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Introduction: Beginning with discussion of Saudi Arabia’s strategic use of its oil wealth in Lebanon and other Arab nations, the program underscores a number of recent developments relative to the ongoing investigation of 9/11 and related matters. Of particular significance is the economic impact of petroleum wealth. In addition to the enormous wealth possessed by Saudi Arabia and the political power that stems from that largesse, the significance of the flow of capital into the Arab oil producing countries for the globalized economy is of primary importance to the discussion. Saudi Arabia’s growing economic power has strengthened its hand in Lebanese politics, where Saudi capital was the dominant force behind the political career of the late Rafic (also Rafiq) Hariri. Arab countries have threatened to move wealth out of dollar-denominated assets and into Euros as an expression of displeasure over the U.S. negation of the Dubai Ports World takeover of operations at major U.S. seaports. This could prove very threatening to the bankrupt United States. Despite public statements to the contrary, it is not at all clear that Dubai Ports World will be completely abandoning the deal. Although officially a U.S. ally, the UAE has been very supportive of Islamist terrorist elements. In that regard, the UAE can join Saudi Arabia and Pakistan—also officially allies in the war on terror—as countries that supported Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
Program Highlights Include: Discussion of possible culprits in the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri; review of the profound connections between organized crime, corporate power and Islamist terror; review of the profound connections between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and international fascism; the Pakistani foreign service’s successful lobbying program to get the U.S. to drop mention of that country’s role in 9/11; review of Pakistani weapons dealer R.G. Abbas’s foreknowledge of 9/11; indications that Dubai Ports World will retain control over its Miami operations; the possibility that Dubai Ports World may retain a 49% interest in U.S. port operations despite official reports to the contrary; review of the new, successful development and application of I.G. Farben’s hydrogenation process for producing synthetic fuel.
1. Much of the first side of the program deals with Saudi funding of Lebanese politics, a subject central to discussion of the recently-assassinated politician Rafic Hariri. Killed by a powerful bomb, Hariri was a Saudi protégé whose business and political careers were underwritten by Saudi capital. As can bee seen, there is no shortage of possibilities concerning the precise identity of the malefactors who killed Hariri. Did Syrian forces kill him? Were the U.S. and Saudi Arabia looking to supplant the secular government of Lebanon with a Muslim Brotherhood government? Were they planning a similar development in Syria? Note that the Saudis have deliberately cultivated Lebanon (as well as other Middle Eastern nations) as proxies against Israel, utilizing their enormous, petroleum-derived wealth.
“ . . . Today, the Sauds entertain good relations with Syria, which preserves a traditional reverse alliance against Israel, and against Iraq since 1990. If necessary, this could prove useful against the Hashemites of Jordan, historical enemies whom the Sauds dispossessed of Hedjaz and the holy places at the beginning of the century. Everything augurs well for future relations with Damascus, since one of the designated Crown Prince’s wives — Hassa al-Chaalane — is Syrian and, what is more, sister; of the wife of Rifaat el-Assad, the brother of the Syrian president who is thus the brother-in-law of the next King of Arabia. These family and tribal relations can only consolidate a Riyadh-Damascus axis. . . . .”
2. One of the reasons for the Saudi diplomatic hegemony in this part of the Arab world is their ongoing control of Arab attitudes toward Palestine.
“ . . . ‘In fact,’ a former French ambassador to Riyadh summarizes, ‘Saudi Arabia forms (with Egypt and Syria) a self-sufficient ‘decision- making triangle’ for everything that generally relates to shaping the Arab attitude with respect to the Palestinian question. It is an undeniable success of the Sauds’ ‘Arab diplomacy.’ Indeed, it is traditionally admitted that no war against Israel is possible without Egypt, and no peace without Syria. In spite of its significant funding capacities, Saudi Arabia — a giant banker, but a dwarf soldier — is in no position to be a major actor in the Israeli-Palestinian process. But, in this ‘decision- making triangle’ with Egypt and Syria, it is placed on an equal footing with two Arab partners that are strategically much greater than itself. Lebanon is emblematic of the immense Saudi capacities of financing, and is tactically key for Saudi sponsorship of Islamist movements. Having little strategic importance — even though it is on the front line vis-à-vis Israel — Lebanon indeed arouses Riyadh’s interest completely out of proportion to its weight on the regional scene. All the great Saudi families are economically omnipresent in Beirut, and Riyadh regularly supports the exchange rate of the Lebanese currency. The principal pan-Arab newspapers, initially Lebanese, are controlled today by Saudi finance; the Lebanese former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri himself owes a good share of his personal fortune to the royal family, which conceded to him a quasi-monopoly over the construction and maintenance of innumerable Princely palaces, as well as major public works projects. Furthermore, he holds a Saudi passport, thus making an exception to the rule that formally precludes dual citizenship with Saudi Arabia. Having become one of the principal financial outposts of the kingdom, Lebanon is located at the crossroads of the Sauds’ Arab and Muslim diplomacy. In Lebanon, a Saudi ‘financial protectorate’, all the underwriters and the beneficiaries of Saudi ‘generosity’ meet. To counter the pro-Iranian Hezbollah engaged against Israel in southern Lebanon, but now represented in the Lebanese parliament, the Saudis employ the same ‘recipe’ they apply everywhere: they use money. This is a perilous approach, because the benefit is not always proportional to the cost. Thus, it sometimes happens that Islamist factions financed by the Saudis turn against their benefactors. . . .”
(Ibid.; p. 248.)
3. Note that Hariri visited the notorious “Three Borders” area of Latin America, long a stronghold of Islamist terror, as well as other fascist and criminal elements. Again, note that Hariri’s milieu was not lacking in potential evildoers, complicating the search for his real killers.
“ . . . Latin America. Once an obligatory way-station for war criminals and other fleeing Nazis, the region known as ‘the three borders’ (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay) is considered by anti-terrorist experts to be a new base of radical Islamism. Often, intelligence agencies have traced the leaders of Hezbollah, Hamas and the international organization of the Muslim Brothers to this area. Forming a triangle between the towns of Puerto Iguazu (Argentina); Foz do Iguacu (Brazil) and Ciudad del Este (Paraguay), the area holds a population of more than 400,000, a quarter of them foreigners, with strong Near Eastern communities, especially Lebanese. At the center, the site of the marvelous waterfalls of Iguacu hosts more than 40,000 visitors a year, which makes the identification and the monitoring of people particularly difficult. In addition, the topography, crisscrossed by innumerable rivers and streams, makes it impossible to get an overall view. This tormented physical and human geography encourages all sorts of traffic. Ciudad del Este has thus become the Latin-American capital for counterfeiting and for the smuggling of weapons and explosives. Weapons come from the United States via Paraguay, and are mainly destined for the markets of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo; they follow the route to Foz do Iguacu and cross the border of Paraguay at Mato Grosso do Sul. Small landing strips in the region are also used for delivering cargoes, and drugs.”
(Ibid.; p. 334.)
4. The Three Borders area highlights the relationship between the political and economic overworld and underworld. As Labeviere notes, the interests of so-called legitimate political and commercial elements, religious extremism and organized crime are inextricably linked. In Mr. Emory’s many interviews with Daniel Hopsicker, the relationship between criminal activiy, Islamisist terror and power politics is set forth in considerable detail.
“A non-producing country, Brazil is today the main regional transit center for the cocaine trade from Colombia and Bolivia, heading for the United States and Europe, via Cape Verde, the Ivory Coast and South Africa. Experts estimate that 80% of Colombian cocaine passes through the Islamic-Latin-American triangle. The Latin-American, Chinese and Near Eastern mafias have made their headquarters there. The mosque of Foz do Iguacu, which also has a Koran school, regularly receives visits by religious dignitaries and Saudi businessmen, although the communities are mainly Shiite. In 1997, the Lebanese former prime minister Rafic Hariri was the honorary guest of the Arab community of Ciudad del Este. Accompanied by a delegation by Gulf financiers, he was mainly interested in Near Eastern investments in the region. At the time, the police services identified a close collaborator of Osama bin Laden in his retinue. Certainly, the Lebanese former prime minister is not considered to be a dangerous terrorist himself, but his many business engagements often lead him to mingle with intermediaries who are directly involved in Islamist mafia operations that generate international terrorism. The ‘Lebanese cauldron’ alone deserves a close investigation into the gray areas of finance where private banking, international businessmen and major offshore criminals meet. Whether in Latin America or in Beirut, these business milieux reveal the osmosis that is going on between the criminal hierarchies and the legal structures of economic and financial activity worldwide. It is symptomatic that when one finds the heads of various criminal groups, one reaches the limit of the criminal activity at the same time. The influence of the Mafias is never so great and so dangerous as when they leverage their criminal activities to ply all the levers that legal society offers in order to subvert that legality itself. Money laundering is not only a monetary activity aiming to legalize dirty money by injecting it into licit economic sectors; it is also exerted on organizations and elite groups that also wish to be made respectable. One point is essential: organized crime is not only a problem of criminality anymore. It is a too broad a topic, these days, to be entrusted solely to the criminologists. The economy of crime was based in the legal economy. If you make a clean distinction between organized crime and the sphere of finance, you are condemned to not understand either one. Certainly, it is more comfortable to regard the Mafias and the criminal organizations as malevolent foreign powers. Reality is less appealing and more complex: criminality has become an essential gear in the engine of contemporary societies.”
(Ibid.; pp. 334–335.)
5. Reprising information from—among other programs—FTR#456, the broadcast notes the profound liniks between the Saudis, the Pakistanis, and international fascism. Of particular interest is the fact that the Saudis hired an American neo-Nazi as a Washington lobbyist! Note that the Saudis and Pakistanis are two of our so-called allies in the war on terror.” Both countries are implicated in 9/11.
“ . . . Another favorite IHR speaker and collaborator was Issah Nakleh of the World Muslim Congress (WMC). Based in Pakistan, the WMC was initially headed by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who, like his friend H. Keith Thompson, stood by the Third Reich until his death in 1974. A few years later, the WMC, then headed by Pakistani Dr. Inamullah Khan, mailed Holocaust-denial literature to every member of the U.S. Congress and the British Parliament. The WMC’s official mouthpiece, Muslim World, carried the ads for The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Henry Ford’s The International Jew, Dr. Khan’s congress also published Freemasonry, a book warning that Jews were using lodge members to extend secret control over religion and society—a paranoid theory that has long been popular among Liberty Lobby supporters and neo-Nazi groups around the world. Acknowledging their political kinship, WMC secretary-general Khan sent a letter to the Spotlight praising its ‘superb in-depth analysis’ and stating that the paper deserved ‘the thanks of all right-minded people.’ Dr. Khan also served as an advisor to the Saudi Arabian royal family, which lavished funds on the WMC. In addition, the Saudi Arabian government retained the services of American neo-Nazi William Grimstead as a Washington lobbyist. . . . Soon, the World Muslim Congress began working closely with U.S. intelligence and Pakistani military officials, who were covertly supporting the Afghan mujahideen in their fight against the Soviet-installed regime in Kabul. This effort was strongly endorsed by Dr. Khan, who served for many years as the Pakistani representative of the Nazi-infested World Anti-Communist League, which played an important role in the Reagan administration’s ’secret war’ in the Golden Crescent.”
6. The Pakistani role in 9/11 was obscured, in part, by intense lobbying (some of it financial) by the Pakistani foreign office—the equivalent of our State Department.
“The Pakistan foreign office had paid tens of thousands of dollars to lobbyists in the US to get anti-Pakistan references dropped from the 9/11 inquiry commission report, The Friday Times has claimed. The Pakistani weekly said its story is based on disclosures made by foreign service officials to the Public Accounts Committee at a secret meeting in Islamabad on Tuesday. It claimed that some of the commission members were also bribed to prevent them from including damaging information about Pakistan. The magazine said the PAC grilled officials in the presence of foreign secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan and special secretary Sher Afghan on the money paid to lobbyists. ‘The disclosure sheds doubt on the integrity and honesty of the members of the 9/11 inquiry commission and, above all, the authenticity of the information in their final report,’ it said. The report quoted an officer as saying that dramatic changes were made in the final draft of the inquiry commission after the lobbyists got to work. The panel was formed to probe the September 11 terror attack and make suggestions to fight terrorism. After the commission tipped the lobbyists about the damaging revelations on Pakistan’s role in 9/11, they contacted the panel members and asked them to go soft on the country. The Friday Times claimed that a lot of money was used to silence these members. According to the report, the lobbyists also helped Pakistan win the sympathy of 75 US Congressmen as part of its strategy to guard Islamabad’s interests in Washington. ‘US softened towards Pakistan only because of the efforts of the foreign office,’ an official was quoted as saying in the report. The Pakistan foreign office defended the decision to hire the lobbyists, saying it was an established practice in the US. An observer at the Islamabad meeting said money could play an important role in buying powerful people. The remark came in response to comments made by some US officials after 9/11 that ‘Pakistanis will sell their mothers for a dollar.’ Pakistan had emerged as front-runner in the fight against terrorism unleashed by the US after the terror strikes. Washington pumped in billions of dollars to win President Pervez Musharraf’s support in launching a crackdown on al Qaida network thriving on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.”
(“Pakistan Weekly Spills 9/11 Beans”; The Telegraph [Calcutta, India]; 3/13/2006.)
7. Next, the program reviews some startling information first presented in FTR#500. Sting man Randy Glass received information from a Pakistani weapons dealer whom he believed to be working for the Pakistani ISI. The dealer—R.G. Abbas—gave dramatic warning of the 9/11 attack.
“ . . . At a dinner in June 1999 at the Tribeca Grill, Glass was wining and dining Rhulum G. Abbas, a Pakistani arms dealer and his friends. Glass and ATF agent Dick Stoltz were posing as weapons brokers, as part of a Federal sting operation. The Pakistani had close connections to the Pakistani intelligence elite, the ISI. In fact, Glass later told Dateline he believed Abbas was an ISI agent.”
(A chapter of Sander Hicks’ forthcoming book The Big Wedding [e‑mailed to Mr. Emory and partially reprinted here with the permission of the author]; pp. 1–2.)
8. At the meeting, Abbas made a chilling disclosure: that the World Trade Center towers were “coming down.”
“The tony Tribeca Grill, owned by Robert DeNiro, was just north of the World Trade Center in 1999. Abbas boasted to his dinner companions that he wouldn’t have any problem taking out the entire downtown restaurant. ‘Because it’s full of Americans.’ Towards the end of the meal, he gestured out towards the Twin Towers. ‘Those towers are coming down.’ [Emphasis added.]”
(Ibid.; p. 2.)
9. Abbas’s foreshadowing of the WTC attacks was omitted from NBC’s “Dateline” show. Only The Palm Beach Post carried the account:
“Although Glass told ‘Dateline’ this story, it wasn’t broadcast. The only media to report it was The Palm Beach Post, on October 17, 2002: ‘In August 2001, just before Glass started to serve a seven-month sentence for a $6 million jewelry scam, he said he reached out to Sen. Bob Graham and U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler. He said he told staffers for both lawmakers that a Pakistani operative working for the Taliban known as R.G. Abbas made three references to imminent plans to attack the World Trade Center during the probe, which ended in June 2001. At one meeting at New York’s Tribeca Grill caught on tape, Abbas pointed to the World Trade Center and said, ‘Those towers are coming down,’ Glass said.’”
(Idem.)
10. “ ‘Dateline’ used Glass in a follow-up piece five months later, but still failed to mention the crucial details about Abbas. I was eager to get Randy Glass on INN World Report and go where ‘Dateline’ and Sy Hersh feared to tread. R.G. Abbas and the ISI had their paw prints all over 9/11. The Times of India and French News Agency AFP had reported that the head of ISI, General Mahmood, wired $100,000 to Mohamed Atta, through Saed Sheikh, right before 9/11. But no U.S. media outlet ever reported this. It was common knowledge that the ISI and the CIA have been in bed together since Afghanistan’s Mujahideen/Soviet civil war. (As we’ll see in a subsequent chapter, Pakistani intrigue and intelligence created the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, which partnered with the CIA to create a $20 billion empire of corruption and covert ops.)”
(Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)
11. The State Department apparently had foreknowledge of the attack.
“Later Glass stated that the State Department contact said, ‘Musharraf just took over and our position is that they’re a nuclear power and they’ve been flexing their nuclear muscles with India and we are trying to prevent a nuclear catastrophe. And we know about the threat, the terrorist threat, from Al Qaeda and Bin Laden flying airplanes into the World Trade Center. And Musharraf has guaranteed us—because it’s his ISI behind it—that he can stop it if we support him publicly.’”
(Ibid.; p. 17.)
12. “Look Randy, we know you’re a straight guy so we’re going to give you some information. You cannot do two things: You cannot go to the media under any circumstance. This is—we’re playing in a nuclear minefield now. Secondly, you can’t tell the agents that you’re working with now because they’re cut out of the loop. They know nothing.’”
(Idem.)
13. Still more indications that elements in the State Department had fairly precise knowledge about the plan to crash planes into the WTC:
“ . . . GLASS: When I called the State Department, I said to them, ‘Listen, I already know about the World Trade Center.’ So they assumed that I knew more than I did. And I didn’t. I didn’t know anything about airplanes. . . .’ HICKS: So you bluffed and you kind of pretended you knew more than you did and then what did they tell you? GLASS: But I didn’t even have to do that. I just said what I knew. I said ‘Look. Listen, I know the World Trade Center is going to be attacked.’ And then this guy said to me ‘Randy listen, you cannot mention any of these things, especially airplanes being used to fly into the World Trade Center.’ And when he said that I almost fell off of my fucking chair. I mean, you have no idea. I thought I was gonna wear the tape out.”
(Ibid.; p. 18.)
14. Next, the program sets forth information that Dubai Ports World may not surrender control of its controversial, proposed takeover of U.S. port facilities. The company may well retain its control over its Miami port operations! Will some “interesting cargoes”—such as WMD’s—come in through Miami? Perhaps in a controlled, protected, sea-borne drug shipment such as the airborne deliveries that came in through Venice California? Again, the relationship between Islamism, corporate capitalism, terrorism and organized crime is front and center. (For more about Dubai’s links to the milieu of 9/11, see FTR 543.)
“The Dubai-owned company that promised to surrender its U.S. port operations has no immediate plans to sell its U.S. subsidiary’s interests at Miami’s seaport, a senior executive wrote Monday in a private e‑mail to business associates. Even if DP World were to sell its Miami operations to quell the congressional furor over an Arab-owned company managing major U.S. ports, ‘that would probably take a while,’ wrote Robert Scavone, a vice president for DP World’s U.S. subsidiary. The e‑mail, obtained by the Associated Press, added to questions raised since DP World’s announcement last week that it will divest U.S. port operations it acquired when it bought London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. DP World has said those operations are worth roughly $700 million. The takeover touched off a political uproar over the Bush administration’s earlier approval of the deal without an intensive 45-day security investigation. The company initially sought to quiet the dispute by submitting voluntarily to such an investigation. Last week, DP World backed away from the deal further. It pledged to ‘transfer fully’ its U.S. operations to an unspecified American company and said DP World will not suffer economic loss. The company has steadfastly declined to clarify its statement or the timing of any possible sale, and leading congressional critics have threatened to intervene if DP World’s plans fall short of a full divestiture of its U.S. operations. Scavone told AP in an interview that his e‑mail was intended to reassure officials at the Port of Miami Terminal Operating Co. — which manages operations there and is half-owned by a DP World subsidiary- that uncertainty surrounding the Dubai ports deal would not affect its work in Miami.”
15. Dubai Ports World may be retaining a 49% stake in the ports operation after all!!
“Dubai’s DP World is considering a variety of options for the US business of P&O, including retaining a 49 per cent stake in a new US-based company running the operations. According to someone involved in the deal, DP World will consider retaining a stake — and how large it might be — once the group has sifted through a list of expressions of interest in the assets, which include the rights to operate five key container terminals. However, the company’s main focus now is thought to be co-operation with the US Treasury to ensure that the deal fulfils two little- noticed conditions of the disposal: that DP World has time to make an orderly sale and that it does not suffer economic loss. Discussions are thought to be under way with the Treasury to decide how any loss will be calculated and how DP World can be reimbursed. ‘My sense is that we are now trying to work out the details with the Treasury and other government departments as to how we can do this in a controlled fashion which doesn’t prejudice the company,’ someone familiar with the situation said. DP World had drawn up a list of at least 15 potential buyers, the person said. It is thought to include the private equity companies Blackstone and Carlyle Group, New York’s Maher Terminals and even Eller & Co, the Miami-based container terminal operator, which has a joint venture agreement with P&O to run the Miami Container Terminal. Eller, which launched a legal action in the UK and US to try to prevent P&O’s sale to DP World, is widely regarded as too small to take on a business as large as P&O’s US concerns. The person involved in the deal said DP World needed to decide which expressions of interest were serious and which came from ‘bottom- fishers’. Neil Davidson, a container ports analyst for Drewry Shipping Consultants, said the assets were desirable even though they were a relatively small part of the P&O portfolio and less profitable.”
(“Dubai May Retain Stake in US Assets” by Robert Wright; Financial Times; 3/12/2006.)
16. Highlighting the fundamental conflict between the dictates of globalization and those of U.S. national security, Arab nations are expressing displeasure with the Dubai Ports World situation, wrongly (though predictably) attributing American concern to “anti-Arab bigotry.” This is tantamount to the Third Reich attributing resistance to their program of military conquest to “anti-German bias.” Again, for more information about the fundamental conflict between globalization and U.S. national security, see FTR#543. “The Dubai Ports World debacle could cause lasting damage to Arab business ties with the US despite the emirate’s decision to give up control of the five US ports, according to analysts and businessmen in the Middle East. Officials in the United Arab Emirates, the federation that includes Dubai, said yesterday that the State- owned company’s retreat in the face of US congressional opposition was designed to protect the UAE’s close relationship with the US. The decision was typical of a pro-western Middle Eastern state that has traditionally avoided political controversy.
‘We did not want the ports issue to sour the ties between the UAE and the US in any way,’ said a UAE official yesterday, The UAE also played down the decision to postpone free-trade talks set for next week. A spokeswoman for the US trade representative office said both sides needed additional time to prepare for the last round of negotiations. But that an investment by Dubai — the city-state seen in the region as an economic model — should face such a populist American backlash and cause a political storm in Washington has dismayed many Arab businessmen. At a time of economic boom in the region, fuelled by high oil prices, many businessmen are suggesting they would think twice before investing in the US in future. A top flight businessman in the transport business, and with links to the US, portrayed the outcome of the controversy as a huge missed opportunity. He said the DP World deal would have given US Customs and Port Authorities unparallelled insight and resources around the world. ‘If US customs wanted to make an intervention on a suspected container they would have been able to do so as part of a seamless supply-chain service in the country of their choice. This is already happening today. However, the tie-up would only have cemented this relationship further and dramatically contributed to strengthening security,’ he said. ‘While Arab investors are still unsure of the details of DP World’s climbdown, there is broad sentiment that Washington too has lost. Abdulhaleq Abdullah, a political science professor at Dubai University, said: ‘This does not send a good message to the Arab world in general. As much as it is a loss for Dubai business, it is s bigger political and strategic loss to Washington. They invoked politics in a business transaction. This is not what people in the outside world expect from champions of globalization.’”
(“Intrusion of Politics into Business Sours Arab Trade Ties” by Roula Khalaf and William Wallis; Financial Times; 3/11–12/2006.)
17. Arab central banks—gorged with petroleum wealth—have expressed their anger by threatening to move their assets into Euros. With the Bush administration and its GOP allies—viewed by Mr. Emory as a front for the Underground Reich—having bankrupted the U.S., this threat by the Arabs should not be taken lightly.
“Middle Eastern anger over the decision by the US to block a Dubai company from buying five of its ports hit the dollar yesterday as a number of central banks said they were considering switching reserves into euros. The United Arab Emirates, which includes Dubai, said it was looking to move one-tenth of its dollar reserves into euros. while the governor of the Saudi Arabian central bank condemned the US move as ‘discrimination.’”
18. The program concludes with review of two articles first presented in FTR #544. Political events all over the world may be profoundly affected by the development of I.G. Farben’s hydrogenation process, a development long predicted by Mr. Emory.
“A novel way to create an ultra-clean fuel for cars that uses natural gas instead of oil is on the verge of rapid growth, analysts say, driven by soaring oil prices and a thirst for alternative fuels. Oil companies are investing billions in the nascent technology, called ‘gas-to-liquids’ or GTL, which can be used to produce quality diesel and a range of other products normally derived from crude. The process was developed in Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa, but in a few weeks will be tested on a commercial scale for the first time when the largest plant so far opens in Qatar. [Emphasis added.] The Oryx GTL plant, a joint venture between South Africa’s Sasol and Qatar Petroleum, is being watched closely by competitors and investors looking for the next big thing in energy. . . . Carmakers are also interested. Royal Dutch Shell is working with Toyota, Volkswagen and DaimlerChrysler to create vehicles that run on pure GTL diesel, which combines high power with extremely low emissions. . . . Shell and ExxonMobil plan to build much larger GTL plants in Qatar. . . . Nigeria has a plant under construction, built by Sasol and Chevron. BP plans to build a plant in Colombia. . . .”
(“Oil Giants Look to Gas Alternative” by Thomas Catan; Financial Times; 3/6/2006; p. 15.)
19. A previous Financial Times article discussed the genesis of the GTL process:
“To be sure, GTL has been around for a while. The basic process was invented in the 1920’s and then developed by Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa—both of which had problems getting enough petrol for their vehicles. Initially, it was used to turn coal into a liquid. [Emphasis added.] Today, it is used to turn natural gas into a clean burning fuel for use in diesel engines, naptha, lubricants and a range of other products. . . . .”
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