| Alternet wrote: |
| The invasion of Iraq by Britain and the US has trebled the price of oil, according to a leading expert, costing the world a staggering $6 trillion in higher energy prices alone.
The oil economist Dr Mamdouh Salameh, who advises both the World Bank and the UN Industrial Development Organisation (Unido), told The Independent on Sunday that the price of oil would now be no more than $40 a barrel, less than a third of the record $135 a barrel reached last week, if it had not been for the Iraq war. ... Production in eight of the others -- the US, Canada, Iran, Indonesia, Russia, Britain, Norway and Mexico -- has peaked, he says, while China and Saudia Arabia, the remaining two, are nearing the point at of decline. Before the war, Saddam Hussein's regime pumped some 3.5 million barrels of oil a day, but this had now fallen to just two million barrels. Dr Salameh told the all-party parliamentary group on peak oil last month that Iraq had offered the United States a deal, three years before the war, that would have opened up 10 new giant oil fields on "generous" terms in return for the lifting of sanctions. "This would certainly have prevented the steep rise of the oil price," he said. "But the US had a different idea. It planned to occupy Iraq and annex its oil." |
What this articles claims is basically that due to the war the Iraqi oil export is much lower than it was before (instead of a potential big increase), causing the oil prices to rise enormously.
In my opinion part of the price rise of oil is due to the weak dollar losing value, but of course part of the dollar losing value might be due to the high oil prices.
If the goal of the war in Iraq was not primarly because of WMD, but mostly for oil, than I guess the Bush administration failed even more in the execution of it. Unless - of course - the goal was higher oil prices, but I doubt that very much.
