What a US Republican Congressman has to say about the coming world oil crisis
The Conservative Congressman Roscoe Bartlett, Chairman of the Projection Forces Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee, gave an hour long presentation on Peak Oil to the US Congress on Monday 14 march 2005. He made the following shocking statement:
Figure 8: The US Congressman Roscoe Bartlett
" Dear Readers, civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon. I hope not. This is not the wacky proclamation of a doomsday cult, apocalypse Bible sect or conspiracy theory society. Rather, it is a scientific conclusion of the best-paid, most widely respected geologists, physicists and investment bankers in the world. These are rational, professional, conservative individuals who are absolutely terrified by the phenomenon known as global peak oil. The market will, indeed, signal the arrival of peak oil. To wait until it does, however, is like waiting until we see a tsunami: by then it may be too late to do anything. We now are doing a lot of talking here in the Congress and fortunately across the country about Social Security, and it is a big problem. But I tell the Members if the problem of Social Security is equivalent to the tidal wave produced by the hurricane, then this peak oil problem is equivalent to the tsunami. The impact and the consequences are going to be enormously greater than the impact and the consequences of Social Security or Medicare or those two put together".
New foreign policy of the United States of America
President Bush visit to Georgia on 9/10 May 2005. It is part of the new foreign diplomacy of the Unites States of America. Bush is well informed by his advisor Matthew Simmons, the Republican Roscoe Bartlett and many others about the coming world oil crisis. His mean goal of his recent visits is: to secure supply of oil and gas to the US. Driving by his growing that the other nations, like China, are also desperately looking for oil and gas.
Figure 9. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline (yellow-green dotted line) will start a few kilometers south of Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, and will run through the territory of neighboring Georgia to the Turkish Mediterranean coast. To the north (green) the Russian oil pipeline network.
The geopolitical importance of Georgia of the US is very clear. Soon a 1,737 km-long pipeline, with the capacity 1 million barrels a day oil, will be opened and transport Caspian oil to the Mediterranean. It is alternative to Russia's pipeline network. Oil experts believe that political considerations played a major role in the choice of the route. American officials prefer a route that would weaken Russia's stranglehold on regional pipeline network and leave Iran on the sidelines. The oil of this pipeline will only go to the American market. Tankers with a tonnage of 300,000 to 500,000 will be filled at Ceyhan, the end site of the pipeline on Turkey's Mediterranean coast, and for these it is only advantageous to transport oil to the United States. The first tanker is scheduled to be filled with Azerbaijani oil summer 2005. Moscow is very worried about this pipeline not only of the detrimental effects of the opening of the pipeline upon Russian economy, but more fundamentally of further incursions by the American military into former parts of the Soviet Union and Eurasia in general. US policy has succeded to get more influence in countries round the Black Sea and Caspian Sea. In recent times countries like Ukraine and Georgia became overnight proWestern. For several years, Turkmenistan was a key player in the U.S. Caspian Basin Energy Initiative, which sought to facilitate negotiations between commercial partners and the Governments of Turkmenistan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey to build a pipeline under the Caspian Sea and export. Since 2002 Kazakhstan allows the US to use the airport of the former Kazakhstan's capital Alma-Ata for emergency landings and refuelling of the US military planes participating in the anti-terror operation in Afghanistan. Turkey will become a member of the European Union. Iran is still a pain in the neck. In Irak has been under US military control. It looks that the US is on its way to attain their dream of stealing the Soviet oil from Caucasus and that nothing can stop them anymore!
Figure 10. Four Presidents on the Red Square, Moscow 9th of May 2005: George W. Bush, Vladimir Putin, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder. They all four are aware about the coming oil crisis. But how they will secure their part of the oil cake?