Овај читалац је лепо изанализирао стање у Либији:
Western oil companies have made a great deal of money with the Gadaffi administration. The US, in particular, following sanctions, “adopted a number of return strategies, from buying back old oil concessions (Marathon and ConocoPhillips), winning bids for new blocs (Chevron and ExxonMobil) or a combination of both (Amerada Hess and Oxy).” Since 2005 “there have been three Exploration and Production Sharing rounds in which exploration areas have been competitively bid to foreign companies.” As a result, “several new one-off deals” had been “concluded, including “massive deals with Shell and British Petroleum,” and a 25 year extension of Italian company ENI (Wikileaks, Tripoli 967).
The close relationship did not end here. In terms of arms trading to the region, the US and the EU have been very friendly indeed. An article in the Associated Press cites the fact that “the US government quietly green-lighted a $77 million deal to provide at least 50 refurbished amored troop carriers to Moammar Gadaffi’s army.” This deal “signaled growing American business contracts with his regime in the months before Libya imploded in civil war” (17 April 2011). Writing in the Guardian, Simon Rogers notes that the European Union contributed a staggering “843.5 mill Euros worth of arms exports in the first five years after the arms embargo with Libya was lifted.” In 2009 alone, some “343.7 million Euros worth of arms sales were conducted with the Gadaffi Regime” (‘EU arms exports to Libya’, Guardian: 1 March 2011). The UK in particular approved 214.8 million strategic export licenses to the region, 25 of which we know for certain were used for military purposes. NGO Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) writes that the UK government is responsible for “the export of goods including tear gas and crowd control ammunition and sniper rifles to Bahrain Libya, as well as a wide range of other miltary equipment to authoritarian regimes in the region (18 February 2011).
Like any trade relationship, the spoils are two-way: with Gadaffi selling oil to the west, and the west selling arms to Gadaffi. However, the good terms of this relationship were imperiled on two counts: the first in regard to Gadaffi’s decision to nationalize Libyan oil reserves; the second in regard to his attacks on the UN Security Council. From the slew of Tripoli-to-Washington cables published by Wikileaks it becomes immediately clear that the US worried about how to secure future oil contracts with Libya. On 15 November 2007, one cable expresses the worry that “those who dominate Libya’s political and economic leadership are pursuing increasingly nationalistic policies in the energy sector that could jeopardize efficient exploitation of Libya’s extensive oil and gas reserves” (Tripoli 967) Another cable, written on 17 June 2008, records how the Libyan government “has been pressing all International Oil Companies to accept further reductions in their production share allocations to increase Libya’s take” (Tripoli 474). Five months later, it is relayed how Gadaffi plans to “implement dramatic government restructuring” and “directly distribute shares of oil revenue to the Libyan people” (Tripoli 896). The evident concern is that a nationalized oil industry, that is, an oil industry whose proceeds will go directly to the people, enforces an alternative growth model to that used in the west. A fully socialized economic structure where wealth is distributed for the good of the nation, and thereby diverted away from western interests, agitated the west greatly. It is therefore logical to suppose that western oil companies wanted to take Libyan oil at the cheapest rate possible. Gadaffi’s regime posed a problem in this regard.
Enough evidence about oil? I think so. Now please, push off.
Zivela Republika Srbija i Banat!
