Modern Iraq is all about oil. It exists for and because of it. Its turmoil and troubles are due to it. Wars have been waged on the country’s soil because of the black gold mine that lies under the ground. Iraq has ‘one of the world’s great hydrocarbon preserves,’ with proven oil reserves of 115 billion barrels. It is the third largest oil producing nation, next to Iran (138 billion barrels) and Saudi Arabia (264 billion barrels).
Iraq has prospered, as well as suffered, because of its oil that remains untapped, and which looks extremely attractive to foreign intervention. George W. Bush’s geopolitics of oil plunged Iraq into the dark abyss of one of the bitterest and cruelest wars in modern history.
Iraq’s oil has been ‘inadequately explored.’ According to analysts, using modern search technologies will bring up 45 to 100 billion barrels more of oil. ‘If all its reserves, known and suspected, were developed to their full potential, Iraq could add as much as six to eight million barrels per day to international output, postponing the inevitable arrival of peak oil and a contraction in global energy supplies.’
Much blood has been shed for Iraqi oil. To become a full-fledged petro-state may yet be the fate designed for the country that is teeming with a much-coveted natural resource. Iraq may just be one huge oil production site whose role is to service global markets that remain stubbornly tied up to the use of oil amid the global paranoia and hysteria of peak oil.
Via AlterNet
