Islam and Oil.

• Author: Eytchison, Patrick
• Position: War for Oil - Economic issues surrounding War on Terrorism, 2001-

A deep structure interweaving resource depletion, culture trends and the capitalist economy undergirds the Bush administration's policy of international aggression and domestic repression. Seen in the context of this structure, the administration's actions are neither inept nor irrational. Instead, they represent the carrying out of a cold logic to preserve the privilege of a ruling class faced with the most severe crisis of its two hundred plus year existence: i.e. the exhaustion of its energy resource base, and the parallel rise of an oppositional semiotic/social movement as strong as, if not stronger than, Marxist communism. The purpose of this essay is to outline that structure. This will be presented in two sections; one on resource depletion and then one on the rise of the Islamist movement. It is only with an understanding of the historical confluence of these two forces that the profound ecological-historical rootedness of present ruling class insanity can be grasped, and with hope an effective resist ance built.

Oil Peak

Although resource depletion means more than petroleum reserve shrinkage--many minerals, metal ores, biologic resources, and water/atmosphere enter the picture--oil is unique in that it is the primary and not easily substituted energy source of modern industrial production, as well as the raw material for many plastics. In fact, the hegemony of the Western corporate elite depends on its control of world oil, but today this control is threatened, first simply by the approaching exhaustion of all large pools of underground crude oil. Bombs will not bring back a one-time-only resource squandered by 100 years of wasteful capitalist consumption.

Contemporary estimates put the Earth's original oil reserve--in technical terms, Estimated Ultimately Recoverable (EUR) reserves--at about 2,000 billion barrels. As of 1999 industrial civilization had consumed about 857 billion barrels. Modern exploration methods have located almost all existing untouched oil; we can expect no new huge "wild cat" finds. The implication from these figures is that world oil production will peak around 2005, and will gradually decline for perhaps a century (at present or higher usage rates) until crude oil will no longer exist as a significant source of energy; but there are several points to consider.

Although the depletion scenario outlined above is accepted by many petroleum geologists, it is not entirely non-controversial. The US Geologic Survey...