So glad to see this finally happening; some things move at a snail’s pace at the federal level. I hope the funds actually improve the Gulf instead of lining the pockets of the well connected. DV

Washington, DC – Under an unprecedented agreement announced today by the Natural Resource Trustees for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (Trustees), BP has agreed to provide $1 billion toward early restoration projects in the Gulf of Mexico to address injuries to natural resources caused by the spill. The Trustees involved are: Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, the Department of the Interior (DOI), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The Department of Justice provided assistance in reaching the agreement.

This early restoration agreement, the largest of its kind ever reached, represents a first step toward fulfilling BP’s obligation to fund the complete restoration of injured public resources,including the loss of use of those resources by the people living,working and visiting the area. The Trustees will use the money to fund projects such as the rebuilding of coastal marshes, replenishment of damaged beaches, conservation of sensitive areas for ocean habitat for injured wildlife, and restoration of barrier islands and wetlands that provide natural protection from storms.

The agreement in no way affects the ultimate liability of BP or any other entity for natural resource damages or other liabilities, but provides an opportunity to help restoration get started sooner. The selection of early restoration projects will follow a public process, and will be overseen by the Trustees.

The full natural resource damage assessment process will continue until the Trustees have determined the full extent of damages caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. At the end of the damage assessment process, the Trustees will take into account any benefits that were realized from these early restoration projects. In addition to funding early restoration projects, BP will continue to fund the damage assessment and, together with the other responsible parties, will ultimately be obligated to compensate the public for the entire injury. BP is providing the early restoration funds voluntarily, and is not required to do so at this stage of the damage assessment process. The agreement will speed needed resources to the Gulf in advance of the completion of the assessment process.

To read the agreement, go to:

“This milestone agreement will allow us to jump-start restorationprojects that will bring Gulf Coast marshes, wetlands, and wildlifehabitat back to health after the damage they suffered as a result ofthe Deepwater Horizon spill,” said Secretary of the Interior KenSalazar. “This agreement accelerates our work on Gulf Coastrestoration and in no way limits the ability of all the NaturalResource Trustees from seeking full damages from those who areresponsible as the NRDA process moves forward.”

“One year after the largest oil spill in our history, we take amajor step forward in the recovery of the Gulf of Mexico, for theenvironment and the people who depend on it for their livelihood andenjoyment. Today’s agreement is a down payment on our promise toprotect and restore the Gulf,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAAadministrator.

“This agreement is a great first step toward restoring ournatural resources destroyed by the BP oil spill,” said LouisianaGovernor Bobby Jindal. “We are eager to continue working withpublic, state and federal co-trustees and BP to quickly convert thisdownpayment into projects to restore our damaged coast and replace ourlost wildlife. We encourage BP to continue to address the damages fromthis spill through early restoration efforts.”

“Alabama’s natural resources are environmentally diverse and aneconomic engine for our state and nation. Ecosystem restoration isvital to the economic vitality of the Alabama Gulf Coast,” saidAlabama Governor Robert Bentley. “Obtaining funding for theserestoration projects is a major step forward in addressing the oilspill’s damage to our precious natural resources. I have the utmostconfidence that the Alabama trustees will consider and identifyprojects and use these funds toward restoring our naturalresources.”

“Since the day of the oil spill, our goals have been to makeMississippi whole and to assure that our coastal areas completelyrecover. Today’s unprecedented agreement is an important firststep but it is only the first step. Mississippi will continue thiswork and will count on our many interested citizens to contributetheir ideas and input as we all work to define the scope of theseearly projects and develop other restoration projects. Our goals havenot changed. We will remain actively engaged in these and otherprojects until the Gulf is restored and our state is made whole,”said Trudy D. Fisher, Mississippi Trustee, Executive Director,Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality.

“I’m pleased that after a year of uncertainty and concerns aboutenvironmental damages which occurred as a result of the DeepwaterHorizon explosion, Florida will be able to use this early restorationmoney to initiate greatly needed environmental restoration projects,”said Florida Department of Environmental Protection Secretary HerschelVinyard. “Because we have worked diligently to assess theenvironmental damage resulting from the spill, we are well positionedto be able to quickly begin performing important restoration projectsand use Florida’s share of the early restoration funds to assist ourcoastal communities with their continued recovery from thespill.”

“While the Texas coast was not as visibly impacted by this spill,our wetlands, bays, beaches and coastal waters were affected, and itmakes sense to invest in places that can help jumpstart and maximizerecovery of the entire Gulf,” said Carter Smith, Texas Parks andWildlife Department executive director. “There will be a publicprocess in Texas and throughout the Gulf to consider and identifyprojects that make the best use of these funds for our coastalhabitats and the fish, wildlife and people who depend uponthem.”

The $1 billion in early restoration projects will be selected andimplemented as follows:

· Each state -Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas – will select andimplement $100 million in projects;

· The FederalResource Trustees, NOAA and DOI, will each select and implement $100million in projects;

· The remaining $300million will be used for projects selected by NOAA and DOI fromproposals submitted by the State Trustees.

All projects must meet the other requirements of the FrameworkAgreement and be approved by the Trustee Council comprised of all thenatural resource trustees.

To read the early restoration agreement, clickhere.

# # #Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/53452.html

I’d say the time passed a long while back, but that’s just me. DV

By: Sen. Lisa Murkowski

April 20, 2011 04:51 AM EDT

It’s now one year since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. Eleven lives were lost in that tragic disaster, and oil gushed uncontrollably for the next 87 days. These terrible events transfixed our nation – highlighting failures within industry and government.

Even before the well was capped, the need for a substantive legislative response was obvious. Instead, many reactions were just that – reactionary. Finger-pointing, counter productive ideas and harsh rhetoric flooded Capitol Hill. Some early suspicions and later conclusions reported by the media – whether about Gulf beaches or seafood – proved off the mark and added to the economic damage.

Meanwhile, an additional challenge has now emerged. As oil skyrockets above $105 a barrel, the emotional shock we felt last summer has been replaced by pain at the pump – and real damage to our economy. Americans now wonder what Congress will do to increase the domestic supply of oil – if not to bring prices down, then to at least keep them from rising further.

These challenges may appear to demand conflicting solutions, but they offer Congress a unique opportunity to pass meaningful energy legislation.

There are clear needs to improve the safety of offshore operations and produce more of our own tremendous oil and gas resources. Those priorities are in the same sentence because they must be part of the same policy. We need to address them together – the sooner the better.

For my part, I am committed to working with the members of the Senate Energy Committee, including Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), to advance just that type of legislation. It is my hope that we will build on two bills that passed our committee last Congress – each with strong bipartisan support – to develop a better package.

The first set of provisions, in the Outer Continental Shelf Reform Act, creates a number of important worker safety and spill-prevention measures. That bill passed our committee unanimously last June, only to die at Majority Leader Harry Reid’s desk.

It was frustrating and a waste. But we now have the opportunity to revisit the bill, cut unnecessary or obsolete sections from it and add new provisions based on lessons learned.

One positive to emerge is the opportunity to make our regulations more cost-effective. We’ve learned that chartering helicopters to and from offshore rigs consumes the majority of our regulators’ expenditures. Other nations simply send their inspectors to rigs via empty seats on industry helicopters. Overly stringent rules about “traveling on private aircraft” have led to unintended consequences. Meanwhile, budgets have been needlessly consumed by transportation costs, rather than with more and better inspections. It’s time to fix this and use the money on safety.

And there is no point ensuring offshore safety if companies aren’t allowed to drill there. That’s why legislation outlining new rules for the oil and gas industry must move concurrently with a serious effort to increase offshore production.

The need for greater supply is achingly obvious with prices now above $100 a barrel. We have to reduce our oil consumption. But under even the rosiest scenario, we’re going to need a lot of oil for a long time. For the sake of our economy, it has to remain affordable.

Domestic production keeps our money here – circulating in our own economy, instead of sending it to countries that are not our friends.This increased domestic production could fund research and development of renewables and also help pay down the deficit.

The U.S. is still competitive among major oil-producing regimes. The immense size of our resource base and our current fiscal structure combine to attract hundreds of billions of dollars in oil and gas-related commerce each year. But this will all go away if companies cannot access U.S. resources or if they can’t rely on stable taxes and regulations.

I’m committed to eliminating the growing uncertainty in those areas and cutting down the risks that drilling can pose to our safety and the environment.

We can honor the lives of those lost on this anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion by putting aside the partisan talking points and passing legislation that ensures the offshore oil and gas industry grows safely, competitively and sustainably.

That’s the job of Congress. We need to do it.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) is the ranking member on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://abcnews.go.com/US/fishermen-sick-gulf-oil-spill-cleanup-abc-news/story?id=13399130

ABC NewsInvestigation

BP Hired MoreThan 10,000 Fishermen to Help After Deepwater Horizon

BY MATT GUTMAN,MARK ABDELMALEK AND BEN FORER

April 19,2011

In the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oils pill, an army of fishermen, 10,000 strong, joined the cleanup effort. Today, almost a year after the spill, many say they are suffering from debilitating health effects that studies suggest are consistent with prolonged exposure to chemicals in oil.

An ABC News investigation found that many workers were told they did not need respirators, advice BP received from the government, and that no government agency tested the air the workers were breathing out at sea until a month after the spill.

BP continues to insist that “no one should be concerned about their health being harmed by the oil.” In fact, BP says, “The monitoring results showed that the levels generally were similar to background conditions – in other words, concentrations that would have been expected before or in the absence of thespill.”

Tell that to Todd Rook, age 45, who says he had pneumonia four times in the last eight months and never once before the oil spill.

Or to Malcolm Coco, 42, who says he has had blood in his urine and suffered from chest pains and memory loss.

Or ask Reba Burnett, whose husband Levy’s job was to find oil, ride through it and disperse it. Reba says her husband is just”different” from the fit person he was a year ago.
“I think sometimes he’s just blank. I don’t know if people understand what I mean when I say just blank.”

BP hired fishermen as part of the Vessels of Opportunity Program, where they took their own boats out to sea to stop the oil before it hit the shore. There were more than 3,000 of these boats out there- that’s more than 10,000 proud fishermen riding through the oil, burning it, skimming it, laying down those booms, for hours and days- sometimes weeks out at sea without coming home-all to save their precious waters and livelihood.

And now they’re speaking out for the first time, but they may just be the latest victims of oil spills. Only two weeks ago, a major study in the New England Journal of Medicine reviewed 26 studies from the eight biggest oil spills around the world. And in a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Gina Solomon,co-director of the Occupational and Environmental Health Program at the University of California, San Francisco says, “The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico poses direct threats to human health from inhalation or dermal contact with the oil and dispersant chemicals.”

“Always coughing — wake up in the middle of the night coughing.”That’s how Mike Fraser, who captained his own boat during the relief effort, describes his life after the spill.
His wife Wendy says she is worried. “When you look at him he’s never smoked a day in his life. Someone who doesn’t smoke should not have respiratory problems that he has now. He didn’t have it before.”

Respiratory symptoms aren’t surprising to medical experts contacted by ABC News. In a 2002 spill off the coast of Spain, cleanup workers were twice as likely to have breathing problems as non-cleanup workers were. In another study, workers who worked more than twenty days on the oil were four times as likely to have breathing problems.

Solomon says, “These are the kind of symptoms that are being reported across the Gulf coast. This is very consistent with what we’ve seen reported after the Exxon Valdez oil spill and other oil spills around the world.”

How Can Oil Make You Sick?

Turns out there are over 200 chemicals in oil, some more dangerous than others.
One of them is benzene — a Group 1 carcinogen according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer. It is in the same class as radioactive iodine, arsenic, and asbestos.

Dr. Michael Harbut, anoncologist who sees Gulf patients said, “I think there’s a fairly high likelihood that we’ll see some increase in some cancers in some of the populations with exposure to the chemicals.” Harbut is Director of the Environmental Cancer Program at the Karmanos Cancer Institute.

But there’s also particulate matter — tiny particles carrying dangerous oil components that can get in the lungs and cause serious breathing problems.

“This is nothing new,”said Harbut. “These are well-known health effects and the science is very strong.”

For fishermen like Levy Burnett the prospect of not remembering their past torments them more than the possibility of cancer. Memory loss has been associated with exposure to chemicals in oil like toluene and xylene.

Burnett said he started forgetting important details about his life. He called his pastor and in the middle of conversation forgot whom he was talking to. Burnett said he needed to call his wife, Reba, to put it all together. She thought he was playing a joke on her.

“I said, ‘No, Reba I’m serious. Who’s Matt Dickinson?’ And shesays, ‘Well, he’s our pastor,'” Burnet told ABC News. “And I should know who Matt Dickinson is because I’m a deacon at my church.”

Fisherman Malcolm Coco also suffers from memory loss.

“For me it’s more like a short term memory loss, you forget what you’re doing when you’re doing things and going about your daily routine,” said Coco.

Breathing problems, fear of cancer, memory loss – these are among the symptoms reported by fisherman despite months of reassurances from the government and BP that workers were safe.

What were BP and the government doing to protect the workers out at sea?

ABC News has been told that workers did not receive respirators from BP to protect them from breathing possibly-toxic air because the company was following advice from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The agency in charge of worker safety did conduct some air quality tests, but said it thought the respirators might do more harm than good.

“They pull very much on the heart, on the lungs; they are physical burdens if workers are already sick, if they’re smokers in many cases it would be dangerous to give them respirators,” said David Michaels, Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA, on C-SPAN in June 2010.

Coco was part of a team that lit fires to burn the oil off the surface of the water. “I was with the burn team,” Coco told ABC News. “It was just spewing black and black everywhere.”

“Those small boats that the fishermen were operating were much closer to the water surface. Much closer to the oil surface,” said Dr. Solomon.

How Did The Government Know Whether the Air Was Safe?

After sifting through hundreds of pages of government data, we ultimately found that no government agency tested the air the workers out at sea were breathing until a month after the spill. Yet most of the fisherman charged out within the first few days following the accident.

While the Environmental Protection Agency conducted extensive air quality tests onshore, the same cannot be said offshore. The first offshore EPA air quality test was not performed until May 17, nearly a month after the spill, and the EPA conducted offshore air quality tests on four days over a six-day period.

Technically, the EPA does not have jurisdiction over the air quality in the Gulf and released a statement on its website that said it would let the Coast Guard and OSHA handle offshore safety. The statement said, “EPA does not anticipate conducting additional off-shore sampling but will continue its sampling and monitoring efforts on land.”

Although OSHA did conduct offshore tests for a variety of oilcomponents, OSHA didn’t start testing until nearly 5 weeks after the spill. The Coast Guard arrived even later on the scene to test air quality — nearly 2 months after the spill.

Most worrisome to experts today is the fact that the government did no offshore testing for small, dangerous particles called particulate matter, and if BP has done any such testing, it has not published its findings.

In the first month after the accident, every government agency was relying on BP for offshore air quality testing. It turns out data released by BP one month after the spill reveals BP apparently only tested for two oil contaminants offshore. And small particles or oil aerosols apparently were not tested.

“We do know from previous studies that these kinds of oil aerosols can cause a powerful inflammatory reaction in the airways and can make people very sick,” Dr. Solomon told ABCNews.

Offshore Testing Timeline, Date Started:
Deepwater Horizon Accident: April 20
BP: April 28
EPA: May 17
OSHA: May 24

Coast Guard: June14

ABC News confronted Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson hoping to find answers. When asked whether the EPA should have taken more of a lead in testing the air offshore in the days after the spill instead of five weeks later, Jackson disagreed.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “[The] EPA is not an expert in occupational safety and worker safety, that’s OSHA’s job.”In fact, Administrator Jackson is correct. The EPA does not have jurisdiction over air quality on the Gulf of Mexico.

OSHA declined ABC News’ numerous interview requests and BP’s chief operations for Gulf cleanup, Mike Utsler, said he didn’t know whether anyone had become ill due to the spill.

Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who led the cleanup effort in the gulf, says that if it happened again he would be more judicious in employing Vessels of Opportunity.
“I think I’d be very judicious in employing Vessels of Opportunity in the future,” Allen said. “I think they can be used effectively, but I think we need to understand the environment they’re operating in, the impact on the people and the impact on the boats and I would say do we have this right before we take a step forward.”

One-year later and with nowhere to turn in the gulf, these fishermen simply wait to see if they’ll be among those contacted to be part of the government’s study on cleanup workers.
But for now these fishermen and their families move forward with only each other to count on, in search of closure and afraid of what the future may bring.

“What I would like the outcome to be is for us to be told the truth,” said Burnett. “Just tell us what happened to us and then we can move on, seek whatever we have to do to try to get better. Move on with our lives.”

Special thanks to Richard Charter.

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2011/04/19-9

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 19, 2011 2:28 PM

CONTACT: Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA)

WASHINGTON – April 19 – T. Boone Pickens and Ted Turner speak at the National Press Club this afternoon. At 10 a.m. ET, a group of environmentalists and scientists are holding a conference call to expose what’s behind Pickens’ plans. For more information, contact: Kate Fried, Food & Water Watch

Food & Water Watch reports: “Congress’s upcoming consideration of the NAT GAS Act (H.R. 1380) … would funnel $5 billion in subsidies to the natural gas industry, while making the U.S. dependent on shale gas drilling for a generation to come. … The process of injecting shale rock with water to extract gas for energy, fracking has been shown to contaminate water supplies. To date, there have been more than 1,000 documented cases of water contamination near drilling sites around the country.”

A.R. INGRAFFEA
Ingraffea will participate in the conference call and is one of the Cornell University researchers who co-authored the recently-published study “Methane and the greenhouse-gas footprint of natural gas from shale formations.” He said today: “We have a preliminary conclusion that it is possible that the life cycle of natural gas produces more greenhouse gases than the life cycle of other fossil fuels. … ‘Natural gas’ basically means methane.” See: “Study: Fracking May Be More Harmful Than Coal Use.” PDF of study

JOSH FOX
Fox made the film “Gaslands,” which has won numerous awards. He and will also be on the 10 a.m. conference call. He said today: “T. Boone Pickens is an just an oil baron turned gas baron trying to game the system into subsidizing his business interests. The Pickens plan does nothing to reduce emissions and would push unregulated toxic gas drilling into overdrive, further contaminating huge areas of the United States. His plan won’t work, not just because it is costly and toxic, but because there are literally millions of Americans living in the drill zones in 34 states who are not willing to have their health, water and air put at risk by drilling. I have seen the strength of the movement against gas drilling all across the United States, it is resilient, smart, democratic, non-violent and adamant in opposing this massive drilling plan.

“Pickens promotes his plan under the guise of clean energy and independence from foreign oil. But his plan is dirty as any fossil fuel and just means more dependence on T. Boone Pickens and his oil and gas buddies. Renewable energy and biofuels are a much better way to go. There are numerous plans that exist today that don’t include risking the permanent contamination of the water supply.”

For a map of all the areas that T. Boone Pickens would like to drill go to the homepage of gaslandthemovie.com

MAURA STEPHENS
Stephens is a co-founder of the Coalition to Protect New York. She just wrote the piece “Meet the Gas Geezers,” which traces the interests of both Pickens and Turner — whose talk together today is billed as a “debate” — regarding gas and water.
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A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.

Published on Tuesday, April 19, 2011 by The Independent/UK
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/04/19-5

I always thought that the Bush invasion was all about Iraq’s oil; this is the first I’ve read of it from the British viewpoint. DV

by Paul Bignell

Plans to exploit Iraq’s oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world’s largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show.

A British Army soldier investigates a large fire near Basra’s Shuiba refinery. Whereas BP was insisting in public that it had “no strategic interest” in Iraq, in private it told the Foreign Office that Iraq was “more important than anything we’ve seen for a long time”. (Reuters) Graphic: Iraq’s burgeoning oil industry

The papers, revealed here for the first time, raise new questions over Britain’s involvement in the war, which had divided Tony Blair’s cabinet and was voted through only after his claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

The minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and senior oil executives are at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil companies and Western governments at the time.

The documents were not offered as evidence in the ongoing Chilcot Inquiry into the UK’s involvement in the Iraq war. In March 2003, just before Britain went to war, Shell denounced reports that it had held talks with Downing Street about Iraqi oil as “highly inaccurate”. BP denied that it had any “strategic interest” in Iraq, while Tony Blair described “the oil conspiracy theory” as “the most absurd”.

But documents from October and November the previous year paint a very different picture.

Five months before the March 2003 invasion, Baroness Symons, then the Trade Minister, told BP that the Government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq’s enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Tony Blair’s military commitment to US plans for regime change.

The papers show that Lady Symons agreed to lobby the Bush administration on BP’s behalf because the oil giant feared it was being “locked out” of deals that Washington was quietly striking with US, French and Russian governments and their energy firms.

Minutes of a meeting with BP, Shell and BG (formerly British Gas) on 31 October 2002 read: “Baroness Symons agreed that it would be difficult to justify British companies losing out in Iraq in that way if the UK had itself been a conspicuous supporter of the US government throughout the crisis.”

The minister then promised to “report back to the companies before Christmas” on her lobbying efforts.

The Foreign Office invited BP in on 6 November 2002 to talk about opportunities in Iraq “post regime change”. Its minutes state: “Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP is desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity.”

After another meeting, this one in October 2002, the Foreign Office’s Middle East director at the time, Edward Chaplin, noted: “Shell and BP could not afford not to have a stake in [Iraq] for the sake of their long-term future… We were determined to get a fair slice of the action for UK companies in a post-Saddam Iraq.”

Whereas BP was insisting in public that it had “no strategic interest” in Iraq, in private it told the Foreign Office that Iraq was “more important than anything we’ve seen for a long time”.

BP was concerned that if Washington allowed TotalFinaElf’s existing contact with Saddam Hussein to stand after the invasion it would make the French conglomerate the world’s leading oil company. BP told the Government it was willing to take “big risks” to get a share of the Iraqi reserves, the second largest in the world.

Over 1,000 documents were obtained under Freedom of Information over five years by the oil campaigner Greg Muttitt. They reveal that at least five meetings were held between civil servants, ministers and BP and Shell in late 2002.

The 20-year contracts signed in the wake of the invasion were the largest in the history of the oil industry. They covered half of Iraq’s reserves – 60 billion barrels of oil, bought up by companies such as BP and CNPC (China National Petroleum Company), whose joint consortium alone stands to make £403m ($658m) profit per year from the Rumaila field in southern Iraq.

Last week, Iraq raised its oil output to the highest level for almost decade, 2.7 million barrels a day – seen as especially important at the moment given the regional volatility and loss of Libyan output. Many opponents of the war suspected that one of Washington’s main ambitions in invading Iraq was to secure a cheap and plentiful source of oil.

Mr Muttitt, whose book Fuel on Fire is published next week, said: “Before the war, the Government went to great lengths to insist it had no interest in Iraq’s oil. These documents provide the evidence that give the lie to those claims.

“We see that oil was in fact one of the Government’s most important strategic considerations, and it secretly colluded with oil companies to give them access to that huge prize.”

Lady Symons, 59, later took up an advisory post with a UK merchant bank that cashed in on post-war Iraq reconstruction contracts. Last month she severed links as an unpaid adviser to Libya’s National Economic Development Board after Colonel Gaddafi started firing on protesters. Last night, BP and Shell declined to comment.

www.fuelonthefire.com

Not about oil? what they said before the invasion

* Foreign Office memorandum, 13 November 2002, following meeting with BP: “Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP are desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity to compete. The long-term potential is enormous…”

* Tony Blair, 6 February 2003: “Let me just deal with the oil thing because… the oil conspiracy theory is honestly one of the most absurd when you analyse it. The fact is that, if the oil that Iraq has were our concern, I mean we could probably cut a deal with Saddam tomorrow in relation to the oil. It’s not the oil that is the issue, it is the weapons…”

* BP, 12 March 2003: “We have no strategic interest in Iraq. If whoever comes to power wants Western involvement post the war, if there is a war, all we have ever said is that it should be on a level playing field. We are certainly not pushing for involvement.”

* Lord Browne, the then-BP chief executive, 12 March 2003: “It is not in my or BP’s opinion, a war about oil. Iraq is an important producer, but it must decide what to do with its patrimony and oil.”

* Shell, 12 March 2003, said reports that it had discussed oil opportunities with Downing Street were ‘highly inaccurate’, adding: “We have neither sought nor attended meetings with officials in the UK Government on the subject of Iraq. The subject has only come up during conversations during normal meetings we attend from time to time with officials… We have never asked for ‘contracts’.”