AZspot AZspot

blue bits. red rocks.
Sunday 7 February 2010

The entire six-year saga of American energy dreams, policies, and pressures in Iraq has so far yielded little — no significant increase in Iraq’s oil production, no increase in its future capacity to produce, and no increase in its energy exports. The grand ambition of transferring actual control of the oil industry into the hands of the international oil companies has proven no less stillborn. Over the years since the U.S. began its energy campaign, production has actually languished, sometimes falling as much as 40% below the pre-invasion levels of an industry already held together by duct tape and ingenuity. In the Brookings Institution’s latest figures for December 2009, production stood at 2.4 million barrels per day, a full 100,000 barrels lower than the pre-war daily average. Will Iraq’s Oil Ever Flow?

A GNT creation ©2007–2012