude on pricing in order to reap the huge rewards of deliberate supply constraints. |
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23rd March 07 - Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) As the number-one user of water worldwide, the agriculture sector must be in the lead in addressing the rising global demand for water and its potential drain on the earth’s natural resources, FAO said today on the occasion of World Water Day. |
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 23rd March 07 - Sanjay Suri, Inter Press Service
The idea of water wars to follow soon in the wake of oil wars has been around as another doomsday scenario for a while. But a dismissal of the scenario as something that has not materialised, and will not, has meant also an under-rating of the potential for conflict that continues to float around water sharing.
"We need to make a distinction between violent conflict and conflict itself," Mark Zeitoun, researcher with the London Water Research Group, a part of the Centre for Environmental Policy at King's College and the London School of Economics told IPS.
"There are no examples of states engaging in violent conflict strictly over water resources. But water is often an element in violent conflicts, and there are conflicts that fall short of war. Absence of war does not mean absence of conflict."
At the sub-national level there are many instances of violent conflict over water, he said. "In Chad, in Western Darfour, you have different tribes, sometimes members of the same tribe fighting over limited resources of water." |
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