Why Chavez Is
In U.S. Crosshairs
By Linda McQuaig
04 September, 2005
Toronto
Star
The future of Venezuelan president Hugo
Chavez started to look precarious last January. It was then that CNN
announcers began referring to him as a "Latin American strongman."
The term suggests a dictator, so it actually doesn't fit Chavez, who's
twice been democratically elected in national elections.
But to millions
of Americans, Chavez has been presented as a strongman, a dictator,
a mini-Saddam. So they probably won't be concerned if he's assassinated,
as Christian fundamentalist leader Pat Robertson last week publicly
urged the Bush administration to do.
Only two years after
it toppled Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Washington seems anxious to get rid
of yet another unco-operative leader of a nation very rich in oil and
largely defenseless.
Of course, as with
Iraq, Venezuela's ample oil reserves are never acknowledged as a possible
motive. This is striking, since oil has been taking on even more significance
lately. The reason is simple: The world seems to be fast reaching the
point where there won't be enough oil available to meet the world's
ever-growing demand.
So the scramble
to get control of oil, a central feature of the global power struggle
for decades, seems poised to get more intense.
The higher gasoline
prices we've experienced in recent months are probably just a small
taste of the ramped-up competition for oil that lies ahead. Many commentators
insist these higher prices are just a temporary blip, and scoff at the
notion of dwindling oil supplies.
For instance, David
Frum, former speechwriter for George W. Bush, insisted in a piece in
the National Post earlier this year that there is plenty of oil. In
a stunning bit of logic, Frum likened the supply of oil to the supply
of tomatoes. If demand for tomatoes rises, the supermarket will stock
more. And so it is, Frum insisted, with oil.
But outside the
make-believe world inhabited by Frum and his former colleagues in the
Bush White House, oil isn't actually like tomatoes.
Unlike tomatoes,
oil produces no seeds. It's a finite resource, much of which was produced
by a special set of climate conditions more than 80 million years ago.
Excessive consumption
has contributed greatly to the potentially catastrophic problem of global
warming. It's also meant we've used up about half of the Earth's most
versatile and effective form of energy.
Perhaps it's reassuring
to know we're only halfway through the supply. But the first half is
the easy-to-reach stuff; the oil that can be pumped almost effortlessly
from the ground. Getting the rest out of the Earth's crust is much more
complicated and expensive.
A growing number
of experts, including British oil geologist Colin Campbell and U.S.
energy banker Matthew Simmons, question the notion that there's no limit
to what oil technology can do and insist the world may soon find itself
wanting more oil than can be produced daily.
This would be a
crisis of major proportions. "The scale of change (that would be
required) is enormous because of the pervasive use of oil worldwide,"
warns Simmons.
A report last February
by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory
was even more alarming.
"The world
has never faced a problem like this," the report noted. "...
Previous energy transitions (wood to coal and coal to oil) were gradual
and evolutionary; oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary."
It's hard to imagine
it won't also be violent. The U.S. has long maintained that access to
oil is essential to its "national security." The problem is
that the U.S. consumes 25 per cent of all the oil produced worldwide
each year, yet has only 3 per cent of world oil reserves. As supplies
diminish, the U.S. will be particularly vulnerable, and vulnerability
is not something it accepts lightly.
Indeed, Washington's
hostility toward Chavez seemed to grow after he signed far-reaching
oil deals last December with America's emerging rival, China.
Media reports often
suggest the Bush administration dislikes Chavez because it considers
him undemocratic. The fact that he's sitting on the biggest oil reserve
outside the Middle East while thumbing his nose at America might actually
be more of a factor.
Linda McQuaig
is the author of It's the Crude,
Dude: War, Big Oil and the Fight for the Planet, to be published
in paperback by Doubleday Canada this month.
© 2005 Toronto
Star