Reuters, 04.21.03, 4:59 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Gold prices surged to 19-day highs Monday on technical support, with bullion taking its eye off postwar Iraq to focus on the state of the U.S. economy. Crude oil futures rose on expectations Thursday's OPEC emergency meeting will cut members' output in a bid to stem a slide in prices, while coffee prices hit two-month highs. COMEX gold ignored a steady dollar and the stock market to head higher, but an Easter Monday holiday in major gold centers like London, Sydney and Hong Kong kept trade activity thin. "There is a little bit of Far East buying here. It's kind of weird with the dollar strengthening up," said a trader. Bullion is seen as an alternative currency in itself and tends to move in the opposite direction from the dollar, which gained against the European euro currency. The market was also beginning to wean itself of Iraq for price direction a month after U.S.-led forces entered the country. President Saddam Hussein has since been toppled from power and efforts to rebuild the nation are under way. Bullion was now bringing into its focus the state of the economy and corporate earnings in the United States. Private research firm, the Conference Board, said Monday the index of leading economic indicators fell 0.2 percent last month after a 0.5 percent drop in February. Wall Street economists polled by Reuters forecast a 0.1 percent decline. "The good news is that it's not getting worse. The bad news is that it's not going to get better this spring and maybe even this summer," said Ken Goldstein, the board's chief economist. While some welcomed the early end of the war in Iraq as the first step toward economic recovery, Goldstein does not think the end of fighting will necessarily boost growth. Imbalances in the U.S. economy are caused by domestic factors, he said. "The issue of consumer confidence is of far greater importance than what is or what isn't going on in Iraq," he said. COMEX June gold ended $6.30 higher at $333.90 an ounce. NYMEX crude oil futures ended just shy of $31.00-a-barrel market amid expectations that OPEC will decide to cut back members' production at its Thursday meeting. Gains were pared by news that oil production in OPEC member Venezuela, the world's No. 5 petroleum exporter, is now edging toward the 3.1 million barrels per day pumped before a two-month strike crippled the industry in December. "This market is expecting an OPEC production cut ... by how much is the question," said a NYMEX floor trader. Iran's oil minister, Bijan Zanganeh, was quoted as saying on Saturday that members who had overshot their OPEC production quotas should be the first to cut output. But Zanganeh also said OPEC had yet to formally discuss a reduction in output ahead of the Vienna meeting Thursday, according to an Iranian newspaper. Zanganeh, who said last week OPEC must cut output to below its ceiling of 24.5 million bpd to keep oil prices from crashing, indicated that any cut would be made after May 1. OPEC fears a seasonal weakening of demand in the second quarter amid high production coinciding with Iraqi export resumption could cause prices to fall steeply. OPEC estimated Friday that 10 quota-bound members pumped 26.06 million barrels in March, 1.56 million above the quota, just as Iraq exports were halted due to the war. But the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated that OPEC production had shot up to 27 million bpd. NYMEX May crude oil ended 32 cents higher at $30.87 a barrel. May gasoline rose 0.32 cent to 90.98 cents a gallon, while May heating oil rose 2.72 cents to 80.08 cents. CSCE coffee rallied to two-month highs as commodity funds covered their short positions, and on speculative buying ahead of first notice day for deliveries against the May contract. U.S. green coffee roastings in the week ended April 5 totaled some 300,000 60-kg bags, down from 350,000 bags the previous week and 330,000 bags in the corresponding week one year ago, according to Complete Coffee Coverage. In the year to April 5, roastings totaled about 5,245,000, compared with 5,260,000 bags in the same period a year ago. CSCE July coffee ended 0.60 cent higher at 65.65 cents a pound.

sf.indymedia.org by Abraham Monday April 21, 2003 at 12:53 PM abraham_94064@yahoo.com

A very interesting article on Aljazeera's web site. Now looking back, Carter was really the only good guy to make U.S. less dependent on foreign oil and to build a more peaceful world. The U.S. corporations have been the axis of evils who fixate the nation on the same old war path to conquer and consume more and more oil. Resolutions to this decades old problem?

The importance of Iraqi oil to the US

Dr. Abdul Hay Zallom is the author of “The New Empire of Evil” and “Forewarnings of Globalization”. He was a key player in the formation of three major oil companies in 1959, two of them owned by two OPEC member states. He is also a founder and board chairman of “Zallom and Associates”, an oil industry consultation company.

Though US Secretary of State Collin Powell has repeatedly stressed that oil is not the goal of the US war on Iraq, many observers reiterate that oil remains the major motivation. They point to Iraq’s huge oil reserves and US oil needs as being behind the US decision.

Iraq owns 11 per cent of international oil reserves, which accounts for more than 112 billion barrels of oil. Studies by the US Energy Information Administration put the reserves in excess of 200 billion barrels. An added attraction is that the cost of pumping Iraqi crude is the cheapest worldwide.

The studies show that the world’s demand for oil will reach 112 million barrels per day in the year 2020 and that only six countries namely Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela, will be able to meet that demand. The US is the world’s largest oil consumer. While an US citizen consumes 28 barrels per year, his Chinese counterpart burns only two barrels per year.

Q: Why did the United States decide to disarm Iraq and democratise it while the world is full of similar regimes?

A: The declared reason is to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. International observers and United Nations inspectors have so far indicated that Iraq is clear of such weapons…even the United States knows that Iraq possesses no such weapons…As for the excuse of replacing the current regime with a democratic one, it is not democratic at all to impose a democratic regime with tanks...Besides, the United States is not the world’s most qualified to defend democracy.

Q: What then are US objectives in Iraq?

A: The United States’ real objectives were revealed by Powell to Congress…when he said that Washington would carry out structural change after occupying Iraq…for us, this structural change, which would primarily depend on oil, would be the establishment of a new empire…Empires do not come into being by coincidence…The Sykes-Picot agreement designed the Arab world according to the interests of the British and the French empires…currently our Arab world is subject to a Bush-Sharon intended empire.

Q: What is the importance of Iraqi oil for the United States?

A: Let me just read to you what “Orbs” Magazine wrote in 1957. Its editor-in-chief was William Eliot, and after him his student Henry Kissinger…The magazine wrote that the mission of the United States was to unify the whole world under its leadership…that is to say a worldwide Empire led by the United States and stamped by the American spirit and culture

Q: Was that just speculation or a kind of strategy…?

A: The plan always existed, but the implementation is divided into phases, in accordance with the circumstances.

Q: What is the role of oil in all this?

A: This means that oil is the pillar and the soul of such future empires…

Q: But why Iraqi oil in particular?

A: Because Iraq’s reserves are huge…According to declared figures, Iraq’s reserves are estimated at around 115 billion barrels…which equals the total reserves of the United States, Canada, Mexico, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, China and the whole non-Middle Eastern Asia…The reserves of all these countries altogether are 116 billion barrels, while Iraq’s alone, as mentioned before are 115 billion barrels…It is worth mentioning here that these quantities of oil are pumped from only 15 out of 74 oilwells.

Q: Does this mean that more than 60 oil wells are not operative or productive in Iraq?

A: Exactly…the West has repeatedly declined to declare the real reserves of oil in the Arab region because of political reasons…Iraq’s reserves of oil can equal that of Saudi Arabia…As declared in 1996, Saudi oil reserves stood at 115 billion barrels…

Q: Some studies indicate that Iraq may have a reserve of 200 billion barrels.?

A: Iraqi oil reserves may even exceed 200 billion barrels…

Q: Since it is a fact that Iraq’s oil reserves equal those of the United States, Canada, Australia and most of the Asian and European countries put together, does this really consolidate the objectives of war on Iraq?

A: Iraq is a prey and the opportunity should be seized, especially since the United States’ oil reserves stand at just 22 billion barrels.

Q: Some studies point out that by 2007 Washington will stop using its own oil, reserving all production for strategic purposes and that every litre of oil will be imported. Is that true?

A: US oil reserves will be kept only for strategic purposes…

Q: Will these strategic reserves help the United States to maintain its industrial superiority and to enable it to remain the number one industrial power of the world?

A: Strategic reserves mean that the United States will not use its own oil except in cases of emergency.

Q: How do you assess the United States’ future need of oil, if it wants to maintain its industrial growth and to form the empire through which it seeks to dominate the world?

A: Oil for the United States is a matter of life or death…Not only Iraqi oil…Iraq will only be the first step and will be followed by other countries…the Middle East and Iran possess 65 per cent of the world’s oil reserves…that may be one of the reasons for picking off Iraq…The US divides oil producing countries into two categories…they call the first category absorber countries, while the second, non-absorber countries…According to the US absorber countries are dangerous because they possess the capability to build modern and powerful states…They include Iraq and Algeria and may now include Saudi Arabia…

Q: These are the most indebted countries in the Arab world. The debt of Algeria, which is categorized as one of the richest oil countries in the Arab world, exceeds 52 billion dollars. Iraq’s debts are far more than that, while Saudi Arabia’s debts, according to its finance minister are 600 billion riyals (US$170 billion). How did this happen?

A: It is not a coincidence that these three major Arab oil producing countries have joined the club of debtors…there was a fear that these absorber countries might become powerful states…It is worth mentioning here that when the current US administration came to power, it brought an agenda to establish a new US empire to dominate the world.

In October 2001 and after the September 11th attacks, Robert Cooper, an advisor to Blair was transferred to the Foreign Ministry to accomplish a specific mission, polishing the final touches on the project of the future empire …The former British empire is the imperial advisor to the future American empire…In “Prospect” magazine, Cooper explicitly said that “Nation States” had proved their failure after independence…and that all conditions are set for the beginning of a new imperialism with an Anglo-Saxon culture…This is what really happens and Iraq is only a part of a series of plots

Q: America did not import a single barrel of oil before 1970, but now 60 percent of its oil need is imported. How did US oil imports jump from zero to 60 percent in a period of 32 years?

A: The first US trade deficit was caused by its oil imports…before the 1991 Gulf War, the United States used to import 45 per cent of its oil demand. Studies at that time predicted that US oil imports would increase to 60 percent by the end of the 90s and to 100 percent in the years to follow…

Q: Do you mean by the year 2007?

A: Exactly…if a projection was made about the United States’ complete reliance on imported oil, how would then the US trade deficit look?

Q: British Petroleum and the US Energy Information Administration have recently said in a study that the world’s oil production will soar to 112 million barrels per day by 2020, compared to 77 million barrels per day in 1997. What does that mean for the United States?

A: It means that if oil was very important for the United States in the past, it will be a matter of life or death for it in the future…Oil is the Arabs’ real weapon of mass destruction…We do not practically benefit from oil…the price of our oil is very low…and does not reflect the real price…

Q: Oil prices in the late 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s stood at $ 40 per barrel, the prices have deteriorated ever since and have sometimes stood at seven or eight dollars per barrel…

A: If the price of oil remained at $ 40 per barrel as you mentioned, Arab wealth would have exceeded 1.5 trillion dollars…Bottling water actually cost between 50 to 60 dollars per barrel…The issue of the price is a matter of national security for the United States…in other words, if a state decides to increase or decrease the price in contradiction to the US interests, Washington would consider that a violation of its national security…

Q: Do you think that the current anti-war positions of France and Germany are linked to the issue of oil?

A: Yes…this is a conflict for profit and not for ideology…the French ELF-Total has a contract for exploiting 25 per cent of Iraqi oil…

Comments

Tee-Hee by Impeach Bush (but first teach him to read) Tuesday April 22, 2003 at 10:09 AM

<a href=news.ft.com>Financial Times By Robert Graham Published: April 21 2003 21:13 | Last Updated: April 21 2003 21:13 The air of injured innocence is slowly evaporating among the key defendants in France's biggest ever corruption trial.

In all, 37 people have been charged with siphoning off almost €400m ($436m) during the late eighties and early nineties from Elf, then a French state-owned oil group.

After a month of hearings, the whereabouts of most of the funds remains a mystery. But the trial judge has succeeded in teasing out the lavish whims of Elf executives and their acolytes, forcing many of the accused to admit to serious personal enrichment.

Loik Le Floch-Prigent, Elf's chief executive from 1989 to 1993 and a central figure in the case, admitted his personal gains with masterly understatement, saying: "Things got out of hand.""At Elf everything was exaggerated. It eroded one's sense of reality... I allowed myself to get carried away." Loik Le Floch-Prigent

Accused of removing €183m of Elf money, and now in poor health as he serves a 2½ year prison term imposed at a previous corruption trial, he appears relieved to confess. "I see this as an occasion to get things off my chest," he said.

Alfred Sirven, who handled many of Elf's pay-offs to middlemen and foreign dignitaries, who is charged with siphoning off €168m, has been a little less contrite.

Soon after the investigation began in 1994 he went on the run, and police only caught up with him in the Philippines in 2001. "I am guilty of certain things: this I have known for a long time, but all the same that does not really explain how these things happened," he said in his gravelly voice.

These men and the other defendants are bitter that their political superiors are absent from the dock - even though they claim Elf was used as a secret treasury for under-the-table state activities from the foundation of the Fifth republic in 1958 until the group's privatisation in the mid-1990s.

But - as the sharp-tongued judge Michel Desplan has reminded them - this is no answer to the serious corruption charges against them.

Mr Le Floch-Prigent has, for instance, been asked to justify the purchase of a $9.3m Paris mansion, a country chateau and a divorce settlement after 18 months of marriage that cost Elf €4.5m. He replied: "At Elf everything was exaggerated. It eroded one's sense of reality . . . I allowed myself to get carried away."

At first he insisted the luxury town house had been bought for corporate relations with the ulterior purpose of being for the use of president Omar Bongo of Gabon, where Elf had vital oil interests.

But Fatima Belaid, Mr Le Floch-Prigent's ex-wife, told the court that the place was for her ex-husband's "personal use", and that its ownership was concealed to avoid taxes.

This prompted the judge to ask Mr Le Floch-Prigent: "For company representation, was not this place too much even for the president of Elf?"

His reply became one of the most quoted lines from the case: "It was a folie des grandeurs. Let's say it was a mistake; but it was not a crime."

To defend the fact that his expensive divorce was settled through offshore Elf bank accounts, Mr Le Floch-Prigent invoked his close relationship with the country's late president François Mitterrand.

The court heard he told the president that if the divorce turned messy there was a risk his ex-wife might reveal what she knew of Elf's activities, causing "collateral damage" to Elf's African clients as well as the president's son Jean-Cristophe, who handled African affairs at the Elysée Palace.

This was the first time Mr Mitterrand had been overtly linked to corruption at Elf during the trial, although the group's top appointments were approved by him.

On the broader issue of where Elf's secret funds went, Mr Le Floch-Prigent has admitted he knew of a "black box" containing some $5m a year. Nevertheless, he said he knew nothing about how the contents were used. That was in the hands of Mr Sirven and André Tarallo, head of Elf's Gabon subsidiary and its principal contact with African leaders, who is accused of corruptly handling €35m.

Neither man has yet been forthcoming about the money trail. Mr Tarallo has been the more explicit, claiming at one point that in 1990 President Bongo feared he was about to lose French backing for his long-standing authoritarian rule and needed a "savings bank" as insurance against losing power.

The trial is in its early stages, and evidence about Elf's dubious foreign operations is expected to be heard throughout May.

This could yet throw light on kickbacks paid by Elf over a deal between Mr Mitterrand and German ex-chancellor Helmut Kohl to invest in the Luena refinery in East Germany - an affair which helped bring Mr Kohl down.

Also under scrutiny will be oil contracts in the North Sea and Venezuela and the purchase of Spanish group Ertoil.

But many observers will be watching most keenly for more folies des grandeurs.

Related stories Time up for men accused of greasing palms with Elf's oil  Apr 22 2003 05:00 The Elf affair - who's who  Apr 15 2003 17:45 Total launches review of corporate ethics  Apr 14 2003 21:53
Exiles call for Iraq to let in oil companies  Apr 07 2003 03:49
Pentagon to blacklist companies investing in Iran  Mar 28 2003 22:25
Moving places  Mar 26 2003 04:00

<a href=reuters.com>Reuters Mon April 21, 2003 04:00 PM ET By Pascal Fletcher

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuela on Monday dismissed renewed charges by Colombia that it was sheltering leftist guerrillas, intensifying a dispute over border security just two days before a bilateral presidential summit.

President Hugo Chavez and his Colombian counterpart Alvaro Uribe are due to meet on Wednesday in eastern Venezuela to try to defuse the controversy over the frontier and shore up ties battered by economic and political problems in both countries.

Relations between the two Andean neighbors, who share a rugged 1,400-mile border, have been strained by accusations from Colombia -- denied in Caracas -- that Chavez's government is allowing Colombian Marxist rebels to operate from Venezuelan territory.

"Venezuela gives no shelter to criminals of any nationality," Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said in an angry response to charges from Colombian Attorney-General Luis Camilo Osorio.

Osorio said at the weekend Venezuela was becoming a "haven for Colombian delinquents" and urged Venezuela to help rid the border of rebels, right-wing paramilitaries and drug-traffickers.

Rejecting Osorio's comments as "a provocation," Rangel said in a statement: "If Colombian delinquents have come into this country, then this is more the result of negligence and complicity by the Colombian authorities, rather than by us Venezuelans."

WAR OF WORDS

In a war of words in recent weeks, Chavez's government has accused the Colombian army of backing right-wing paramilitaries and allowing them to penetrate into Venezuela.

The latest heated exchange set the tone for what could be a prickly April 23 meeting between left-wing paratrooper Chavez and Uribe, a lawyer who has set himself the task of trying to defeat the Marxist rebels and bring peace to his country.

Uribe, whose father was killed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, has appealed to neighboring governments to denounce the FARC and a smaller rebel group as "terrorists" and act firmly against them.

But populist Chavez, who was first elected in 1998 and has declared a self-styled "revolution" in favor of his country's poor, has refused to label the Colombian rebels as "terrorists." He says he wants to maintain a neutral position to be able to contribute to a negotiated peace in Colombia.

His critics accuse him of having ideological sympathies for the Colombian guerrillas.

Chavez has denied the criticism, saying his armed forces will repel any illegal incursions into Venezuelan territory, whether by rebels, paramilitaries or the Colombian army.

"Venezuela, its government and people, want to have the best relations with Colombia ... we hope the Uribe-Chavez meeting in Puerto Ordaz will be fruitful," Rangel said.

Also on the agenda for the talks in the industrial city of Puerto Ordaz will be trade between the two neighbors, who are major commercial partners.

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Monday, April 21, 2003 By: David Coleman

Smug-faced US Ambassador Charles Shapiro has admitted responsibility on accusations by Venezuelan Foreign Minister Roy Chaderton Matos that he's feeding false information about Venezuela to the US State Department in Washington.

Unashamedly Shapiro has told reporters "I am to blame since it corresponds to me to inform the US government and I am keeping them constantly informed."

MRE Chaderton Matos had earlier complained that US Secretary of State Colin Powell has been badly informed on prevailing realities in Venezuela...

Shapiro says he has just hosted a Monday meeting to exchange opinions between US Congressmen and their counterparts in the Venezuelan National Assembly (AN) ... "it was a courtesy visit!"

AN 1st vice president Ricardo Gutierrez, deputising on this occasion in the absence of AN president (speaker) Francisco Ameliach, told the US visitors that a new board of directors of the National Electoral College (CNE) is to be constituted shortly.

However, Shapiro didn't let up one second on his anti-Venezuelan stance ... asked by opposition Globovision reporters if  the US Congress delegation was worried about the situation in Venezuela, Shapiro quipped "we're permanently worried by the situation in Venezuela!"

Press hacks at the bunker on Colinas de Valle Arriba have been scrambling today to "damage control" Shapiro's incredibly stupid statement ... but the cat's already out of the bag!

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