Correction: we are not infiltrating Egypt to keep a tight lid on Nile tributaries, we want to infiltrate Egypt and keep a tight lid on Nile tributaries, necessary for Egyptians to survive.
1.3 billion reasons to worry about oil China to rival U.S. as oil guzzler
Today, nearly 60 percent of China's oil imports come from that region. Through bilateral agreements, rather than international mechanisms, and using arms sales and dual-use technology transfers - nuclear equipment, guidance systems for missiles - to cement ties, China has obtained oil exploration and exploitation rights in some of the most turbulent nations in the Middle East and North Africa - Iran, Sudan, Libya, Algeria and, until the recent war, Iraq.
Iran does have access to Chinese arms and dual-use technology transfers as seem in the Chinese-origin navigation system on the Shihab-3.
1.3 billion reasons to worry about oil China to rival U.S. as oil guzzler
Tuesday 17th August 2004
American leaders have good reason to worry about the price of oil. Oil price shocks can play a decisive role in ending a presidency, as in the cases of Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush. The Nov. 2 election may well hinge on the cooling of the economic recovery caused by sustained high levels of oil prices. But that's not really what the next president should be so concerned about. The real oil shocks - much more damaging and sustained than ever before - will come a bit later, but much sooner than anyone had expected, from a part of the world not even discussed seriously in the current campaign: China.
With 1.3 billion people, a phenomenal rate of economic growth, and an insatiable consumer demand for cars, China will soon come into direct conflict with the United States over oil, the world's most valuable and increasingly scarce industrial commodity.
The pressure on supply will inevitably jack up prices to levels that would make today's motorists and electricity customers blanch.
The conflict is unavoidable. It could create geopolitical tensions and cause dramatic shifts in U.S. foreign policy that may overshadow today's preoccupation with global terrorism. And there are no easy solutions to avert it, only regrets over this nation's missed opportunities in decades past to develop viable alternative energy sources to lessen U.S. dependence on imported oil.
Any such program, initiated today, will take far too long to bear fruit in time to avoid an economic and political clash with China over oil.
Just a quick glimpse at the figures involved makes clear the dimensions of the problem. China's economic growth has bubbled along at a steamy pace of 8 to 10 percent a year for the past decade.
With that growth, private auto sales in that vast nation have skyrocketed from token levels 10 years ago - only 220,000 were sold as recently as 1999 - to nearly 2 million this year. Last year alone, China's automobile sales increased by a staggering 69 percent.
More cars than U.S. by 2030
It's estimated that China could have nearly 30 million automobiles by 2010. By 2030, China is expected to have more cars than the United States and import as much oil as the U.S. does today.
Already, China has overtaken Japan as the world's second biggest importer of oil, after the United States. And its appetite is huge and growing. As Daniel Yergin of Cambridge Energy Research Associates puts it, "China has gone from being a minor player in world commodity markets, if a player at all, to being the decisive dynamic factor today. In terms of oil, 40 percent of the entire growth in oil demand since the year 2000 has been China."
In this quarter alone, China's demand for oil is projected to increase 21 percent. That follows a 19-percent increase during the first quarter of this year.
Nor are Chinese consumers, especially those in the growing middle class produced by a booming technology sector, particularly interested in fuel-efficient small cars. Gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles are not simply an American passion. They are in great demand in China, too.
In a report from China broadcast on National Public Radio in June, a 35-year-old woman in Beijing, Sia Lan, an executive in China's expanding advertising industry, said she, like many other of her friends, prefers to drive SUVs. "I have a sedan car, too, which I used to drive to work because my Jeep guzzles a lot more gas," she said. "But I prefer my Jeep because I can see over all the other cars."
A Chinese environmentalist, Liang Congjie, is distressed by the implications. "If each Chinese family has two cars like U.S. families, then the cars needed by China, something like 600 million vehicles, will exceed all the cars in the world combined."
The prospect is daunting, not only for the effects it would have on the world's production of greenhouse gases to accelerate global warming, but also for the incredible pressure it would put on the world's oil supply.
Just 10 years ago, China was self-sufficient in oil and actually exported small quantities to other Asian nations. Now, imports account for more than one- third of Chinese oil consumption. And rather than relying on foreign oil companies to supply it with oil, China wants its own oil firms to go directly overseas to secure supply sources it can exploit itself.
Clash with U.S. in Mideast
This is where China's quest for more oil will come directly in conflict with the concerns of U.S. foreign policy - particularly in the Middle East.
During the Cold War, China stayed away from the Middle East. That region's geographic distance and political instability deterred it from securing ties with its major oil-exporting nations and, at least until a decade ago, the old China of ox carts and bicycles did not need to import oil.
But now the Middle East and relations with oil-producing nations have become key interests in China's foreign policy, perhaps second only to its obsession with Taiwan.
Exploring the world
Today, nearly 60 percent of China's oil imports come from that region. Through bilateral agreements, rather than international mechanisms, and using arms sales and dual-use technology transfers - nuclear equipment, guidance systems for missiles - to cement ties, China has obtained oil exploration and exploitation rights in some of the most turbulent nations in the Middle East and North Africa - Iran, Sudan, Libya, Algeria and, until the recent war, Iraq.
The case of Sudan, where international concern for the humanitarian disaster in the Darfur region is intensifying, puts China's role in perspective. It illustrates how Beijing's oil interests could come in direct conflict with U.S. policy.
Chinese troops in Sudan
While Washington has begged the world - and pressured the United Nations Security Council - to send peacekeeping troops to Sudan to quell the sectarian fighting that has put a million refugees at risk, China has already deployed 4,000 troops to Sudan. But those troops are there only to protect China's investment in an oil pipeline. China is concerned that civil unrest could wreck the oil project. It has actually been hostile to U.S. pressure to impose economic sanctions on the Arab government in Khartoum, a key Chinese client, buyer of Chinese arms and partner in oil exploration.
It was also telling that China was a major opponent at the Security Council of the war against Iraq, in large part because China had obtained prospective contracts with Saddam Hussein for exclusive exploitation of some oil fields. But perhaps the most worrisome prospect for U.S. policymakers is China's burgeoning attempt to secure ties with Saudi Arabia, the world's arbiter of the oil market, taking advantage of the Saudi regime's tensions with Washington since the 9/11 attacks.
All these are disquieting harbingers of Beijing's coming conflict with the United States over oil. It will come sooner than expected and the United States is not prepared for it. This president or his successor must, at the very least, alert the nation about its consequences, initiate a national conversation about it and encourage a program of energy conservation to alleviate the obvious economic pressures we will all face.
China's need for oil is the proverbial 800-pound gorilla in the room, and no one seems willing to confront it or even acknowledge it - until it's too late.
UN: U.S. Seeks More Pressure On Sudan To Stop Darfur Atrocities
U.S. officials have circulated a new draft resolution in the UN Security Council that seeks stronger measures to end the rampant human rights abuses still being committed in Sudan. The resolution includes a reference for the first time to sanctions on Sudan's oil trade and a call for bolstering international monitors there.
The proposed sanctions on Sudan's oil trade are for the most part directed toward China.
Note: China uses Sudan not only for their oil; Sudan is also the base for Chinese oil operations elsewhere in Africa. And it appears China is willing to trade weapons for oil to Sudan’s radical Islamist government among others.
"China has sought energy cooperation with countries of concern to the United States, including Iran and Sudan, which are inaccessible by U.S. and other western firms. Some analysts have voiced suspicions that China may have offered WMD-related transfers as a component of some of its energy deals," noted the Commission. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/6/17/135930.shtml #msg-3645404
The main investor in the Sudanese oil industry is the China National Petroleum Company, and China is Sudan’s biggest trading partner overall.[2] It has been alleged that there are Chinese soldiers in Sudan protecting Chinese oil interests there, and that these troops have engaged in skirmishes with the rebels.[3] Moreover, while there are numerous foreign oil companies present in Sudan, it is precisely in Southern Darfur that the Chinese National Petroleum Company has its concessions. USAID, the American humanitarian agency, has helpfully provided a map of Sudan showing precisely where the oil concessions are. http://www.usaid.gov/locations/sub-saharan_africa/sudan/map_oil.pdf) #msg-3678761 #msg-3758175
Because Sudan is as a ‘country of concern’ along with Iran the United States can only watch as other countries avail themselves of oil and gas from these two large producers. A predicament the United States will attempt to remedy by various means.
It is only now that Sudan has become a base for Chinese oil operations that we are ‘concerned’ about the Sudanese.
-Am
UN: U.S. Seeks More Pressure On Sudan To Stop Darfur Atrocities By Robert McMahon
Thursday, 09 September 2004
Darfur refugees in Chad (file photo)
U.S. officials have circulated a new draft resolution in the UN Security Council that seeks stronger measures to end the rampant human rights abuses still being committed in Sudan. The resolution includes a reference for the first time to sanctions on Sudan's oil trade and a call for bolstering international monitors there. The council is due to discuss the draft today. At the same time, a U.S. State Department report may indicate whether U.S. officials regard the Darfur actions as genocide.
United Nations, 9 September 2004 (RFE/RL) -- The UN Security Council is to discuss today a U.S. proposal to increase pressure on the Sudanese government to end abuses that have led to the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
About 40 days after an initial warning from the council, Sudan has failed to rein in militias which continue to carry out attacks, killing, raping, and assaulting villagers in the western part of the country.
Now the U.S. government has circulated a resolution which calls on Sudan to take new steps -- such as submitting names of militiamen disarmed and arrested for rights abuses -- to end what it calls a "climate of impunity." It demands the government stop all military flights over the western region of Darfur and supports a UN call for a much larger monitoring force.
The measure also asks UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to establish an international commission of inquiry to investigate all human rights abuses in Darfur.
The draft does not use the word "sanctions" but makes reference to possible future actions "with regard to the petroleum sector" in the event Sudan's government does not comply.
U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher explained the purpose behind the new measure yesterday: "The most appropriate step at this time is to specify what needs to be done to help people on the ground in Sudan. Imposing new sanctions at this time may or may not help people on the ground in Sudan. We know that adding African Union monitors will make them safer. We know that ceasing government flights will make them safer. We know that monitoring overflights can make them safer. And what we're focused on in this resolution is things that can be done right now by the government, but also by the international community, to make the people of Darfur safer."
The international community has assisted Sudanese civilians with humanitarian aid but has been unable to stop what many rights experts label an ethnic-cleansing campaign in Darfur. The conflict has already killed more than 30,000 people and caused 1.2 million to flee their homes.
There are currently about 80 military observers from the African Union in the vast region of Darfur, protected by about 300 soldiers. They are monitoring a cease-fire signed by the government and rebel groups.
UN special envoy Jan Pronk has asked Sudan to permit more than 3,000 troops into the region. Sudan has resisted a larger force but its foreign minister said in Japan yesterday that the government had asked for more monitors from the African Union. "I do favor a much larger presence, preferably I think under UN auspices, to protect people who are being victimized. I frankly think that's more important than sanctions on the Khartoum government against oil or anything else."
Robert Johansen is a senior fellow at the Kroc Institute of International Peace Studies and professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame. He told RFE/RL that a robust international force with policing powers is essential to protect civilians and eventually allow them to return home. "I do favor a much larger presence, preferably I think under UN auspices, to protect people who are being victimized," he said. "I frankly think that's more important than sanctions on the Khartoum government against oil or anything else."
Sudan produces an estimated 250,000 barrels of oil per day and its customers include China and Pakistan, two Security Council members that oppose sanctions.
The issue of oil sanctions is likely to be sensitive in the Security Council but should be raised, said Princeton Lyman, a former U.S. diplomat in Africa and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, an independent policy institute. "The pressure on Sudan, even if they can't get it through the Security Council, to talk about sanctions on the oil trade is something I felt we ought to be talking about for a long time. [The threat of oil sanctions] ought to be out there -- even the thought that if the UN can't do it, maybe selectively other countries will. Because those are the only sanctions that would really hurt," Lyman said.
Lyman also stressed the importance of the political talks taking place in Nigeria between representatives of the Sudanese government and two rebel groups from Darfur. Fighting broke out in Darfur in early 2003 over scarce land and water resources. Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, escalated the fighting by targeting villagers, who have fled into camps or into neighboring Chad.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell will brief a U.S. Senate committee today on a report that says the government of Sudan has promoted systematic killings in Darfur based on race and ethnic origin. It's uncertain whether Powell will label the violence as genocide, which could create a strong legal case for a military intervention. author biography
see also: U.S. Declares Genocide in Sudan's Darfur
Sept. 9, 2004 — By Saul Hudson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States declared on Thursday genocide has occurred in Sudan's Darfur region and blamed the Khartoum government and Arab militias for the crisis that has driven more than a million people from their homes. http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20040909_220.html
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