Balkans & US oil industry analysis

[TonyGosling]

FURTHER STEPS TOWARDS CHAOS
As covered in some detail by this author in his article “The Balkans Have Their Uses” - written some years ago (http://www.spectrezine.org/global/Mendes.htm ) - in 1996, the US Trade and Development Agency (TDA) gave the Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil Corporation (AMBO) the exclusive right to run the Corridor 8 pipeline from Burgas (Bulgaria), through Macedonia to the Albanian port of Vlore, thus bypassing the crowded Bosphorous.
Now -some 11 years later, we learn that “On 31 January 2007, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Albania signed a trilateral convention on the construction of the Balkan pipeline AMBO. Environmental studies are being conducted and construction licenses need to be obtained, allowing work to commence late 2008”! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMBO_pipeline) In the words of AMBO’s President, Edward (Ted) Ferguson, at said trilateral convention: “Before the end of 2008 we would expect to start construction… by early 2011, we should have a commissioned pipeline and be loading the first tanker in Vlore.” (http://www.balkanalysis.com/2007/02/01/trilateral-signing-in-skopje-b rings-ambo-oil-pipeline-a-step-closer-to-realization/). NB: in January 1997, Edward Ferguson, Director of Oil & Gas Development in Brown & Root, had been appointed President & CEO of AMBO - and in 2006, the Macedonian-American, Gligor Tashkovich, Executive Vice President of AMBO, was appointed minister without-portfolio in charge of foreign investments in the Macedonian Government.
This immediately poses the question: why has it taken so long to even begin said construction?! The answer to this is partly because the ‘crowded Bosphorous’ (see above) has since been bypassed by the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, thus gaining access to the Mediterranean. But a far clearer answer to this question is to be found by a brief review of USTDA’s motives: in their own words (a) “The U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) advances economic development and U.S. commercial interests in developing and middle-income countries.....and in carrying out its mission, USTDA gives emphasis to economic sectors that may benefit from U.S. exports of goods and services”; (b) “Since greatly expanding its program in Europe and Eurasia with the political changes in 1990, USTDA has provided funding of over $300 million for studies and other assistance on many major infrastructure projects in Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union. Afghanistan, due to its ties to Central Asia, also falls within USTDA's Europe and Eurasia region”; and (c) “USTDA funding in support of such projects has two benefits: it reduces the level of investment risk American companies face in uncertain markets, and it provides reassurance to local partners that their projects are backed by active US government support” - with financial help from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), run by that wheeler-dealer of wheeler-dealers, George Soros! (http://www.ustda.gov/ustda/USTDA%20By%20Region/EuropeEurasia.htm).

It would thus seem that Corridor 8 can justifiably be considered merely a ‘pipeline of convenience’ for Corporate America, inasmuch as their corporations are the main financial beneficiaries of such a project - thanks to the US Administration.
The references above to Europe, Eurasia, Russia and Afghanistan reveal the range of countries being currently targeted by America for its own benefit - and this calls for a closer look at a similar, though quadrilateral convention recently held in June 19th 2007 in Baku, Azerbaijan. This was a meeting of the leaders of 4 ex-Soviet Union countries - namely: Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldavia (GUAM) - in a bid to curb/counter Russian influence in the region. They were joined by the presidents of Lithuania, Poland and Romania - who would join in the ‘talks’. And in view of the fact that the current Georgian and Ukrainiam governments were the result of American financially manipulated ‘Revolutions’ (as were Serbia and Romania), it is therefore hardly surprising to learn that they, in particular, have “promoted GUAM as a pro-democratic, pro-Western alternative to the Kremlin-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)”. The talks were dominated by proposals to ship oil from energy-rich Azerbaijan to a Ukrainian pipeline and the creation of a joint peacekeeping force that could replace Russian peacekeepers currently deployed in separatist regions of Georgia and Moldova. (www.bakutoday.net/view.php?d=38383). Once more, it should be noted that George Soros’s OPIC had played a crucial role in financing Ukraine’s ‘Orange Revolution’.
On June 12, 2007, the US Ambassador to Ukraine, one William B. Taylor, held a meeting with the Secretary General of GUAM, Mr. V. Chechelashvili, to preview the coming Baku quadrilateral convention. “Mr. William B. Taylor expressed satisfaction on the fact that GUAM Secretariat had started its activities and reiterated the readiness to provide further assistance to GUAM in implementation of concrete projects of regional cooperation, as well as to support GUAM Secretariat progress of the GUAM-U.S. Framework Program.” - and Chechelashvili “expressed his gratitude to the U.S. Government for the technical and financial assistance to implement them” (said program). (ref: http://www.guam.org.ua/204.732.0.0.1.0.phtml). That Russia (CIS) is one of such targeted countries is hardly surprising in view of America’s recent proposal to install anti-missile stations in Poland - with an associated radar in the Czech Republic (as widely reported ). President Putin’s reaction was immediate, and angry - not surprisingly, as he would have been well aware of the GUAM program, to say nothing of the number of US military bases already installed in the Balkan and Caspian regions!
Previous to his appointment as ambassador to Ukraine on June 5th ‘06, Taylor had held many important positions in the US Administration as exemplified by the following (not comprehensive) list: he had directed an in-house Defense Department think tank at Fort McNair; served as Special Deputy Defense Advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to NATO; had been responsible for developing many of the initial U.S. assistance programs for other countries of the former Soviet Union, including Ukraine; had been Coordinator for the U.S. Assistance to Europe and Eurasia; in 2003 -2004 he had served as the Afghanistan Coordinator for the U.S. Department of State, after having served in Afghanistan as the Special Representative for Donor Assistance to Afghanistan; and ‘04 - ‘05, had served as Director of the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office in Baghdad.
He was/is an archetypical administrative official in the mold of Bush, Cheney, Wolfovitz, Holbrooke, Rumsfeld, Bolton - et al - all men embarked on the fascistic capitalist aim of world domination under the banner of ‘Terrorism!”- with the assistance of a menial British government.
As this author has written more than once before: this US Administration finds itself on the horns of a dilemma - would not the most rational means of solving this problem be to examine the source of said terrorism, namely frustration - but how can they, when to do so would mean questioning the capitalist system itself?!

[Disco_Destroyer]

Ukraine has shut all gas pipelines to Europe Gazprom

well 1 of the 2 parties are lying


Link


Gazprom says that Ukraine has shut all four pipelines which send gas to Europe, causing several countries to run out of fuel. But Ukraine claims that Russia stopped delivering all gas to Europe through its territory on Wednesday morning.