The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle

Commentary on the Flux of Events

September 30, 2001

The price of a barrel of benchmark crude oil has fallen from around $30 to around $20 since the Attacks of 9-11-01, as world business halts in a haze of anxiety, waiting for that other shoe to drop (perhaps a whole warehouse full of shoes, of many nations). The conventional theory-du-jour, as expressed for instance in today's Sunday new York Times, says that oil prices may remain depressed a long time as the so-called global economy falls into "recession." "Consumers" (as US citizens are called) will benefit, they say, from lower gas prices, etc.

More likely, I believe, is that the US may not be able to avoid a wider military engagement with the Muslim world -- in which case oil will be used as an economic weapon against us, one way or another, either by OPEC, or by individual oil-producing nations, or by extremists in the Middle East who wish to make a bad situation a whole lot worse. We ought to recognize that oil infrastucture -- well-heads, pipelines, and port facilities -- can be sabotaged easily in places such as Saudi Arabia, and that even if the US were to try to occupy the Arabian Peninsula, we would not have enough troops to protect all this equipment.

It seems to me that the American public should be prepared for disrupted oil imports and all that portends for us economically. Are the news media asleep?