Its all about OIL & GAS, land is the least to worry about
Dean Henderson is the author of four books: Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families & Their Global ISBN-10: 1453757732 which had its third edition in 2010. By Four Horsemen he means: Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco, Royal Dutch/Shell and BP Amoco.
By Dean Henderson
When the Berlin Wall fell and Gorbachev was overthrown in favor Boris Yeltsin, the Four Horsemen rushed to Moscow to begin making oil deals. Oil and natural gas had always been the Soviet’s main export and it remained so for the new Russia. In 1991, the country earned $13 billion in hard currency from oil exports. In 1992 Yeltsin announced that Russia’s world leading 9.2 billion barrel/day oil sector would be privatized.
Sixty percent of Russia’s Siberian reserves had never been tapped. In 1993 the World Bank announced a $610 billion loan to modernize Russia’s oil industry – by far the largest loan in the bank’s history. World Bank subsidiary International Finance Corporation bought stock in several Russian oil companies and made an additional loan to the Bronfman’s Conoco for its purchase of Siberian Polar Lights Company. [Evening Edition. National Public Radio. 6-18-93]
The main vehicle for international banker control over Russian oil was Lukoil, initially 20%-owned by BP Amoco and Credit Suisse First Boston, where Clinton Yugoslav envoy and Dayton Peace Accords architect Richard Holbrooke worked. Bush Sr. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, who orchestrated the BNL cover-up, was now CS First Boston’s Chief Financial Officer. A handful of Zionist Russian oligarchs, collectively known as the Russian Mafia, owned the rest of Lukoil, which served as the Saudi ARAMCO of Russia for the Four Horsemen, a partner to Big Oil in projects throughout the country which involved truly staggering amounts of capital.
These included Sakhalin Islands projects known as Sakhalin I, a $15 billion Exxon Mobil venture; and Sakhalin II, a $10 billion deal led by Royal Dutch/Shell which included Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Marathon Oil as partners. Siberian developments were even larger. RD/Shell is a 24.5% partner in Uganskneftegasin, which controls a huge Siberian natural gas field. At Priobskoye, BP Amoco operates a $53 billion project. At Timan Pechora on the Arctic Ocean a consortium made up of Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco, BP Amoco and Norsk Hydo runs a $48 billion venture.
In November 2001 Exxon Mobil announced plans to invest another $12 billion in an oil and gas project in the Russian Far East. RD/Shell announced a $8.5 billion investment in its Sakhalin Islands concessions. BP Amoco made similar proclamations. [“Exxon’s Russian Oil Deal Makes Other Firms Feel Lucky”. Wall Street Journal. 12-13-01] In 1994 Lukoil pumped 416 million barrels of oil, making it fourth largest producer in the world after RD/Shell, Exxon Mobil and part-owner BP Amoco. Its fifteen billion barrels in crude reserves rank second in the world to Royal Dutch/ Shell. [“The Seven Sisters Have a Baby Brother”. Paul Klebnikov. Forbes. 1-22-96. p.70]
The Soviet Caucasus, with encouragement from Langley, soon split from Russia. The map of Central Asia was re-written as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Georgia all declared their independence. The pipeline Reagan ordered targeted carried Soviet natural gas east to the North Pacific port of Vladivostok and west to the Black Sea port of Novorrossiysk from the world’s richest known natural gas fields lying beneath and abutting the shoreline of the Caspian Sea, which lies in the heart of Caucasus.
The Four Horsemen coveted this resource more than any in the world. They wanted to build their own private pipelines once they got their hands on the Caspian Sea natural gas fields, which also contain an estimated 200 billion barrels of crude oil. Oil industry privatizations were quickly announced in the new Central Asian Republics which had, by virtue of their independence, taken control of the vast Caspian Sea oil and gas reserves. By 1991 Chevron was holding talks with Kazakhstan. [: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. Ahmed Rashid. Yale University Publishing. New Haven, CT. 2001. p.145]
The Central Asian Republics became the largest recipients of USAID aid, as well as ExIm Bank, OPIC and CCC loans. Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan were especially favored. These countries control the shoreline of the Caspian Sea, along with Russia and Iran. In 1994 Kazakhstan received $311 million in US aid and another $85 million to help dismantle Soviet-era nuclear weapons. President Clinton met with Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev. They signed an array of agreements ranging from disarmament deals to space research cooperation. Kazakhstan, with an estimated 17.6 billion barrels of oil reserves, had been a strategic part of the Soviet nuclear weapons grid and was home to the Soviet space program.
The two leaders also signed an agreement providing investment protection for US multinationals. The Free Trade Institute and US Chamber of Commerce sent officials to train Kazakhs in the finer arts of global capitalism. The Four Horsemen moved in swiftly. Chevron Texaco laid claim to the biggest prize – the $20 billion Tenghiz oilfield – then grabbed another gusher at Korolev. Exxon Mobil signed a deal to develop an offshore concession in the Caspian. [“Christopher Promises Aid to Oil-Rich Kazakhstan”. AP. Northwest Arkansas Morning News. 10-24-93] Tengizchevroil is 45%-owned by Chevron Texaco and 25%-owned by Exxon Mobil. [10K Filings to SEC. Exxon Mobil and Chevron Corporations. 3-28-01] President George W. Bush’s NSA and later Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice, an expert on Central Asia, sat on the board at Chevron alongside George Schultz from 1989-1992. She even had an oil tanker named after her.
Across the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan was receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in US aid. BP Amoco led a consortium of seven oil giants who spent an initial $8 billion to develop three concessions off the coast of the capital Baku – historic base camp of Big Oil in the region. [“The Quietly Determined American”. Paul Klebnikov. Forbes. 10-24-94. p.48] BP Amoco and Pennzoil – recently acquired by Royal Dutch/Shell – took control of the Azerbaijan Oil Company, whose board of directors included former Bush Sr. Secretary of State James Baker.
In 1991 Air America super spook Richard Secord showed up in Baku under the cover of MEGA Oil. [Azerbaijan Diary: A Rogue Reporter’s Adventures in a Oil-Rich, War-Torn, Post- Soviet Republic. Thomas Goltz. M.E. Sharpe. Armonk, NY. 1999. p.272] Secord & Company did military training, sold Israeli arms, passed “brown bags filled with cash” and shipped in over 2,000 Islamist fighters from Afghanistan with help from Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Afghan heroin began flooding into Baku. Russian economist Alexandre Datskevitch said of 184 heroin labs that police discovered in Moscow in 1991, “Every one of them was run by Azeris, who use the proceeds to buy arms for Azerbaijan’s war against Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh”. [“al-Qaeda, US Oil Companies and Central Asia”. Peter Dale Scott. Nexus. May-June, 2006. p.11-15]
A Turkish intelligence source claims that Exxon and Mobil were behind the 1993 coup against elected Azeri President Abulfaz Elchibey. Secord’s Islamists helped. Osama bin Laden set up an NGO in Baku as a base for attacking the Russians in Chechnya and Dagestan. A more pliant President Heidar Aliyev was installed. In 1996, at the behest of Amoco’s president, he was invited to the White House to meet President Clinton – whose NSA Sandy Berger held $90,000 worth of Amoco stock. [See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism. Robert Baer. Crown. New York. 2002. p.243-244]
Lukoil owns 26% of the Russian Black Sea port at Novorrossiysk. Its president Vayit Alekperov wanted to build the Caspian pipeline through Grozny in Chechnya, while the Four Horsemen preferred the route through Turkey. CIA support for Armenian separatists and Chechen Islamist rebels ensured chaos in Grozny. Alekperov finally agreed to the Turkish route.
In 2003 the US Defense Department proposed a $3.8 million military training grant for Azerbaijan. Later they admitted it was to protect US access to oil. As author Michael Klare put it, “Slowly but surely, the US military is being converted into a global oil-protection service”. [Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum. Michael T. Klare. Metropolitan/Henry Holt. 2004. p.6-7]
Turkmenistan, which borders the Caspian Sea on the southeast, is a virtual gas republic, containing massive deposits of natural gas. It also has vast reserves of oil, copper, coal, tungsten, zinc, uranium and gold. The biggest gas field is at Dauletabad in the southeast of the country, near the Afghan border. The Unocal-led Centgas set about building a pipeline which would connect the oil fields around Chardzhan to the Siberian oilfields further north. More crucial to Centgas was a gas pipeline from Dauletabad across Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean. [Escobar. Part I] Advisers to the project included Henry Kissinger. Unocal is now part of Chevron.
With the Four Horsemen firmly in charge of Caspian Sea reserves, the Caspian Pipeline Consortium was born. Chevron Texaco took a 15% stake with the other three Horsemen and Lukoil splitting the rest. Pipeline security was provided by the Israeli firm Magal Security Systems, which is connected to Mossad. Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan have especially cozy relations with Israel via Special Ambassador Yusef Maiman, who is president of the Israeli Mehrav Group. Mehrav is involved in a project in Turkey to divert water from the upper Tigres and Euphrates Rivers to the southeast part of Turkey and away from Iraq. [“The Roving Eye: Pipelineistan, Part II: The Games Nations Play”. Pepe Escobar. Asia Times Online. 1-26-02] The Caspian pipeline was built by Bechtel in partnership with GE and Wilbros Group. The pipeline quietly began moving oil and gas in November 2001, just two months after 911.
Bechtel also built the oilfield infrastructure at Tengiz for Chevron Texaco. In 1995 Bechtel led a USAID-funded consortium to restructure the energy sectors of eleven Central and Eastern European nations in line with IMF mandates. Bechtel received a massive contract to upgrade Russia’s many ailing aluminum smelters in tandem with Pechiney. Lukoil contracted with New Jersey-based ABB Lummus Crest (formed when engineering giants Asea Braun Boveri and Lummis Crest merged) to build a $1.3 billion refinery at the Novorrossysk port and to do a $700 million upgrade on its refinery at Perm.
The Bush Jr. Administration now planned a series of additional Caspian Sea pipelines to compliment the Tenghiz-Black Sea route. A Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline was built by a Four Horsemen consortium led by BP Amoco. The law firm representing the BP-led consortium is James Baker’s family law firm – Baker Botts. The BP Amoco pipeline runs the length of the country of Georgia through its capital Tblisi.
In February 2002 the US announced plans to send 200 military advisers and attack helicopters to Georgia to “root our terrorism”. [“Wolf Blitzer Reports”. CNN. 2-27-02] The deployment was a smokescreen for pipeline protection. In September 2002 Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivaniov accused Georgia of harboring Chechen rebels. In October 2003 Georgian President Eduard Schevardnadze was forced to step down in a bloodless revolution. According to a December 11, 2003 article on the World Socialist Party website, CIA sponsored the coup.
In September 2004 hundreds of Russian school children were killed when Chechen separatists seized their school building. Russian President Vladimir Putin said of the incident, “Certain political circles in the West want to weaken Russia, just like the Romans wanted to weaken Carthage.” He accused “foreign intelligence services” of complicity in the attacks. His adviser Aslanbek Aslakhanov went further, stating on Russian Channel 2 News, “The men had their conversations not within Russia, but with other countries. They were led on a leash. Our self-styled friends have been working for several decades to dismember Russia… (they are the) puppeteers and are financing terror.” Russia’s KM News ran the headline, “School Seizure was planned in Washington and London”. [“Paranotes: Russian School Seige Conspiracy”. Al Hidell. Paranoia. Issue 37. Winter 2005.]
Lukoil epitomizes the corruption so rampant in Russia since the Soviet collapse. Bribery is the norm. Lukoil has given luxury jets to the mayor of Moscow, the head of Gazprom (the state-owned natural gas monopoly) and Kazakhstan President Nazarbayev. In the mid-1990’s Lukoil announced that it would sell another 15 % stake to foreign stockholders through its largest owner and financial adviser CS First Boston and the Bank of New York. [Klebnikov. 1-22-96. p.72] In 2002 they announced plans to sell off another big stake.
According to Kurt Wulff of the oil investment firm McDep Associates, the Four Horsemen, romping in their new Far East pastures, saw asset increases from 1988-1994 as follows: Exxon Mobil – 54%, Chevron Texaco – 74%, Royal Dutch/Shell – 52% and BP Amoco – 54%. The Horsemen had more than doubled their collective assets in six short years. This quantum leap in Anglo-American global power had everything to do with the takeover of the old Soviet oil patch and the subsequent impoverishment of its birthright owners.
Dean Henderson was born in Faulkton, South Dakota. He earned an M.S. in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana, where he edited The Missoula Paper and was a columnist for the Montana Kaimin. His articles have appeared in Multinational Monitor, In These Times, Paranoia and several other magazines. A life long political activist and traveler to fifty countries, Henderson co-founded of the University of Montana Green Party and the Ozark Heritage Region Peace and Justice Network. He is former Vice-President of the Central Ozarks Farmer's Union and former President of the Howell County Democrats. In 2004 he won the Democratic nomination for Congress in Missouri's 8th District. Dean's Books Available in print and e-book formats: Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf
