November 2000 : Saddam Hussein announces Iraqi oil will be priced in euros, not US dollars.

March 2003 :




Mid-2003 : Iraq's oil goes back to being priced in US dollars, not euros.

November 2009 :

“The idea that an oil company was participating in the drafting of the Iraqi Constitution leaves me speechless”

100,000 to 1 million : Number of Iraqis estimated to have been violently killed during the War On Iraq.

5 million : Number of Iraqi children left orphaned by the War On Iraq.

6000 : Approximate number of coalition government and American private corporation soldiers and agents killed during the War On Iraq.

1 in 4 American soldiers returning from Iraq require ongoing medical and mental health care.

70% of Iraqi children are believed to be suffering trauma-related symptoms as a result of the War On Iraq.

(source)

115 billion barrels : Iraq's estimated oil wealth

340,000 barrels : Estimate of oil consumed by the Pentagon per day.

Possessing the world's largest fleet of modern aircraft, helicopters, ships, tanks, armored vehicles, and support systems - virtually all powered by oil - the Department of Defense (DoD) is the world's leading consumer of petroleum.

.

Thanks Idiot

This warpig helped to add about eight to twelve cents to the price of every litre of petrol you will buy in the second half of June and early May :

Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz...,said in a newspaper interview that "if Iran continues its nuclear weapons programme, we will attack it."

"Other options are disappearing. The sanctions are not effective. There will be no alternative but to attack Iran in order to stop the Iranian nuclear programme..."

He stressed that such an operation could only be conducted with US support.

The left-leaning Haaretz newspaper published scathing criticism of Mofaz on its front page and cited reports that the minister's remarks caused the price of a barrel of crude oil to rise by 11 dollars.

While Kevin Rudd is going after OPEC nations for high oil prices, he should also be condemning warpigs and oil speculators whose appalling behaviour and psychotic greed is now threatening the health and lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world. Forcing the price of oil up even higher through abhorrent stock market speculation or by spreading financial terror and unease through promises of greater war in the Middle East ruins economies and fuels price rises all overs supermarket shelves. The poor, as usual, will suffer most because of this idiot's fear mongering.

That threatening/promising war can add about ten cents or so to a litre of petrol makes the plans by Rudd and Brendan Nelson to do little more than shave off a few cents, at the most, seem almost pitiful.

If our allies launch a new front in the expanding world war, FuelWatch will only be good for watching fuel prices bash through $2 a litre, then quickly sprint towards $3.

Alexander Downer Lobbied Washington, Baghdad In 2003 On Behalf Of BHP

Excerpts from this Sydney Morning Herald article :

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, warned BHP Billiton that pushing for control of an Iraqi oilfield straight after invasion would be "very sensitive" because the US-led coalition had made it clear "there would not be blood for oil".

Despite this Mr Downer agreed he would raise the company's claim over the huge Halfayah oilfield with Washington and the head of the post-war occupation government in Iraq, Paul Bremer, according to documents released yesterday by the Cole inquiry into the Oil for Food scandal.

A highly confidential record of the meeting between Mr Downer and BHP Billiton executives written by the Department of Foreign Affairs details their discussion of the project in London in May 2003, only weeks after the Saddam Hussein government fell.

The document reveals an extraordinary effort by BHP Billiton to get its share of the Halfayah oilfield, one of the richest in the country, by lobbying the key players in postwar Iraq.

The executives told Mr Downer the company had already lobbied Arthur Sinodinos, the chief adviser to the Prime Minister, John Howard, and were about to approach Downing Street and the US Vice-President Dick Cheney.

In a frank assessment of the power structure under the occupation government in Baghdad, the executives told Mr Downer they had a key contact there, the former boss of Shell Oil in America, Philip Carroll, who had been hand-picked by the White House to advise the new Iraqi oil minister. Mr Carroll also had a number of Iraqi exiles with him who had worked for the Iraqi Oil Ministry.

"The Australian Government had said sincerely that it had not joined coalition forces on the basis of oil," Mr Downer is recorded saying. "Wise judgement suggested it was the Iraqis themselves who needed to be awarding the oil contracts.

"That said, Mr Downer agreed he would raise the matter both in Washington and in Baghdad with Paul Bremer. He would also have it raised with the Oil Ministry in Baghdad."

The document also clearly sets out of the first time that real relationship between BHP Billiton and the controversial company Tigris, its joint venture partner in Iraq.

Tigris has been accused in evidence to the Cole inquiry of being involved in a major fraud in the UN's Oil For Food program to assist Australia's wheat trader, AWB.

According to the document, Mr Harley told Mr Downer: "Tigris was responsible for maintaining relationships with [Saddam Hussein's] Iraq by working Oil for Food projects until a normal political situation could be established in Iraq.

"This arrangement was judged by all parties to give Australia the maximum chance of securing the Halfayah field investment."

The Cole inquiry also released a bundle of new documents from AWB and the UN supporting evidence to the Cole inquiry that AWB knowingly paid hundreds of millions of dollars in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime to maintain its wheat contracts in Iraq.

Several Iraqi documents written by Saddam Hussein's officials between August and December 2000 detail orders to Iraqi ministers to collect kickbacks and fees on humanitarian shipments to Iraq under the UN Oil for Food program and transfer the money back into government coffers.

The Full Story Is Here