Jun 30, 2008 11:11 pm US/Central
In The Know: Did We Invade For Oil?
(WCCO)
Telling the press that Iraq should be the second or third largest producing oil country in the world, its oil minister threw open the door for foreign oil companies to bid on the right to come in and help Iraq reach that goal. Don Shelby said, insiders hint that U.S. and British companies have the inside track.
A cynic might say that the U.S. and Britain are leading contenders because those two countries led the fight to get rid of Saddam Hussein. A cynic has said that oil was the real reason the coalition invaded in the first place.
Now, U.S. companies are in the running to pump out the 115 billion barrels of proven reserves in the deserts of Iraq, a number that could rise to 350 billion barrels if you add unproven reserves. British Petroleum and Shell are in the hunt, too.
Iraq has the second largest proven reserves in the Arab world, behind Saudi Arabia. If Iraq's oil can come to the market at five billion barrels per day, in five years or so, that could bring down the price at the pump a few cents.
But the question remains.
Did the U.S. invade Iraq for the oil, or did the U.S. invade Iraq to keep al Qaeda from controlling the oil? If either of those turn out to be true, I sure wish someone in government had said so.
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