Libya: So it was all about oil after all!

Last year NATO countries bombed Libya, demanding “democracy” in the country. But now it’s clear it was all about oil and it’s not like the Americans and Brits are going to be democratic about it, and share those spoils equally with France and Italy.

So… oil giants Total from France and ENI from Italy are just going to have to wait in the sidelines while the hungry American and British big boys take their juicy oil slices first… ExxonMobil, Chevron, Texaco, BP, Shell…  It’s no surprise then to read in The Wall Street Journal that the US Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), together with the puppet Libyan “authorities” are launching “investigations” into both companies’ “financial irregularities” in their shady dealings during the forty-two years of Gaddafi’s power.  Now who would have imagined this!  An Italian oil company involved in kick-backs?   Corruption at the highest echelons of the French oil industry?!?   Tsk, tsk!!!  Unheard of…!    The US and UK would never do something like that!!   Just ask Enron, ask Halliburton, ask BP…Clearly, major oil companies will now be judged on how close or how far they were from the Gaddafi’s, and on how much their respective countries contributed to last year’s war effort.  Perhaps even on how much and how far and wide they shared their huge ill-obtained profits.  It seems that scorecards must now be completed…It’s worth remembering that at the height of the Libyan fighting last year, the “rebels” found the necessary time, between their “freedom fighting” shifts, to set up a new national oil company.  As Bloomberg reported on 22nd March 2011, “The Transitional National Council released a statement announcing the decision made at a March 19 meeting to establish the “Libyan Oil Company as supervisory authority on oil production and policies in the country, based temporarily in Benghazi, and the appointment of an interim director general” of the company.”And just as big oil and big finance always dance together, that report then went on to explain that “The Council also said it “designated the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and the appointment of a governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi.”   Like Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, or Abelard and Eloise, Oil and Money are probably the West’s most universal and paradigmatic duo.  Their love affair has been going strong for many decades. Oil is a mighty powerful global business.  Oil companies can make or break governments and entire countries.  Nationalizing a foreign oil company like Iran did in the early fifties can put the CIA and MI6 spy agencies into full-gear ousting democratically elected governments and replacing them with “more suitable leaders'.   Trading oil in any currency other than the US Dollar as Saddam Hussein dared to do in November 2002 can get you invaded just a few months later.  Even weak Argentina’s finger-pointing at illegal British oil escapades in the Falkland Islands resulted in the Royal Navy dispatching super destroyers and nuclear subs to the region… Libya is the world’s 9th largest oil producing country and holds Africa’s largest oil reserve.  Gaddafi was planning to introduce a new currency for Libyan and regional oil: the Gold Dinar which, contrary to the US Dollar, would have had true intrinsic value.  Gaddafi’s central bank, in turn, was fully independent of the global financial usury-based system presently in global free-fall.  Gaddafi was using oil revenues for his own people and not for the US/UK/EU/Israeli war efforts in the Middle East and further afield. So, when the Persian Gulf became the very, very hot spot it is today, the global oil cartel together with the mega-bankers who shuffle those trillions upon trillions of Petro-Dollars all over the world, had to make sure that their respective governments would put their military on red-alert, as the oil giants scrambled for new sources… The focus is increasingly on oil fields lying in “kinder, gentler” parts of the world: the Falkland Islands, the Brazilian Coasts, and Libya that lies smack in the middle of that easy-to-attack “it’s our-bloody-Mediterranean-Sea” North African Coast. Last year’s destruction of Libya was a reflection of just this type of complex behind-the-scenes engineering of all these key oil, financial, military, media and political players.  It’s the kind of Real News that seldom if ever hits the headlines… just because it is the Real News!  During the better part of last year until the public execution of Muhamar Gaddafi by the Western Power’s proxies inside Libya – i.e., mercenaries, criminals, thugs and CIA/MI6/Mossad agents, aka “Freedom Fighters” – the Western media repeated time and again how very bad Gaddafi had suddenly become overnight; how the poor Libyans were clamouring for “democracy”; and how the heroic Libyan “freedom fighters” based, armed, trained and financed in Benghazi were battling to “liberate” Libya and impose Clintonite “democracy” and “human rights”.  Actually these “freedom fighters” overshot their runway: now that Libya is finally “free”, they’re asking for the Eastern Cyrenaica region to secede from the rest of the country.  Was civil war part of the West’s plan for Libya?  Last year, after securing full UN backing via Resolution No. 1973 allowing NATO air strikes to devastate the country and impose the most violent regime change seen in recent times, NATO-backed thugs have plunged the country into chaos.   As the “Libya Business News” publication mentions on Tuesday, “About 3,000 people gathered in Benghazi last month to announce that Barca (Cyrenaica) was an autonomous region within a federal state. Barca is at the centre of Libya’s oil industry, with two thirds of production and three quarters of reserves there.” It is one of the three historic regions into which the country is divided. And while Barca has the most oil, the other two is home to two thirds of the population. So the question now is how the rich revenues from rich oil reserves will be “democratically” distributed among the population.

Adrian Salbuchi for RT

Adrian Salbuchi is a political analyst, author, speaker and radio/TV commentator in Argentina. www.asalbuchi.com.arDisclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in the story are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.