Iran’s Natural Gas Riches: US Knife to the Heart of World Future Energy
Global reseach / Global research
22-Mar-2010

 The scheduled start of drilling
this month by China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) in Iran’s South
Pars gas field could be both a harbinger and explanation of much wider
geopolitical developments.

First of all, the $5 billion project –
signed last year after years of foot dragging by western energy giants
Total and Shell under the shadow of US-led sanctions – reveals the main
arterial system for future world energy supply and demand.

Critics
have long suspected that the real reason for US and other western
military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is to control the Central
Asian energy corridor. So far, the focus seems to be mainly on oil. For
example, there have been claims that a planned oil pipeline from the
Caspian Sea via Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea is the main
prize behind the US’s seemingly futile military campaign in those
countries.

But what the CNPC-Iranian partnership shows is that
natural gas is the bigger prize that will be pivotal to the world
economy, and specifically the dual flow of this fuel westwards and
eastwards from Central Asia to Europe and China.

Michael
Economides, editor of the Houston-based Energy Tribune, is one of a
growing number of industry observers who is convinced that natural gas
will supplant oil as the primary energy source, not only in the coming
decades b... >>>

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