Oil and $: the real score

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
8/15/2005



The world oil price now shooting through the roof is not about lack of supply, it is about the U.S. sucking back in of what they need form the $ 55-trillion they have printed and circulating in the world. Bush has been increasing the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserves since last year, prompting John Kerry then to criticize him for causing U.S. oil prices to rise. There is no shortage either from the OPEC production side, and its officials have repeatedly pointed to speculation as the real culprit in the rise of oil prices. It is the U.S. Dollar as petrodollar, the green piece of paper with power over the world’s oil.

The real score in the exorbitant price of oil today is the restoration and maintenance of the U.S. Dollar hegemony or domination over the world. The first oil prices increases of the magnitude we are seeing today was in the period of 1971-1974 when it quadrupled from around $ 3 a $ 12 a barrel (the largest increases was between ‘71-‘74 and ’78-‘81). It was no accident that the U.S. was suffering a historic $ crisis forcing Nixon to uncouple the U.S. $ from the gold in 1971 and the Bilderberg group “arranged” with Kissinger to trigger the Yom Kippur war.

A short but good reference on the current oil price spike in relation to the dollar hegemony can be found in Rod Coffman’s “Repatriation of the U.S. Dollar” at Newtopia.com, while a more extensive consideration of the issue of the U.S. Dollar hegemony can be found in Asia Times website on the Internet, in Henry Liu’s “The coming trade war and global depression”. Price trends since 1973 seem to show repeating cycles of oil price upsurges and wars every other two decades. Oil, the U.S.$ and wars are the keys to the global U.S. hegemony.

The Philippines, like the rest of the world, was caught off guard by the first oil price shock in the ‘70’s that lasted until the early ‘80’s, countries learned the lesson. Brazil developed its bio-fuel program using sugar turned into alcohol, it also became the major country producing an alco-gas car using the Volkswagen. The Philippines and Marcos learned the lesson about oil and energy, and the exchange rate when the Peso plunged due to oil prices, as the cruxes of sovereignty. Marcos embarked on an ambitious energy program laying out a wide mix of energy sources: biogas, biodiesel, nuclear, mini and micro-hypdro, geothermal, oil and gas development.

In what Philippine history will consider a criminal or even treasonous act, the Cory Aquino administration dismantled Marcos’ energy development program. The nuclear power plant succumbed to anti-nuclear/civil society disinformation and destabilization; 10,000 mini and micro hydro plants were left to rot; the bio-energy programs such as alcogas, dendro-thermal and bio-diesel programs were abandoned; only the existing geothermals were continued but are now deteriorating, while several hydro projects and oil/gas exploration well much delayed or aborted.

Then energy dependency was created by the privatization of the Napocor, and total enslavement will be completed if and when the Transco privatization is consummated. Are all these energy fiascos in the Philippines a result of mere stupidity of the mere housewife Cory Aquino and reinforced by “reformist” Ramos or was it design, to ensure total control of the country? To students of the political-economy it is clear it was all pre-meditated, and part of the strategic geopolitical plan to sustain the present global powers. Higher spikes of global oil price, up to $ 80/bl. and a few wars is to be expected.

War on Iran is contemplated, ostensibly over Iran developing nuclear capacity, despite a U.S. Intelligence Review leak (representing U.S. intelligence consensus) that Iran is 10 years away from a bomb material. What is not well known is that Iran threatens the U.S. in a more immediate way. Iran is started an oil exchange market or bourse scheduled to start early 2006, and instead of the petrodollar it will be using the perto-euro as currency for trading oil. That threatens U.S. $ hegemony the way Saddam Hussein also did when he started trading Iraqi oil on the Euro.

The real score in Philippine politics is not the battle between the ruling class factions of Gloria cum local gangsters versus Cory/Purisima/Dinky cum the foreign comprador class, it is the sovereignty and independence of the nation versus the global oligarchs and corporatocracy which have plotted the re-colonization of the Philippines as a component of maintaining its hegemony. The true objective of FVR’s pressure on Gloria for the Cha-cha was revealed in her CNN interview: the obligatory surrender to the American and global audience of the patrimony of the Philippines.

In her July 25, 2005 CNN interview Gloria publicly intoned that “modernization” of the Constitution’s economic provisions is necessary, i.e. opening of land and patrimony to foreign ownership. The August 15, 2005 Time magazine has a puff piece on Ramos and his Cha-cha. The paper power of the paper dollar will be converted to land and mineral ownership, then Filipinos will end up squatters in their own country. Then we can only be slaves and mercenaries of the foreign overlords in the country, at the crossroads of the China Sea. That’s the real score.

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