Political conflicts arising from oil industry

By Vladimir V. Sytin
The Ukrainian Times

“Oil has been playing a title role in the universal, world tragedy for ages,” wrote Valentin Pikul in his novel-essay Greasy, Dirty and Corrupt. “How much fiery raptures over it! Some worship it, whereas others curse it!” In fact, the oil industry provokes a lot of political conflicts in different parts of the world.

For instance, let’s journey back in time to 2004. Romania submitted a suit against Ukraine to the International Court of Justice in The Hague in a bid to end a long-running dispute over Black Sea exploration rights. At stake was some 13,000 square kilometers of sea potentially rich in oil and natural gas. To get a bigger share of the reserves, the Romanians were proving that the Serpent Island was not habitable and could not be added to Ukraine’s continental shelf. Eventually, Bucharest won the case.

According to Willy Lam, a Hong-Kong-based expert in Chinese politics and foreign policy, China’s thirst for oil is the real story behind Beijing’s worsening territorial dispute with Japan over the group of supposedly oil-rich islands claimed by China as the Diaoyus, and by Japan as the Senkakus. That same concern also explains a flare-up in China’s dispute with some East Asian nations over their claims to the resource-rich Spratly Islands in the South China Sea in 2004.

Doug Casey, a keen analyst, thinks before the British created “Iraq” out of thin air in 1920, everyone got along cordially, not least because they did not have to deal with each other. The Kurds are ethnically a different people, the Sunnis and the Shiites could be compared to Irish Catholics and Protestants. The problems started when they were placed into one political entity, Iraq. Power was concentrated in the capital, Sunni Baghdad. Oil production, however, came mostly from the Kurdish north and the Shiite south. The situation only simmered while production and prices were relatively low, there did not seem to be that much to fight over. If the United States grants Iraq independence today, the Kurds will secede, from Mr. Casey’s point of view, which the others will not stand for because of the oil. Nor will the Turks, Iranians, or Syrians because it would be the beginning of Kurdistan that is a whole other question. The Sunnis and Shiites will have a civil war.

As Russian writer Valentin Pikul put it, sometimes oil seems to carry people away straight to a paradise. “But we, going to the paradise, should look all round to see the horrible road running right to hell,” he wrote. So, the list of political conflicts arising from the oil industry goes on and the tragedy continues.