Good Luck, Britain! Good Luck, World!

Oil production in the UK will take a 40% hit today due to a strike at a Scottish pipeline. Supply and demand are the greatest determinants of price, and since spring typically causes gas prices to shoot up like the dandelion stalks in my front yard (two feet tall, no kidding), I think we can safely say that Monday morning is going to be ugly.
Remember world - what happens to one part of the oil supply/demand chain, happens to all. Have fun!

Oil is to blame for... Starving Palestinians

So:
Palestinians are starving
Because UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine had to halt food deliveries
Because Israel cut off fuel to the area
Because Hamas was firing rockets at civilians
Because Israelis have taken their land
Because the British gave it to them
Because the Jewish people had no home
Because of the diaspora by the Romans
Because of....

So, yeah, oil IS to blame.

Oil is to blame for... global instability?

So, ascribing to a realist theory of international relations, what happens when Royal Dutch Shell finally decides they've had enough of these Nigerian rebel groups destroying their energy infrastructure? When energy prices become untenable?
A.) Small wars to secure resources
B.) Neo-colonialism
C.) Collapse of international institutions
D.) All of the above?

Constructivism is all well and good when resources are abundant, but don't tell me that a starving nation would prefer to perish nobly adhering to the international norms.

Aren't safe and Canada the same thing?

So while the Tehran Times is offline - a bit of humor from a "news organization" that doesn't even pretend to be independent from the Islamic Republic:

The Persian Gulf region is the world safest oil supplier, Minister of Oil Gholam-Hossein Nozari said Saturday evening.

He stressed that as a powerful country in the region, "Iran plays essential role in security of the Persian Gulf."
The minister made the remarks after a meeting with the Secretary General of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Abdullah al-Badri who arrived in Iran on Friday on a three-day visit.

Persian gulf? Safe? Safer than Nigeria, okay, but safer than Canada??

Oil is to blame for... lame spring breaks?

Price of oil increases, ergo the price of vacations increase. Hooray! Thanks Washington Post for the cheery news!

Oil is to blame for... the war. Or is it?

The Washington Post presents a column that actually rationally looks at the case of blood and oil in the Middle East. Columnist Steve Mufson states that it is nearly impossible that the invasion of Iraq was at the behest of Big Oil, but also admits that yes, the government does have an eye on oil and it is impossible to extricate energy security interests from our national security interests.
Some of the comments following the column, however, are impossible.
A sample:
"Of course, AA 77 never took off, and no plane struck the Pentagon. Explosives were planted in the Pentagon, and it might have been struck by three cruise missiles."
"...let the Europeans, Japanese and Chinese defend their oil interests with their own soldiers. The Arabs would not be whining about their relatively benign treatment under US occupation anymore. I'll bet they would be very well behaved if they were occupied by the Chinese Army- the Chinese wouldn't put up with the kind of b.s. that we do out of some misguided sense of political correctness."
"I do not believe Iraq was about oil directly; but it was about preserving the "Imperial Dollar" as the world's currency standard."
"Israeli security interest as represented by the neocon architects of this disaster. For the Jews, having a major American land army invade one of their sworn enemies and having to deal with resentful fundamentalist suicidal Muslims was perfect. They can’t be too open about it but you see their silent hand on it. Joe Lieberman and subtle Jewish influences in the media are obvious."

My question - how is the article improved by this commentary? It seems quite clear that a number of the commentators did not read the article or address it. Some of these outrageous
statements seem ripped straight from the Tehran Times. It seems a shame that a decent article was ruined by the obnoxious and ignorant commentary that followed. It is no surprise that the Post hides comments behind a link, unlike other papers which stick comments right on the bottom.

Oil is to blame for... everything

...but what does oil blame its problems on? In class we talked about various factors that impact foreign policy, or the media. Here's a quick scan on necessary factors for determining the price of oil:
Energy companies (broken down: "upstream" companies that extract oil, "downstream" companies that refine), OPEC, Department of Energy, nationalized oil companies (foreign governments), investors, demand of consumers (drivers of cars, trucks, boats, planes, consumers of home heating oil, manufacturers of anything plastic, the military), environmental/clean energy groups and lobbies, alternative energy companies, gasoline retailers, local taxes and restrictions, natural disasters (Katrina wiped out gulf production for some time), accidents (shut down refineries), safety and environmental regulation, transportation costs, weather, litigation.

So go on, pick your raison du jour, and lay it on thick when you complain about how much it costs to fill up at the pump.

Oil is to blame for... Anchorage

Found this Anchorage Daily News headline scanning Google for news about oil: Wednesday's oil, gas, gold and zinc prices. I think its a nice example of how local regional news can be. Elsewhere, most people only read about oil prices - especially now with the price hovering around $100/bbl. But in Anchorage, you can read about the price of oil in relation to the other resources in the state. These prices are noted daily, that's how vital they are to the interests of the citizenry.
In the story of Big Oil, we don't frequently hear about the blue collar mechanics at the bottom of the industry. This series of Alaskan articles touches on how tightly they are connected to the market.

Oil is to Blame for... 9/11

From the Tehran Times, my favorite source of trustworthy information:
The Bush administration’s purpose in planning and orchestrating 9/11 was to create an atmosphere of fear in this country so that the military/industrial/oil/private central banking complex could start their fake war on terror which included attacking Afghanistan and Iraq.

The article, which was the most viewed for Thursday, February 14th, goes on to implicate the mainstream media and Congress as complicit in the events of 9/11. The reason? Oil.

Vice President Cheney met with the heads of the various oil companies right after Bush took office...They were talking about attacking Iraq in order to gain control of their oil fields. They were talking about attacking Afghanistan to take over the construction of a gas pipeline through Afghanistan.

What is interesting, of course, is that this view of America and 9/11 does not appear to be widely challenged in certain parts of the world. Tehran Times is one of the most widely read dailies in Iran, and they reported this story as truth, perpetuating the schema of Big Oil as a super villain.

Oil and Petrotyrants

Two news items from the oil world while I was "out" this week:
1.) Exxon moves to bring Venezuela to court for breech of contract. Big Oil Strikes Back at Petrotyrants. This move pushes against the trend of petrotyrants nationalizing their crude reserves, setting a trend to encourage further development in instable and oil-rich countries like Chad and Angola.
2.) Nigeria demanded that oil companies return to the delta. Oil Firms Ordered to Niger Delta. Many companies fled the area due to increased violence and kidnappings, and the Nigerian government's demonstrated inability to control local insurgents. The government claims it will kick countries out of the country if they refuse to do business in the most dangerous parts. Here we have the inverse of the previous event, with the government attempting to control the investments of international firms.
Overall, it is interesting to note the interaction between governments and corporations, and how they engage in a power struggle as near equals. Where do corporations fit into the Clausewitzian trinity? People? Or is the model of the trinity fundamentally unable to incorporate international business?

I can find the cafeteria, I'm oriented enough

No class for me this week, as I've been in orientation for my new awesome job which has nothing to do with oil, the Washington Post, or the Tehran Times.
Except it when it does.

Oil, Tehran Times, and How News Spreads

Tehran Times 1/29, at approx. 00:30 EST "Iranian Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari Monday reiterated that there was no need to supply more oil as the market was supplied sufficiently and its conditions were stable. "
No Oil Shortage in World Market: Oil Minister

Press TV-Iran 1/29, at approx 03:00 EST "Iran's Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari has said that there is no reason for OPEC member states of pump more crude into the market"
No Reason for OPEC Output Rise

Reuters 1/29, at approx. 09:00 EST "Iran's Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari was quoted in an Iranian newspaper as saying that 'there was no need to supply more oil as the market was supplied sufficiently and its conditions were stable.'"
Oil Above $91 as Rate Cut Hopes Lift Market

Blogging Stocks 1/29, at approx 14:22 EST "Iran's Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari said Tuesday that there's no reason for OPEC states to increase oil production, PressTV Iran reported."
Iran: No Need for OPEC to Increase Production

CNNMoney 1/29, at approx 23:19 EST "Prices were... getting support from expectations that OPEC will leave current production quotas unchanged when the 13-member oil cartel meets in Vienna on Friday for a crucial meeting about its output levels."
Oil Prices Above $92 in Morning Asian Trade

Okay, so what?
So this is how news travels. Tehran Times reports on statements by their Oil Minister. Another Iranian station picks up on the story, which in turn is posted to a stock blog after the end of trades Tuesday. The result is the story posted by CNNMoney - futures in oil are up by a dollar, buoyed in part by statements originally reported in the Tehran Times.
In less than 24 hours, statements made by one oil minister from one of the OPEC countries were impacting the Asian stock market four thousand miles away. That's the speed of information today.
At no point on this story's journey did any article mention the dubious journalism practiced by the Tehran Times. Likely the remarks of the Iranian Oil Minister were not fabricated, but some context might have been appropriate, especially considering what Iran stands to gain from rising oil prices.

Note: The Reuters story, including the quote from Gholam-Hossein Nozari, made it into the Washington Post. Nice to see my two papers tied together.
Note (part two): The pictured gentleman is Gholam-Hossein Nozari. The Farsi behind him reads, simply "oil".

Tehran Times Daily Headline: Islamic Revolution was one of history’s greatest events: Ahmadinejad
WTI/NYMEX: $92.37

Oil is to Blame for... Rising Global Unemployment

AllAfrica.com, a Washington-based news-aggregate site with a focus on the African continent, links to this story originally published by the Vanguard in Lagos. The article takes its information from a press release made by the International Labour Office(ILO)'s annual report on Global Employment Trends.
The headline of the article: Nigeria: Rising Oil Prices to Render 5m Unemployed, ILO Warns
The lede for the press release:

Economic turbulence largely due to credit market turmoil and rising oil prices could spur an increase in global unemployment by an estimated 5 million persons in 2008, the International Labour Office said today in its annual Global Employment Trends (GET) report.

Despite making the lede, surprisingly oil is not mentioned again in the article or press release. Turning to the actual report, we find:

For the first time, probably, turbulences in one economically strong region (namely, the Developed Economies & the EU region and upfront the United States as a result of higher oil prices and the US housing market turmoil) have, so far, not impacted on other regions. (emphasis mine)

Put simply, the press release and all subsequent articles written on the GET report fingered rising oil prices as a culprit for rising unemployment across the globe, when what the report actually claims is the rising oil prices have not had the anticipated effect on unemployment, and indeed that more people are employed than ever before.

It is rather incredible that the press release for the report would be so misleading, but a headline blaming unemployment on rising oil prices probably makes intuitive sense to a public that has been fed Big Bad Oil stories for years. As discussed in Robert Entman's Projections of Power, news that fits into an accepted schema is highly unlikely to be contested. A brief search online concludes that the press release was noted but not analyzed.

WTI/NYMEX: $90.13

Oil is to Blame for... the Recession

President Bush pleaded with Saudi leaders today for an increase in OPEC production, claiming that high oil prices might cause a U.S. economic slowdown (International Herald Tribune).

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that the falling price of a barrel of oil indicates a future recession.

So which is it? High oil prices will cause a recession, or dropping oil prices are the canary in the recession mine?
"Big Oil" is today's handlebar mustachioed villain, today's robber baron. Although recessions and wars have been pinned on it, oil is not a sufficiency - oil alone does not explain the 2003 invasion of Iraq, nor any other social, political, or economic crisis. One of the issues I'll be charting in this journal is the scapegoating of the oil industry, as well as instances when oil truly is a necessary factor.

West Texas Intermediate (WTI)/Light Crude futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX): $91.71