By Cecilia Keehan
Professor Michael Watts, Director of International Studies and Professor of Geography at the University of California at Berkeley, came to the Morning Forum of Los Altos, June 1, to discuss “The Relationship of Oil to Imperialism and the Making of the Modern World.”
He said he didn’t believe that the present war in Iraq is about oil. The problem has never been about scarcity, he said, but about acquisition. He said the first Gulf War was an effort to preserve American power.
He believes that we need some kind of divine intervention, as a result of our reliance on oil and our unfortunate affection for it. This focus has been so pervasive, that the lead story in the latest issue of National Geographic is “The End of Cheap Oil,” he said.
Watts wondered how profound the oil crisis is and how it might compromise our style of living. Speculation about transitioning to other fuel sources may happen, he said, and the consequences may be enormous.
He raised several questions concerned with the relationship of oil and war, specifically, U.S. occupation of Iraq.
He raised questions about how oil influences national security and foreign policy, and finally, the relationship between oil and radical Islam. The religious Islam becomes political Islam, Watts said. He pointed out that some forms of political Islam are not militant.
He flagged a few issues concerning the political economy of petroleum. The latest issue of National Geographic, he said, also features an Iowa couple with the contents of their home displayed on their lawn. This was meant to demonstrate how much we depend on oil. In a related feature, an Iowa farmer is shown standing next to a bull. Watts said it took five barrels of oil to get the bull to its present girth through the use of fertilizer and other petroleum based products.
National Geographic pointed out that the price we pay now for gas is substantially higher than it was a few years back, but it’s also cheaper now than it was 25 years ago. Is it a reflection of the real cost of oil? No.
The professor said the one calculation that the magazine failed to include is the cost of military installations around the world. Bush recently appropriated $100 million to keep rebels away from oil, he said. Watts reassured the audience that we were not running out of oil. He joked that the Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones.
The United States, he said, accounts for a disproportionate amount of oil use. Citing proven reserves, he agreed that the public needs to know about the reserves, but the amount is finite.
Of the proven oil reserves, Watts said that 75 percent are located in a geographical zone in the Middle East. In the past 30 years, global reserves have increased, but in time, will flatten out.
The immediate geopolitical issue concerns the proportion of reserves that is in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, and this is a concern for both George Bush and Tony Blair. Oil production, he said, has almost certainly peaked. Even oil giant Shell recently confessed publicly that it exaggerated its known reserves by more than 20 percent.
Watts said when the United States is no longer wrapped up in Saudi Arabia, the country will then be able to turn its gaze to Canada and Alaska with reserves as large as OPEC’s. In addition, Canada may be a more secure supplier of oil. Earlier predictions stated that by the year 2000, global oil production would peak, but the latest projections are that it will happen later, most likely by 2010 or possibly 2040 or 2060, he observed.
Watts said that about $250 billion in oil money is in the hands of Saudi Arabian leaders. Although oil companies pulled out of Nigeria more than 40 years ago, Nigeria’s oil wealth still consists of sales of $400 billion, $60 billion of which is unaccounted for. Watt’s belief is that the money is likely to be in European banks.
