All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm happy to welcome Steve Horn to the show.
He's a writer for Truthout.
At truth, I'm not sure why, but dash out dot org.
Truth dash out dot org.
The article is called Top Oil and Gas Executives Had Major Presence at Bahrain Conference.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing, Steve?
Good.
Thanks for having me.
Very happy to have you here.
And I guess you mean top American oil and gas executives were included in this, huh?
Yep, both American and global, which, as the article kind of showed, they work together.
So, yep, they were all there.
Right.
Now, the larger context, of course, is the majority or at least a substantial segment of the people of Bahrain's attempt to participate in the Arab Spring and ask for a little bit of self-government.
They really just wanted a constitutional democracy at the beginning anyway.
And that revolution, of course, has been brutally put down, as has been expertly documented by the likes of Roy Gutman and McClatchy newspapers and others.
I know that's not exactly your specialty, but I want to make sure that people understand that there is a minority monarchy that is brutally suppressing an insurrection there.
In fact, just the other day, they sentenced a bunch of doctors to major prison terms for even treating those wounded in the protests.
So that's who's running things over there and in whose interest is the subject of your piece here.
So please tell us about this conference.
Sure.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
I'll add a little bit to that.
What happened is after the uprising started in February, roughly a month later, once people were capping out in the city square in Bahrain, Pearl Square, not exactly sure on that, but once that happened, there was an emergency meeting called by the Gulf Cooperation Commission, the GCC, which consists of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Oman, and Saudi Arabia.
So the leaders of those countries got together and decided that there needed to be a crackdown of this democratic uprising in Bahrain to quell it and make sure that things as they exist don't change.
So in that light, the best portrayal of things as they exist is this conference, which occurred the 25th to the 28th of September, hosted by the Society of Petroleum Engineers, SPE, at a conference titled Shaping the Future, Innovating Beyond Limits, which a bunch of top-level oil and gas professionals, executives, engineers, et cetera, got together and talked about the future of oil and gas procurement in Bahrain and the Middle East region generally at this conference.
This included executives at huge corporations such as Halliburton, ExxonMobil, Shell, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, Saudi Aramco, Weatherford, Kuwait Energy.
The list goes on and on.
If you look at the sponsorship list, it's enormous, and it's pretty much any huge oil and gas company you can think of that has a global presence was there.
Well, now, as far as the risks inherent in investing in major projects over there in that part of the world, it seems like they've made a pretty good bet in developing further their infrastructure to extract oil and gas out of Bahrain, since they have a common interest directly with the Pentagon there.
They maintain the 5th Fleet Base at Bahrain.
Right, yeah, so that's there, which is actually part of the larger naval CENTCOM base that exists there.
They work in tandem, those two, and, yeah, I mean, it's a very clear depiction of the collusion between United States foreign policy and the geopolitical game it plays and oil and gas in the Middle East, in the world, et cetera.
I mean, if you look at where these bases are set up in the Middle East, I mean, the Middle East generally is the biggest epicenter of oil and gas, and to keep the empire running, it takes lots of oil and gas.
Journalists like Nick Turse have documented this pretty well, and then scholars such as Michael Clare have also documented it really well.
Yeah, what's funny is, and I don't know the exact numbers or anything, but the military is, the U.S. military is the single biggest consumer of petroleum products every day on this planet, by far.
It makes you wonder whether any of this would be required if it wasn't for their fuel needs, if this is all just a self-licking ice cream cone here.
Right, yeah, it's a self-perpetuating project, and it even makes efforts more cynical when they say they are going to try to do things that are more green.
Yeah.
I mean, it's just sort of a mockery of what they're actually doing, what their mission is, who they work with, et cetera.
So, yeah, basically, it's a, I mean, many have said it's war is a racket, empire is a racket.
That's exactly what it is.
Yeah, you know, I think The Onion even did a TV kind of debate show where they talked about how they can make the war in Iraq more environmentally friendly by using regular steel instead of depleted uranium and that kind of thing.
Right, yeah, I mean, exactly.
One of the first ones in Iraq when the United States launched the 2003 invasion was Halliburton to set up oil rigs.
Yeah, so if you look at this closely, you see what it's actually all about.
Yeah, you think of the burn pits and all that.
I mean, if anybody's an environmental activist at all, it seems like their first priority has got to be ending the empire.
Right, true, although you and me working in the environmental movement somewhat, I see that what the Pentagon does purposely is sort of divide and conquer tactics on the actual environmental movement where they do these things, like where they say we're going green and that we're going to lead the way towards green efforts, and then people lose track of what they're actually doing, that they're the biggest cause of all these environmental ongoing catastrophes.
So, yeah, it's very cynical on their part, but they're a very cynical entity.
All right, now, can you tell us about, at least to some degree, the extent of their plans, these oil producers, what kind of investment, what kind of development they're looking toward in Bahrain?
Yeah, sure.
So, some research I did for this article, I looked into State Department figures.
They showed that currently, today, Bahrain produces 40,000 barrels of oil a day.
A March article written by London's Telegraph showed that Bahrain is aiming to produce, by 2017, over 100,000 barrels of oil a day.
So that would be over two and a half times more what they produce today by 2017.
So they have big plans in terms of oil.
In terms of natural gas, a July report by the Kuwait News Agency showed that Bahrain alone produces approximately 1.3 million cubic feet of gas per day.
And they just signed a contract with this corporation called Occidental Petroleum, which drills for natural gas both in the United States and globally, including because of this deal they made this summer coming up in Bahrain.
And they hope to produce 1.6, so right now it's 1.3 million.
They hope to produce 1.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day by 2014.
So if you look at what their goals are based on petroleum and gas procurement, it becomes pretty evident why it was in the oil and gas companies' worst interest from a financial point of view for there to be a democratic uprising in Bahrain.
And it explains why there's been such a brutal crackdown there.
It's a huge strategic epicenter.
Yeah, it's so funny.
I don't know.
It's amazing to me, like you said, about if the military says they're going green, that actually really works in diverting people into getting distracted on that kind of thing.
And it's the same thing with just the slogan, human rights and democracy.
Yeah, human rights and democracy, nothing, when it's up against the military interests of the U.S. Navy and the rest of the Central Command, and certainly not when up against the interests of those who sit in the highest towers in downtown Houston.
Freedom, rights, and democracy take a backseat for sure.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
This is Anti-War Radio.
We're talking with Steve Horn from Truthout.org.
The piece is, top oil and gas executives had major presence at Bahrain conference.
And we're talking about the dictatorship of, I forget, the guy's got five names, something, something, Khalifa, right?
Yeah, Prince, what the heck is his full name?
His full name is Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, the longest serving unelected prime minister that currently exists in the world.
Well, that's his sidekick, right, the prime minister?
Right, I guess the reason why he was the key figure in my stories, because he gave the opening address at this conference.
Right, that's Smithers to the King, whose name escapes me, I'm sorry.
Right, right.
But anyway, yeah, so here's this brutal dictatorship.
As we talked about, they put down a major, well, what started out as a pretty small piece, protest movement, until they crushed it and made it big and then crushed it some more with the help of the Saudis and made it horrible.
Now they're locking people in prison for decades for daring to protest.
And in the shadow of all of this comes all of Houston, Texas, to make a bunch of deals with the kingdom about taking all their oil and gas out of the ground and taking the profits for themselves.
And tell us again about the companies involved in this.
I think I remember you saying Halliburton.
Yeah, Halliburton was there.
There's a number of different lists that exist on the website.
They had an executive committee/program committee, which had all the big guys out there like Halliburton, ExxonMobil, Shell, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, Saudi Aramco, Weatherford, Kuwait Energy, Bahrain Petroleum Company.
Then they had sort of exhibitors there too, Chevron, Baker Hughes, Schlumberger, Halliburton, Shell.
Then if you look at the sponsors that are listed in the program, Shell, Halliburton, Baker Hughes.
I mean they repeat, but yeah, they were all there.
All right, now you also say that the U.S. military, just last month on September the 14th, the D.O.D. proposed a sale of $53 million worth of weapons to the Bahrain monarchy?
That was, I mean the place that I saw that wrote about it was last week Friday, Mother Jones.
But then there's also sort of just a document that exists that shows that they proposed a, yeah, the $53 million deal to sell weapons to the Khalifa family.
Sort of, it's not even ironic, it just sort of makes sense that this would happen right before a big conference like this.
I mean they're kind of setting shop there and making sure that the rebellion remains quiet.
And if it doesn't remain quiet, it gets squelched like it did last time around.
This is also, I mean coupled with the fact that in October of 2010, the U.S. sold over $60 million worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia, which was the key ally in crushing the rebellion back in March.
So, yeah, look at all these things combined and it's pretty clear what the U.S. mission is in the Middle East.
Yeah, well, and you know what?
If there's value in this, that's the value, right?
Naked, bloody-handed imperialism, no pretext, no democracy, no purple-fingered elections, no we're doing this because we love you and it hurts us more than it hurts you, no, none of that.
Just we support this kingdom and we support its murder of the citizens there because we want our fifth fleet base there and we want to steal the petroleum out of the ground.
Yeah, exactly, and I mean I think the best documentary of late that I've seen on the topic was done by Al Jazeera English.
They had something called Bahrain Shouting in the Dark, which makes clear everything you just outlined and the role that the United States plays in just making sure democracy does not exist in the Middle East.
Yep, and you know, Admiral Mullen, he said on Meet the Press, they asked him, well, what's the difference between Libya and Bahrain?
And Mullen said, well, simply Bahrain's our ally.
Yeah, and just the fact is that Qaddafi wasn't a reliable enough source to keep the oil and natural gas flowing.
Yeah, he's a bit too eccentric, that Qaddafi guy.
Right.
Had his own goals.
Right, and I mean, obviously the clearest example of unreliable collaborative elites is the 1953 coup of Mossadegh and Iran.
And Iran is still being, you know, there's still active targeting of Iran today.
There's all these different propagandistic stories about why Iran is a threat.
But the reason why Iran is a threat is because they've nationalized their oil and they won't let these multinational oil and gas corporations come in and profit off of it.
So that's why, if you look at the bigger picture, it's pretty clear that that's the reason why they're the threat.
There's no evidence of a nuclear threat from Iran.
So yeah, it just fits in with this broader picture.
Well, you're certainly right about that.
Although, I might add, just their defiance in general, oil or anything else.
Noam Chomsky pointed out that they treat Cuba the same way.
They don't have any oil.
They don't have much to steal, a little bit of sugar cane.
But it's the principle.
You cannot declare independence from this empire or we will take it out on you and we'll never lift our embargo.
Never, ever, ever.
Right, yeah.
I will add, though, with Cuba, I know, I don't know all the details, but there was a recent, I think this year sometime, a discovery of offshore oil in Cuba.
Oh no, yeah, I think you're reminding me of that.
Yeah, so I mean, it's always hard to divorce.
It's bad.
Yeah.
Bad for the future.
Well, you know, I'm reminded, this whole conversation reminds me of this Cato study from years and years ago.
I think in 1996 or 7 or something like that, just back during Bill Clinton's blockade and all that.
And they talked about how we spend twice as much on securing our oil in the Middle East with all our defense department and state department intervention as we actually do on just buying the oil.
We could just buy it all.
If it wasn't for this whole concept of military strategy and making sure that the Chinese don't control it or making sure that this, that, and the other particular corporation based in Houston are the ones that get to make the profits off of it, the American people would save, save, save.
If we would just get out of the Middle East and just buy it, it'll be for sale.
It's a literal liquid on a global market.
Right.
I mean, that's the whole, sort of the scheme.
But also, I mean, there's a bigger picture also.
I mean, if that was, if the case was that, you know, we need the oil from there.
Well, there's plenty of natural gas being drilled right here in the United States.
The whole thing is that they're drilling it there.
They're drilling it here.
Whoever these corporations see profit, they run towards it.
Human rights be damned, including if it's dangerous to the people that live in, even the United States, the people who live in those areas.
So that's the bigger picture.
Including, I noticed, and earlier you mentioned it's in your article here about Occidental Petroleum and their interest here.
That's Al Gore's family backers there.
Oh, really?
Which you say are all behind the fracking all across the United States and California, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma.
Oh, I didn't know the background on that.
Well, I don't know how recently they've been donating to Al Gore, but certainly they were his father's backers and backed him, at least in the 1980s, you know, when he was running for president, I think.
Oh, it's amazing.
We'll have to go back and do a little research maybe before I make too many broad accusations.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, if that's the case, that's pretty, potentially pretty damning.
Yeah, in fact, one guy asked me, oh yeah, well, what do you think would have happened if Al Gore was president?
What do you think he would have done after September 11th?
And I said, well, he would have blamed it on the FARC and invaded Colombia, because that's where Occidental's interests are, you know.
Right, I think it makes absolutely no difference about who, based on this system, this system of blood and oil, blood for oil, has been in place since, doesn't matter who's in president, if the DNR has been in place since 1945, at least.
And it became official U.S. doctrine via the Carter Doctrine in 1980, where any threat to U.S. gas or petroleum procurement in the Middle East was deemed a national security threat and makes it eligible to go to war for it.
That was outlined in his 1980 State of the Union address.
So this is nothing, you know, it makes no difference.
It's all mirage, you know, if he would have been president, if she would have been president, etc., etc.
The key issue here is that we have a system right now, a self-perpetuating system of oil and gas profiteering at a global level.
Well, yeah, you know, Palast, Greg Palast from the BBC even said that the coup against Chavez in 2002 was because the NSA had overheard Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi making a deal to lower the price or raise it or something, and so they made the move on Chavez.
No surprise.
National security, you know.
All right.
Hey, thanks very much for your time.
Really appreciate it.
Very good.
Thanks a lot, Scott.
All right, everybody.
That's Steve Horne.
Check him out at truthout.org.
Top oil and gas executives had major presence at Bahrain conference.
See you tomorrow.
