Subject: Untold Story
Bartcop,
There is a story outside the US, particularly
here in Saudi Arabia that
I have been expecting to make the news in the
US, but apparently not.
It involves Daddy Bush/Cheney/ExxonMobil/Halliburton
and natural gas,
which if I'm not mistaken, Cheney's Energy Policy
references.
The following excerpt comes from:
The story has been archived and must be purchased,
but a copy can be found in Usenet Newsgroups.
"The Saudi government, which is keen to join the
WTO, has just softened
the requirement that foreigners must have agents.
The clearest sign of
change, says Saudi oil analyst Nawaf Obaid, is
that the government
forbade the use of agents and the paying of commissions
in its latest
foreign-bid project. The Natural Gas Initiative,
as it is called,
represents a staggering $25 billion investment-and
that's just for
starters. The big winner was ExxonMobil, which
will lead two of three
joint-venture projects. Saudi officials were
so intent on avoiding any
unseemly backroom deals that all bidders were
required to take a very
unusual step: They signed agreements voiding
their contracts if they
were found to have paid bribes."
This story about the "Natural Gas Initiative"
in Saudi Arabia has been
on the newswires and in the foreign press for
over a year. Unfortunatley
I have not tracked it, or "researched" it with
references to URL's.
I follow it in local papers and at work here
in Saudi Arabia.
The story as I'm aware of it is that:
- The Saudis and Iraqis were having border clashes for a year before spring of last year.
- After the selection last year, a series of phone
calls from Cheney & Daddy Bush
(not Junior), were announced in the local
papers, e.g. Arab News, (www.arabnews.com)
while negotiations were still going on on the
Natural Gas Initiative.
- During that period, the Saudi's seized an Iraqi
pipeline and pumping station
(presumably on Saudi territory) as War Reparations.
- About a week after that the Saudi's announced
that the pipeline & pumping station
could be converted to natural gas pumping. (I
believe Halliburton did the assessment.)
- The day after Junior made his Energy Policy
announcement, the Saudi's
announced agreement on the $25 billion Natural
Gas Initiative with ExxonMobil
(a Houston based company) getting the lion's
share of and prime fields.
- (While not necessarily related, 2 days before
"9/11", two Halliburton
employees were killed down the street from me
by a "suicide bomber";
two other "westerners" were seriously injured.
A non-westerner was
injured and non-westerner, announced as the bomber,
killed. The thing
about this was that the two westerners killed
were Halliburton was not
announced publicly, but was common knowledge
at work.)
I am now curious now as to what Cheney's visit
to this part of the world
next month is going to be about. After all these
month's in seclusion
for security reason's he's going to visit the
"hot bed" of terrorism??
Or, the Saudi's announced yesterday (02/27) that
there were some hangups
in the final Natural Gas Initiative, particularly
with ExxonMobil, and the
agreement would not be finalized on the scheduled
March 2nd date.
I'm sorry I don't have any "hard" references,
but I really assumed that
US media, the Dems, or outraged ant-Bush folks
in the US would have
picked up on this story. Apparently not.
Any taker's with the time to go through foreign newswire and news archives??
Mike