BLACK
GOLD
In
1859 Drake
field – the first oil field in the history was discovered in
By
the end of
19th
century
large
«integrated
companies»
appear,
uniting
all functions in themselves
– from
exploration to transportation of oil
and
trade in oil products.
The
oil prices are determined every day, nearly every hour.
Figures,
established
according
to the rates of actual sales
are
published in specialised magazines, following which one can observe the direct
influence of oscillations
in
the price of one barrel of reference blends
of
crude oil
(which
depend on the big number of concrete bargains hourly concluded
– in
particular in Middle East)
on
the international currency rates
and
the condition of global economy
for
the current moment.
The
energy conservation law
continues
to influence
the
actual living standard
of
a mass worker.
In
the following text we shall try to examine the significance, which our region
–
Central
Asia –
obtains
in
the context of energy crises of the last
30 years;
the
end of antagonism between market and planning systems,
of
liberal and bureaucratic capitalisms
ńorrespondingly;
breaking
into the spaces, previously unavailable for the market,
that
have significant energy resources
– natural,
as
well as human,
workforce;
and,
especially,
the
S11 terrorist attacks on USA that served as an excuse for the
consequent
agressive,
enforced
assertion of political and economic interests
of the US ruling circles in the whole world
and according to the opinions of some proletarian analysts
(Jon
Flanders,
George
Caffentzis)
carried
out directly
for
penetration into Central Asia.
If
one gets acquainted with tables and diagrams,
it
becomes clear that the biggest demand for oil exists in the regions of North
America, Western Europe, Far East and Oceania, while it is produced
mainly
in Middle East,
where
the oil reserves
are
measured in hundreds of billions of barrels
– in
the first place in such countries
as
Saudi Arabia,
Iran,
UAE,
Iraq,
Kuwait.
In
the world consumption of oil products per head
there
is a vast gap between
As
we shall see the process of profit extraction from oil production is quite
capacious, requiring a lot of time,
big
capital investments
and
a precise calculation of all factors, including force majeur
circumstances,
such
as wars,
revolutions,
social
tension.
By
convention,
the
entire process can be divided into three stages
– the
upstream phase,
including
exploration/evaluation/development/production;
the
downstream phase,
which
includes transportation/refinery/distribution;
and
trade and marketing.
Certainly, the
first stage is the most labour intensive. In
order to discover a new field (not
speaking about the region) all
factors that are able to influence profits/losses of such an enterprise must be
taken into consideration. If
Capital does not have a certainty in
the maximum payback of investments and
profitability of production, the
field will not be developed. Actually,
there are rich fields in the world that
are not and will not be developed because
of unprofitability of, say, their
geographic location, being
far from the market, or
from a possible, profitable
pipeline route. In
the first turn, the
composition of oil-bearing bed (its
geometry, quality, dynamics), its
type and balance reserves are studied. The
exploration can be seismic, gravimetric electromagnetic – the
last one is especially often used in CIS. Then
the logging is done – the
measurement of physical quality of the rock by
means of geophysical sensors lowered along the stem of an exploratory
well, a
logging diagram is drawn, which
will become the basis for the evaluation of the explored reservoir. When
the exploration data are studied there
is always a high risk of failure – as
a rule, only
one out of 7 wells
fits for operations.
In
its financial expression the
upstream phase looks
as follows (in
capital costs): the
collection of seismic data costs 500-1000
USD
per kilometer; logging – from 5 to 50
USD
for one inspected meter; drilling – from
half million to
one million USD per kilometer; testing/lowering
of equipment – from 0.1 to 0.5 million
USD; operations – from 0.5 to 2 thousand
USD per day.
The
evaluation of all exploration works is
carried out as a rule by a group of experts-geophysicists in
the central body of an oil company. An
engineering decision is passed and
only then the drilling of wells, the
lowering of equipment and
the extraction of oil & gas start. At
this stage huge investments
of capital are made – hundreds
of millions of dollars.
In
general it could be said that the upstream stage of the biggest of known oil
& gas fields of
Central Asia, particularly
Kazakhstan, was
carried out in the period of
1966-1975. Already
in
1975 Kazakhstani
Caspian fields together
with Western Siberia were
producing 35% of
the total output of USSR.
The
oil industry dynamics is
well reflected by the downstream phase.
As
we have already mentioned the cost and
safety of oil products transportation from fields to the market is
the most important economic factor when
the fields to be developed are defined. At
the dawn of the industry the
transportation was carried out by railway, river
ferries and trucks, but
the increasing production output and distance between fields and
markets became a reason for
the development of new modes of transportation. The
oil transportation by sea was
always cheaper than by land. The
first person to carry it out was the not unknown Emmanuel
Nobel – the
Swedish businessman actively
participated in business organisations of
The
crude oil is transported to the location of refineries, where
it is processed and divided into
separate products (petrol, gasoil, naphtha, bitumen). Refineries
usually consist of an operating aggregate, reservoirs
for crude oil, intermediate
and complete material storages (an
extremely important characteristic of oil, as
a commodity is
an impossibility of storing it for
a long time without high costs), oil
and oil products reanimation systems, auxiliary
services. A
big number of refining technologies (depending
on the oil blend) includes
cracking, reforming, isomerisation, alkylation, cleaning, hydro-treatment. Each
of these technological processes has
its own cost. Currently,
in the developed countries the
petrochemical industry exists, allowing
with a lesser damage for environment to
process the oil waste into plastic, rubber, detergents, fabrics
etc.
The
majority of refineries is
located close to the markets of consumption – big
cities, large
industrial facilities, and
also, due
to the big volumes of offshore transportations in
the ports – such
as Rotterdam, New
Jersey, Marseilles, Genoa, Yokohama. However, lately, due
to fiscal and economic reasons, it
becomes more and more profitable to construct such plants on
the so called «neutral
territoties», situated
along the routes of oil transportation – for
instance on
On
the last stage – distribution – the
biggest importance is attained by
a distribution network between refinery, storehouses, mediating
agents and
sellers. This
network – is
the most valuable asset of the large oil companies, requiring
big capital investments and established for long periods.
In
the beginning we already mentioned that the so called integrated companies
played the supreme role in
the industry. The
first largest integrated company was Rockefeller’s «Standard
Oil». The
American millionaires clan controlled
by that time the
nodal transportation routes – railways
and the river navigation in
North-Eastern States. Rockefellers
bought all exploration works and then by means of a special prices
policy established
control over downstream operations. In
relation with a growing monopoly of
such companies, their
control over prices, destruction
of competition, in
In
After
the First World War the
world market found itself in a situation, in
which a few large international companies controlled
all production (except
for the production in the rapidly industrialising at that time
In
the beginning of the 60-s
an organisation of petroleum exporting countries producing more than 70% of the
world exported oil – Saudi Arabia, Iraq, UAE, Kuwait, Iran, Indonesia,
Venezuela, Nigeria, Gabon - was established. This
group has achieved a possibility of imposing on the buyers the
so called «Officially
announced price» for
crude oil, which
was defined by means of confidential negotiations between OPEC
members.
A
little while later the first energy crisis took place. There
are various opinions about
the reasons that triggered the crisis, but
it’s clear that it can’t be explained by official versions like
political antagonism of interests between Islamic
countries and
Israel/USŔ. True, after
the Yom Kippur war a
quadruple increase of oil prices by OPEC countries followed. However, such
a massive «accumulation
of capital by OPEC» according
to Mario Montano, «is
also the capital accumulation by Seven
Sisters». Further,
he continues:
«This
identity if interests between USA and OPEC countries has
a long history. In 1950
the
State Department, in
association with Treasury, allocated
a significant loan to the oil companies for
the payment of foreign taxes. This
loan for the payment of taxes put
a premium on
the oil companies interests in multinational operations and
at the same time increased the share of governments of petroleum producing
countries.
Meanwhile,
the oil prices are kept stable. On
the availability and cheapness of «cheap
oil» the
capital constructs its control over the working class in
its countries and
on the international level in
the post-war period. In
the
The
growth of prices as per Teheran Agreement, imposed
jointly by OPEC members and
US State Department, delivered
a first blow to the working class of
Mario
Montano exposes a concept of the energy crisis, as
a strategy of capital, which
had to provoke the following consequences: «1) energy
crisis reduces the general employment; 2) it
increases the unemployment threat, in
general, as
well as in separate sectors (e.g., in
the automobile sector); 3) it
allows capital to accumulate massively
through
the growth of prices in those areas
(energy and food industry), in
which, the
biggest capitalists, i.e. multinational companies, based
in USA, prevail». (ibid)
The
fact that the first energy crisis was preceded by mighty class upheavals
in the whole world, such
as black riots in
Let
us turn to a more official source – a
respectable American political magazine Foreign
Policy No. 25,
as
of
1976-77; an
article by V. H. Oppenheim,
entitled «Why Oil
Prices Go Up: The Past: We Pushed Them» start
from the following phrase: «Since 1971, the United
States has encouraged Middle East oil-producing states to raise the price of oil
and keep it up». Further
Oppenheim traces the
history – in 1970
the
OPEC countries for the first time announce that they would seek a world wide
price increase. The
oil companies respond with a collective initiative for negotiations. An
intervention of
In
the same issue there is T.Moran’s article, dedicated
to the same subject. However,
in this article the analysis is concentrated more on the internal situation in
the OPEC countries and
the quadrupling of oil prices is
explained by these countries wish, in
particular that of Iran, Iraq and
Saudi Arabia – leaders
of oil production in OPEC, to
prevent social upheavals in their own countries, to
finance social peace by
means of food subsidies, housing and
municipal services provision within
a wider industrialisation program. Nevertheless, as
we shall see, neither
social concessions to the broad masses, nor
repressions of SAVAK, the Shah guards, managed
to prevent the
social explosion that had been maturing in
After
five years since the first oil crisis the
Iranian revolution ‘78 marked
the beginning of the second one. In
many respects the oil prices increase provoked
expectations of the living standards improvement, demands
of salary growth in the OPEC countries themselves. Some
bourgeois commentators saw the reasons of
events in
«Melancholic
Troglodytes» draw
a number of parallels between the regime of ayatollah and
European dictatorships of
the middle of the last century – as
well as in Francoist Spain the
Church established itself over the whole of cultural life (on
Spanish beaches men
and women had to stay separately from
each other and wear bathrobes!), as
well as in Nazi Germany the chief’s charisma served
as a guarantee of «reactionary
modernism», radical
reforming of
the «corrupted» Shah
regime and
exactly as in Mussolini’s Italy the
borderline between private
and social areas of life was erased.
Undoubtedly,
it was a big blow for the
This
whole process demonstrated the total dependence of
consumer countries on OPEC, their
readiness to
pay any price, no
matter how high it increases. As
a result, the
oil industry came into crisis again. USSR
invasion to Afghanistan added oil to fire. (Walter
J.Levy, Foreign
Affairs, 58 (5), 1980).
Now
the Carter government was
forced to announce its
readiness for war in
the case of «a
threat to US vital interests», i.ĺ. further
military expansion of USSR on
Middle East. It
is exactly in this antagonism of interests between the two superpowers of that
time that the mojahed movement takes its roots from.
The
crises entail
a search of the replacement of oil by alternative energy sources. In
particular, the
discovery of big oil and natural gas reserves in the Northern Sea brought
to construction of big sea gas pipelines in the 70-s.
Also,
by the beginning of the 80-s the
necessity to use instead
of the OPEC
«Officially
announced prices» another
system for the establishment of actual prices on crude oil, open
and accountable, was revealed clearly. In
this new system the rules of such financial institutions as Wall
Street, Chicago agricultural market, were
used. Oil is estimated according to its quality against
the reference blends and
transportation costs. The
monopoly of Saudi crude leaves
place to
the reference blends – British
Brent (the
most wide-known blend, extracted
on the North Sea) and
American WTI (West
Texan Intermediate).
The
long term contracts, putting
a buyer in dependence on a seller are
replaced by the so-called «trap»
contracts, according
to which the price is defined through the calculation of a concrete
interest from
each product, which
one refinery can produce from
one barrel of the crude oil (for
instance 30% of
petrol, 50% of
fuel) and
summing up the corresponding prices for
this product at
the internal petroleum refining market.
By
that time, an overproduction occurs in the OPEC countries – they
extract about one billion barrels above
the ceiling established by themselves. Especially
it is related with Saudi Arabia, extracting
from 5 to 6 million
barrels per day, which
clearly exceeds the demand. Moreover,
Saudi Arabia even goes for a barter, exchanging 34
million
barrels for 10 planes «Boeing-747».
All
the abovementioned novelties plus
the initiative of the largest for that moment producers - UK, Norway
and Saudi Arabia provoke
the third oil shock. It
is a competely reverse process with
an exchange of the roles – OPEC
has to gather a meeting, where
the protective measures are discussed.
At
the same time in USA due
to the fall of oil prices the
interest rates decrease, the
inflation risk reduces and
the growing monetary mass is pumped by the
Federal Reserve System (FRS, the
system of a dozen or so largest banks – a
sort of Central Bank of USA) into
the national economy.
However, according
to an American autonomous Marxist George
Caffentzis the
decrease of a nominal oil price has
been provoked by the necessity to lower the USD rate. The
decision on lowering the rate, in
his view, was
related with an
intensified struggle of
black South African population against
apartheid, that
led to a moratorium on
the debts payments and
introducing the state of emergency on the part of South African
government. Reagan
administration went
for the dollar decrease to soften the conditions of the debt payment by South
Africa. The
author also connects the bombings of Tripoli and Benghaz in 1981
with
the change in oil prices – according
to his version Lybia was thus physically punished
for opposition to the US interests in
stabilisation of oil prices, because
as well as before the first oil crisis Lybia
was interested in the prices increase. At
the same time a brgain was concluded with Iran in
exchange for arms. («Rambo
on the Barbary shore», Midnight
Notes)
In
general,
all
these factors seem to have played
an
essential role,
although
the
authors of Midnight Notes
(as
well as their predecessors ZEROWORK)
tend
to overemphasise
the
conscious role of capital
and
separate capitalists
in
the strategic management of crises.
For
example,
this
author is contradicted by an influential
English
ultraleft magazine
«Aufheben»,
which
provides its own interpretation of events:
«[according
to Caffentzis] These
twin manoeuvres of 1985-86 - the dollar and oil devaluations - exhibit how the
international market is consciously structured by capital.
This
whole analysis is riddled with errors which are symptomatic of Midnight Notes'
theoretical inadequacies. Firstly the US dollar was not devalued unilaterally at
a stroke. The devaluation of the dollar that followed the Plaza Accord took
nearly two years and required concerted intervention of the central
banks
of
the major industrial powers armed with reserve funds that were only a fraction
of the huge flows of capital surging around the international money markets.
Secondly the devaluation does not necessarily halve the debt, particularly if
the debt is denominated in US dollars and the exporter, e.g. Mexico, is trading
mainly with the US. It is true that resistance to debt forced rescheduling under
the Baker plan and simultaneously limited the US government's strategy of using
interest rates to indefinitely defend an overvalued dollar, forcing them towards
international co-operation to devalue the dollar in 1985. But we can not simply
explain fluctuations in the US dollar in terms of oil pricing as Midnight Notes
are prone to do. Halving the dollar does not mean that oil prices have to be
halved to prevent the US' import bill doubling since oil is denominated in
dollars. Consequently the twin manoeuvres of 1985-86 do not show how the
international market is structured by capital, on the contrary they show how
attempts to consciously regulate international markets are highly
circumscribed!»
On
the level of facts, it
cannot be refused that this whole process benefitted the
developed countries economy. On
the contrary, the
OPEC countries suffered from it and
got stuck in debts. For
instance, Nigeria had to accept the Structural adjustment program of
IMF, the
foreign debts of Jordan made 8 billion
USD, those
of Iraq – 80 billion
USD.
Unlike
them, Kuwait, which
had invested 100 billion
USD into two reserve funds abroad during
the 70-s, continued
to receive a bigger profit from these investments than from oil
production.
Thus,
by the beginning of the
90-s
an
antagonism developed between the poor Arabic countries
(Egypt,
Iraq,
Jordan,
Yemen)
and
the rich ones
(UAE,
Kuwait)
as
a result of which Iraq occupied Kuwait and the oil prices doubled
again.
(Ya.Sadowski)
Iraqi
policy was originally directed towards
a
reducing of the extraction
and
an increase of prices.
According
to some critics
the
interests of USA and Saddam Hussein coincided here.
Certain
facts testify that.
In
1990 the
congressmen Allen Greenspan
and
Stephen Neal lobbied a
«zero
inflation»
plan
(reducing
inflation to zero)
for
the next five years,
using
the following arguments:
«1)
[zero inflation would] reduce interest rates and maintain them at their lowest
possible levels; 2) promote the highest possible sustainable level of
unemployment;
3)
produce the maximum sustainable rate of economic growth; 4) increase the
national savings rate as well as increase investment, thereby boosting
productivity and raising the standard of living;
5) Stabilize
the economy by allowing long term contracts between employers and workers to be
more predictable as well as credit contracts between debtors and
lenders».
(Michael
Meeropole)
It
is only one of the symptoms that the economic situation in the United States
starts to require
a
dollar rise emphatically.
One
of the best American experts in Middle East
met
in January of the same year
an
Iraqi Minister in New York.
Washington
Centre for Strategic and International Studies
made
a proposition that Iraq increased the oil price to
25 USD
per barrel
and
that the same country put pressure on its OPEC partners.
The
records of conversations with American diplomats,
with
A.Glaspie in particular,
proposing
the same price of
25 USD
per barrel prove that.
(Helga
Graham,
London
Observer as of
21 Oct.
1990).
The
situation in Iraq is compicated
by
the Shiites and Kurds uprisings
on
the North and South of the country.
However,
USA
for that moment obviously were not interested
in
the support of Iraqi lower classes
in
their struggle against the regime.
It
is known that they preferred to bomb the deserters columns,
returning
from Kuwait,
which
could become the main force
in
an insurrection against the Hussein regime,
at
the same time leaving the elite guards of the dictator untouched.
(K.Knabb,
Joy
of Revolution).
Here
again the polemics between
«Aufheben»
and
Midnight
Notes is continued.
The
latter in their analysis came to a conclusion that
«Iraq and the US colluded in the invasion of Kuwait, via April Glaspie, as part
of a co-ordinated strategy of increasing oil prices. Whilst the invasion of
Kuwait was a consequence of the Ba'athists inability to impose austerity on
their own working class, it is not the case that it was part of a co-ordinated
global plan for militarizing the world's oil industry, as the disarray of the US
government's response clearly illustrates…
However,
the triumph of the Ba'athist state over the working class uprisings was by no
means guaranteed. Also it is not the case that the Iraqi state sought saturation
bombing, resulting in massive destruction of productive capital, and the risk of
overthrow, because it thought it might possibly improve its ability to impose
austerity. Excepting the decimated oil industries of Iraq and Kuwait, Midnight
Notes fail to show that oil production is more militarized after the Gulf War
than it was before. Even with civil war raging in Yemen oil prices are only $16
a barrel, the level they were prior to the Gulf War. This is hardly the mass
increase in oil prices that Midnight Notes expected as the result of collective
capital militarizing oil production through the Gulf War. With oil prices
predicted to settle down to $13-14 a barrel for the forseeable future we can
conclude that either capital does not have a high oil price strategy
at
all,
or that it has been incapable of imposing one. It is clear that oil prices are
not operating as the motor for a new phase of accumulation to pull the world out
of recession». (Aufheben
No.5,
1996)
In 1997-98
following
the financial crisis in
the Asian countries a new fall of oil prices occurs. In
his recent work Caffentzis writes
that it is exactly because of that that «the Saudi monarchy
decided, for "strategic reasons," to globalize its economy and society beginning
with the oil sector. The oil industry had been nationalized since 1975, which
means that foreign investors were allowed to participate only in "downstream"
operations like refining. But in September 1998 Crown Prince Abdullah met in
Terrorist
attacks of The
identical American-Saudi projects existed
in relation to the
construction of a Trans-Afghan pipeline for the hydrocarbons
transportation from
Kazakhstan. We
remember that as a result of the first visits of Saudi ruling circles
representatives to
Kazakhstan, not
only the sponsorship arrived for the building up «most
Northern Moslem capital» and
for the reconstruction of a strategic motorway, but
also an abrupt change in
the statements of the then Prime Minister K.Tokayev regarding
Taleban – about
comprehension and a necessity to develop a dialogue with the Afghan ruling
regime. Other
two promising directions for
the possible pipeline routes for
the Central Asian oil – are
Iranian and Turkish. The
Bush administration inherited from the Clinton administration the
policy of open pressure and
lobbying the last direction, obviously, more
expensive (according
to some estimations – 2.5-3 billion
USD), but
also more politically correct – we
are talking about Baku-Cheyhan project. In
relation with this it is curious for what reasons exactly Iran was
included into the
«axis
of evil», because
not long before S11 an
abrupt aggravation of relations between Iran and Azerbaijan took
place, when
on
23 July 2001
an
Iranian military ship forced
Azeri British contractors to
stop operations at a disputable field moving them away, while
in Baku an «anti-President
plot» of
the radical Islamic grouping «Hezbollah», based
in Iran, was
unveiled, all
of this with the background of territorial claims of Iran to
Azerbaijan and
demands of the latter to
give out a participant of an armed anti-government revolt of
1995. Also, in 1997 an agreement
between Kazakhstan and China was signed – on the transportation of oil from West
Kazakhstan to Western China. Possibly, in reality
this one is the most optimal project for Kazakhstan. Yet in June 2001
D.Akhmetov, Vice Prime Minister of RoK, stated that the project of a pipeline
Atyrau-Zhanazhol-Kumkol-Alashankou «might become a reality in 2006-2010». The
project is evaluated in $3-3.5 billion. The length of the pipeline is around 3
thousand km, its carrying capacity – not less than 20 million tons of oil per
annum. It is known that the Southern neighbour has an old interest in the
«temporarily uninhibited territories», it is a centuries old story.
However, currently China is virtually surrounded by hostile forces and it
seems like surprising mentioning by Bush of North Korea and the «Republic of
Taiwan» are also nonrandom, but are an expression of the transparent challenge
from USA to China in the pronounced struggle for prevalence in the region. It’s
difficult to say what’s it pregnant with so far, but it’s clear that
metropolises won’t limit themselves to mere diplomacy and very wise sayings in
their political game. For
example, a
seat of tension for both countries – USA
and China, as
well as for Russia, is
Kyrgyzstan, where
in Bishkek airport «Manas» American
soldiers are quartered, while
in the South of the Republic after
the armed clashes with police of March 2002 the
rural masses are still ready for the armed struggle against the
government. Finally, the actually
existing pipelines come through Russia. CJSC «Caspian Pipeline Consortium» was
established in 1992 by the governments of RF, RoK and Sultanate of Oman for the
construction of a 1580 km long pipeline, designed for the crude oil
transportation from Tengiz and other nearby fields in Kazakhstan and Russia to
the terminal on the Black Sea shore in the area around Novorossijsk. The
pipeline route passes the territories of Kazakhstan, Kalmykia, Astrakhan
province, Stavropol and Krasnodar territories. In December
1996 an agreement on CPC restructuring was signed, as per which 50% of the
Consortium authorised capital stock went to the international companies, that
are among the top ten oil producing companies of the world. In CPC apart from
Certainly
Putin’s policies in the region, at
times presenting a real threat to
the profits of American capital served
as another reason for so urgent assertion and military penetration of
USA into
Central Asia. As
George Caffentzis writes: «There are two clear
territories which the Bush administration has strategically used the death and
destruction of September 11 to move on: a conceptual restructuring of the
political horizon and a geo-political thrust into the former Central Asian
republics of the U.S.S.R. which became nation states in 1991. These states,
especially As
we know, the
exploration works were continued indeed and
several more mammoth fields are waiting their turn – in
the first place Kashagan field – the
largest newly discovered oil field in the world in the last thirty
years. According
to preliminary estimations its reserves make around
7
billion
tons of oil. Let’s
remember that one ton of Tengiz oil is more expensive than Brent
by 7 dollars. Changes
in geopolitical situation
as
always brought oscillations in oil pricing policy.
On
14
November
2001 the
OPEC countries organised an extraordinary conference,
at
which a decision to reduce the quotas
for
production and export of crude oil by 1.5 million barrels a day was
made.
The
OPEC countries demanded reduction of production
from
the independent oil producers,
which
the latter were not in a hurry to obey.
Oil
prices fell to
17 USD
per barrel.
Only
when Russia did cut the oil export by 150 thousand barrels a day
since
the beginning of 2002,
the
prices were stabilised at London IPE (International Petroleum
Exchange). There
are many various possibilities of situation developments.
As
it is known,
Kazakhstan
joined OPEC as an observer
(together
with Russia, Mexico, Norway, Angola, Oman),
however,
the
multisided confrontations of interests in Central Asia is
far from ensuring the US hegemony in the country and in the region
in
general.
Undoubtedly,
class war has to play its part in the general picture
and
its intensity depends on the strength of destructive/creative tendencies in the
wide strata of pauperised population
more,
than
on external economic crises.
In
Russia during Summer-Autumn
2001 on
the Black Sea shores a number of initiatives and radical groups was
active,
including
mainly anarchists from
«Autonomous
Action»
and
eco-warriors from green organisations
and
directed against CPC
and
Russian-Turkish gas pipeline «Blue
Stream».
However,
differing
from other recent
ecological
actions
they
didn’t manage to attract any significant support from local
population,
or
achieve any success in their beginnings,
for
instance in suspending works
until
the period of storms,
handcuffing
themselves to operating equipment
or
sitting on unique trees
being
cut along the gas pipeline route. Approximately
at the same time,
on
the other end of CPC project,
Karachaganak
workers group was active.
It
was a circle of workers from various enterprises,
with
a very loose structure,
gathering
weekly
for
discussions on broad theoretical issues
(libertarian
socialism,
council
communism,
revolutionary
syndicalism)
and
situation on their own jobs.
After
S11 events,
more
than one thousand workers from Arab-Italian consortium
ŃŃŃ/Saipem
held
a meeting in the construction camp on the field,
where
the terrorist attacks were celebrated,
burning
US flag and raising Palestinian.
The
authorities deported several Palestinian workers,
who
provoked disorder according to their bosses, who gave them away to
police.
Karachaganak
workers group concentrated
on
radical anti-war propaganda
from
class positions at the field.
Eventually,
it had to disperse due to the alarm that it caused in the local secret services and circulation of rumours about "an anarchist conspiration" in that small ghetto town.
On the South of the country at the same time various extremist groups
activated,
distributing
Pan-Islamist leaflets.
A
wave of persecutions and arrests by police and national security started in the
country.
Nevertheless,
recently
we witnessed not only certain actions
on
the part of radical minorities,
but
also large wildcat strikes
on
the part of oil producing proletariat,
although
they had been bringing forward standard demands
of
salary increases and an improvement of labour conditions.
For
sure,
in
view of the promised
«oil
century»
for
Kazakhstan it’s possible to expect
only
stronger integration of the oil
area
workers into the new accumulation regime.
Currently,
it
is exactly in oil industry that the average salary approaches
the
cost of living,
while
Western consortiums,
especially
operating on Caspian Sea and at Karachaganak,
not
in the last turn to support their image before the government
provide
more or less stable contracts
(up
to 2 years),
bearable
labour conditions,
and
currently they develop a whole package
of
social benefits,
from
housing loans
to
medical insurance,
possibly
even for the workers families.
At
the same time the subcontractors of the same consortiums
(construction
companies in the first place)
often
keep inhuman labour conditions,
irregular
working hours,
minimum
salaries,
strong
differentiation between local and imported workers
and
even non-payment of overtime,
although
the last factors
usually
lead to non-sanctioned strikes.
Especially
harmful for us,
perhaps,
is
that artificial opposition
of
local and foreign workers.
Indeed,
Western
companies too often profit from the lack of knowledge
by
our workers and specialists of the advanced Western technologies
– while
at the same time it is obvious that foreign workers and specialists are below
the level of Soviet school workers and specialists
in
work, skills and qualification.
Nevertheless,
as
per concluded contracts,
the
companies profit much more if they bring, say,
through
Beirut,
a
wide variety of foreign workers
(Filippino,
Tamil,
Palestinians,
Sikhs,
Persians),
– and
not because they spend their salaries at the home markets,
but
rather because their salaries are reimbursed to the companies from the State
budget of the same Kazakhstan.
Again,
it’s not due to simple discrimination that a hard working local
worker
always
has a salary much lower than an imported one
(no
matter how low paid he is on Middle
Eastern markets).
In
the first place it is due to the extreme cheapness of the local workforce
market.
Secondly,
again
the payment of high salary to a foreign worker is profitable for his
employer
– it’s
a vicious circle.
Therefore
instead of common struggle against the bosses there are only mass rumbles
against each other.
At
the same time no one can guarantee that the ethnic Russian,
Kazakh
or Tatar workers,
who
today come together against a crowd of Filippinos
won’t
start mobilising against each other,
as
it already happened around the Republic
in
the first half of the
80-s.
All
the same the class interest,
uniting
them today
– is
common alcoholism,
while
for a vast number of younger ones,
that
is, since the «Taleban»
corporation came to power in Afghan,
it
is heroin.
At
the fields as nowhere else
the
proletarian conditions of existence are reproduced,
implying
squalid housing, absence of communal utilities,
ecology
destructive for human organism (hydrogen
sulphide,
radiation
since the Soviet nuclear tests),
hierarchy
imposed by western colonisers,
under
which their underage
mistresses,
employed
by the well-known oil companies
possess
real authority over the field old timers.
The
green buck,
circulated
in huge amounts in the locations of hydrocarbons extraction
only
stresses
the
total spiritual bankruptcy
and
misery of everyday life
of
the population producing them.
When
a night disco in an oil town
earns
more per night,
than
a large enterprise,
standing
still in another once industrialised province,
while
in the dark street corners around
it women get disfigured and even killed for their liaisons with foreign
bosses,
a
relative external well-being
appears
to be a mere chimera,
while
the stable salary
transforms
into the smoke of withdrawal syndrome. Of
course,
in
the country,
where
the actual average salary
is
much lower than the actual cost of living,
the
spontaneous protests «against
work»
or
an appearance of a mass political movement with a clear
anticapitalist
program are hardly possible,
but
the unpredictability of the international situation itself
with
the further
unification
of world economy puts an internationalisation of conflict between Capital and
human being
on
the agenda.
PS
Stockholm Association for
studies of the oil peak (ASPO) has published a forecast of a mass oil crisis,
which can fall on the world energy resources market in 10 years, Russian
Information Agency "RosBusinessConsulting" reports from Sweden. According to the
calculation of the ASPO specialists, the crisis will provoke an increase in the
demand for oil that will exceed the offer from oil producers. Moreover, ASPO
believes that the oil reserves will end yet while the current generation is
alive. It
is due to the fact that the industrial countries
consume
4
times
more oil,
than
there are newly discovered reserves.
In
20 years
the developed countries
will
consume by
20% more
oil,
than
today.
The
developing countries consumption will increase by
50%. ASPO expresses
an opinion that the politicians and the oil producing States
exaggerate
the figures concerning their reserves on purpose. RIA
"RosBusinessConsulting", www.kazaag.kz, as of 14.08.2002 Bibliography: Harry
Cleaver Texas University site "Aufheben"
No.3,5 "Zerowork"
No.1-2 G.Caffentzis:
"The work/Energy Crisis & Apocalypse", "Midnight Oil" Commoner
web-zine (www.commoner.org) J.Flanders,
"In Mezzo alla Furia" K.Knabb, "Joy of Revolution" "Melancholic
Troglodytes" Karl
Marx,
«Capital»