Check out the archive of Price of Oil posts regarding War.

For information on the Iraqi Oil Law and the campaign to stop it, go here.

Download Crude Designs: The Rip-Off of Iraq’s Oil Wealth, which details allied efforts to rewrite Iraq’s petroleum laws to the benefit of US & UK oil companies. Co-published in November 2005 by Oil Change with PLATFORM and others.

Download Crude Vision: How Oil Interests Obscured US Government Focus On Chemical Weapons Use (112KB PDF)

The Iraq war is only the latest example of decades of US military involvement and covert action in oil producing regions.

The Bush Administration, backed up by a chorus of pundits, vehemently denies that oil provided any part of the rationale for the Iraq war. The denials are so absolute, so acerbic in tone, that it is hard not to conclude that they protest too much. No conflict can be understood by looking at just one factor, but the peace movement’s rallying cry of “No Blood for Oil” resonates so powerfully because it holds more than a grain of truth.

Since the 1973 Arab oil embargo, successive US administrations have equated national security with access to, and control of, oil – particularly in the Persian Gulf, which holds two-thirds of global oil reserves. In other words, as long as we need oil, we need the Persian Gulf. Faced with this unpleasant fact, every President since Carter has chosen to defend US “access” to the Persian Gulf. “Regime change” would ensure the long-term availability of Iraqi oil for U.S. industry and consumers.

Even the administration’s own words give away the game. In August 2002, Dick Cheney told the Veterans of Foreign Wars why Saddam has to be removed: “Armed with these weapons of terror and a seat at the top of 10% of the world’s oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world’s energy supplies…” Cheney (whose former company, Halliburton, received a Pentagon contract to assess Iraq’s oil fields after the war) clearly doesn’t think that oil is irrelevant.

The Bush Administration has said that the war is all about weapons that no one can find, or democracy by force. Protestors and people around the world think it has a lot to do with what everyone already knows Iraq has – oil.

Check out PLATFORM’s ongoing, detailed, and rigorous analysis of the Iraqi Petroleum Law and Global Policy Forum’s excellent “Oil in Iraq” page