Lis­ten: One Seg­ment

High­light­ing recent geo-polit­i­cal devel­op­ments in the petro­le­um indus­try, this pro­gram exam­ines some of the con­sid­er­a­tions under­ly­ing recent head­lines. Although pub­lic atten­tion has focused on the issue of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruc­tion, eco­nom­ic ana­lysts con­cen­trat­ed on the issue of Iraq’s oil and its poten­tial effect on the world petro­le­um mar­ket. If UN sanc­tions against Iraq were lift­ed, the impact of so much oil becom­ing avail­able on the inter­na­tion­al mar­ket might very well depress the price of petro­le­um below $10.00 per bar­rel. Russ­ian oppo­si­tion to recent Amer­i­can mil­i­tary prepa­ra­tions in the Mid­dle East is root­ed in a need to chan­nel Iraqi oil prof­its toward pay­ing off the large Iraqi debt to Rus­sia. In addi­tion, Russ­ian fas­cist Vladimir Zhiri­novsky has vig­or­ous­ly cham­pi­oned the major invest­ment made my the Russ­ian Lukoil com­pa­ny in Iraqi petro­le­um devel­op­ment. The broad­cast also sets forth dis­cus­sion of the enor­mous prof­its being made by Iraqi oil black-mar­keters, includ­ing peo­ple close to Sad­dam Hus­sein. The pro­gram touch­es on maneu­ver­ing by Cono­co (one of the largest U.S. oil com­pa­nies, con­trolled by Du Pont) in the for­mer Sovi­et Union and Cono­co’s dal­liance with the Islam­ic-fun­da­men­tal­ist Tal­iban mili­tia in Afghanistan.