The world is about to change, for the better….
1967 and Israel wiped out the Egyptian Airforce in a single raid. All the Egyptian fighter aircraft disabled on the ground and none made it to the air – well, that’s the story anyway.
Into the Egyptian territories of Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula, whipped Jordan and kicked them out of Jerusalem and pushed right to the West Bank of the Jordan River. The fortified high ground of Syria’s Golan Heights as well.
That was three surrounding countries, all bigger, all with larger armies, all beaten off simultaneously. Not just beaten, but their air forces destroyed, armies pushed back and the war was over in just six days. Iraqi air force was chopped to bits as well.
WOW.
And the world crowed, cheering the success of plucky little Israel.
Truly, it did.
How times change huh?
The Arab world was pissed off, I mean, well pissed off, but what could they do? They were militarily impotent and frustrated as hell.
So they did something. Some bright spark came up with an idea of going after not Israel, but her supporters. Making life dreadful for everyone else until they started putting pressure on the hated enemy.
How? Easy, OPEC.
Now, OPEC had been founded in 1960, but no one had taken much notice until the Arab members roused it into action in 1973, after another fracas with Israel, the Yom Kippur war.
Then we noticed. Boy, did we notice, oil was cut back, prices jacked up, and we have been beholden to the oil exporters of the Arab world since.
These guys are rich, they are now very very rich. Ok, the people are not, not on a per capita GDP basis anyway, but some individuals are, and the governments have loadsa cash to play with. Cash which they don’t have to account to taxpayers for.
So, they use oil to threaten and intimidate, and cash to bribe and influence. How many universities world wide have established Islamic Studies departments with Saudi cash? Biased towards Arab viewpoints and Wahhabist ideology?
Cambridge (England) and Harvard (Mass)? Both traded their credibility for Saudi cash, and others.
Money has been spent, threats have been hinted at, friends have been made.
It all worked too, now, forty years later, who talks of plucky little Israel?
Apartheid Israel.
Racist Israel.
Warmonger Israel.
Nazi Israel.
What’s changed?
Oil, that’s what. Oh sure, part of it is the left hates success, and Israel is the lefts greatest (only?) success, but that’s bye the bye.
Oil buys influence, and Israel, free, open and democratic Israel, doesn’t have any and the thug states surrounding it do.
Ok, they don’t, but other Middle Eastern thug states do, and that’s what matters.
How much oil do these people have? How much oil is there?
Well, conventional reserves, world wide, are somewhere between 1 trillion barrels and 1.3 trillion. Of that, Saudi Arabia has 250 Billion barrels – somewhere between 20-25% of total conventional reserves (although, Saudi has been reporting those same reserve levels for years – they just don’t seem to deplete). Iraq has about 143 billion barrels, Iran has 138, and Kuwait has 104.
So, just this little group of Israel’s hatemongering and vitriolic enemies control over half the worlds confirmed conventional reserves of oil.
We have all heard the old saw about how Moses should have turned right after his stroll across the Red Sea, rather than the left turn he actually took, plonking his chums down on the one spot in the entire middle east where there is no oil.
Or did he?
Now we get to non conventional supplies of oil.
Have you heard of oil shale? Oil held not in fluid reservoirs but impregnating shale? There is a lot of this stuff, a real real lot. America for instance, has an estimated 2 trillion barrels of oil locked up in oil shale. Yep, that’s right, 2 trillion barrels. Just the US, by itself, has an amount equal to about twice the worlds proven conventional reserves.
The US doesn’t dig the stuff up mainly for regulatory reasons, it is all locked away and the clean and cost effective extraction technology is only pretty new and the disputes are being worked out. However, one country has strong reason to cut through all that guff and get the industry moving.
Venezuela has about the same as the US, but given its (roughly) 300 billion barrels of cheap conventional reserves it is in no great hurry to exploit it, and ,next, is, well, Israel, with somewhere between 250 and 500 billion barrels in the Shfela Basin, south east of Jerusalem .Yep, when it comes to oil shale Israel has reserves at least equal to those of Saudi Arabia and maybe equal to those of Saudi, plus Iraq, plus Iran.
Game change anyone?
Now, this stuff hasn’t been exploited in the past because it was both too costly and too environmentally damaging, but that has all changed. We now know how to extract the stuff without poisoning the land, and as long as prices are over $35 per barrel it can be done at a profit too.
And Israel has real and immediate reason to take advantage of its suddenly exploitable luck. Think of the game change if Israel can shaft OPEC and engineer a glut of oil on the market. Could Iran or Saudi cope if oil suddenly halved in price? To between $60 and $70 per barrel? They’d still make oodles of cash, but they have oodles of clients too, all sucking at that oleiferous teat. Loads of friends in both the Middle East and the West would suddenly find themselves cut off and having to work for a living.
Mosques in Dearbourn and Bradford, jihadis in Beirut and London, all thrown onto their own resources.
Politicians suddenly bereft of delightful gifts and holiday hosts.
Propaganda no longer financed.
Back to an era of cheap energy for world manufacturing and transport. God! Even more reason for the red Greens to hate Israel.
As a telling side issue, you know the oil majors aren’t involved? Apparently they aren’t working with this free and open society because they don’t want to take the risk of offending Muslims and being cut off from access to the thug states. The whole effort is being driven by Zionist (that is not a pejorative term on this site) businessmen such as Lord Rothschild and Rupert Murdoch.
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