Opinion Forum

Blood for Oil!

July 2nd, 2011

China and Iraq When we went to war in Iraq, those on the left yelled that we were shedding blood for oil. It seems that they may have been right — oil for our great friend and ally China.

According to this article,

China starts oil pumping in Iraq

China has begun pumping oil in southern Iraq in the first new oil field brought on line in the Middle Eastern country in more than 20 years.

The state-owned China National Petroleum Co. (CNPC) announced in its newspaper Tuesday the opening of the al-Ahdab field, located roughly 110 miles southeast from Baghdad.

The field began operating June 21, according to CNPC.

CNPC claims that the project, which had cost the company $3 billion, marks “significant progress in CNPC’s building of major oil and gas cooperation projects in the Middle East.”

The field is estimated to hold a billion barrels of crude oil and is expected to produce 115,000 barrels of oil daily by 2017.

The contract of the Iraqi government with CNPC to develop the al-Ahdab field, signed in November 2008, was the first oil field deal signed between the Iraqi government and an international company.

The contract gives full control of the oil field to the Iraqi government.

The Chinese government, instead of receiving a share of ownership of the field, will receive a fee of $6 per barrel, which will decrease to $3 when oil production reaches its maximum. The fee will be paid for 23 years. …

Al-Ahdab is not the only field that CNPC has developed in Iraq. CNPC and BP both produce in the Rumaila field in southern Iraq, estimated to be the largest in the country.

CNPC also is invested in Halfaya Field, near the Iranian border.

That’s cool. We probably didn’t do it ourselves because we have plenty of domestic oil. True, according to a recent Rasmussen survey

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters shows that just 19% believe the United States does enough to develop its own gas and oil resources. Seventy-five percent (75%) do not think the country is doing enough in this area. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Even though we have money to burn and don’t need any more, maybe the Obama Administration can work out a deal with China similar to the one China has with Iraq.

(This article was first published at The PJ Tatler.)

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: China, domestic, drilling, Iraq, oil, satire, U.S.
Categories: Economics, News, Politics | Comments (2) | Home

2 Responses to “Blood for Oil!”

John H.M. Smith | July 3rd, 2011 at 10:00 am

The left will not care, Miller. I have met some of them at several online forums recently.
They say that the real problem facing the world now is radical asymmetry in political, economic, and military power between the United States and the rest of the world, specifically, China. They want a weaker America and a stronger China.
I call upon those Americans who are still happily buying Chinese products to visit top 20 Chinese military websites via a decent Chinese to English translation software.
The best way to do this is to follow the steps: Google homepage–>Chinese (Simplified)–>more–>”265 websites navigation”–>military; or you can directly open http://www.265.com then click “military”.
I wish after reading those hatred-promoting articles our fellow Americans can still sleep very well at night.

Clarissa | July 4th, 2011 at 12:56 am

I don’t think that any person in their right mind – irrespective of their political persuasion – can sincerely wish a stronger totalitarian, oppressive China. And people on the left of the political spectrum have many reasons to find the Chinese political and ideological system to be especially disgusting. As a Liberal, I, for example, can never feel anything but disgust towards a system where little girls are routinely aborted just because their gender doesn’t seem as prestigious or as convenient.