Part 7 (2/2)

According to the Dow Jones Newswires, private Russian oil firms, such as Lukoil, are heavily invested in US gas stations and refineries in antic.i.p.ation of these inevitable developments. As if to underline these, the Financial Times reported, on October 3, a purchase of 300,000 barrels of oil from the Russian Tyumen Oil company.

The deal with Israel will allow Russia to peddle its oil in the Asian market, a major export target and a monopoly of the Gulf producers.

Russia is in the throes of constructing several pipelines to Asia through its eastern territories and Pacific coastline - but completion dates are uncertain.

For its part, according to the Department of Energy, Israel extracts natural gas from offsh.o.r.e fields but has no commercial fossil fuel resources of its own. It imports oil from Mexico, Norway, and the United Kingdom and coal from as far away as Australia, Colombia, and South Africa. Israel buys natural gas and oil from Egypt. The bulk of the energy sector is moribund and state-owned, ostensibly for reasons of national security. The deal with Russia is a G.o.dsend.

Israel is perfectly located to offer an affordable alternative to expensive and often clogged oil s.h.i.+pping lanes through the Suez Ca.n.a.l or the Cape. A revival of the Trans-Arabian pipeline (Tapline) to Haifa can considerably under-price the politically wobbly Iraqi-Turkish and the costly Suez-Mediterranean (Sumed) alternatives.

With one of every five Israelis a Russian ?migr? and confronted with the common enemy of Islamic militancy, Israel and Russia have embarked on a path of close cooperation. Prime Minister Sharon's visit to Russia last month was a resounding success. Faced with these millennial geopolitical developments, anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists are having a field day.

The Jewish lobby, they say, is coercing America, its long arm, to hijack the Iraqi oil fields in the forthcoming war and thus to counterbalance surging Russian oil exports. Israel, they aver, planned to carry out, in October 2001, an operation - ”Mivtza Shekhina” - to secure southern Iraq's oil fields while also mitigating the threat of weapons of ma.s.s destruction aimed at its population centers.

Conspiratorial paranoia notwithstanding, it is unlikely that the USA is motivated by oil interests in its war on Saddam. A battle in Iraq aimed solely at apprehending its crude would be fighting over yesterday's oilfields. Only an easily replaceable one tenth to one eighth of American oil consumption emanates from the Gulf, about a million barrels per day of it from Iraq. Moreover, the war is likely to alienate far more important suppliers, such as Russia - as well as the largest European clients of Gulf oil extracted by American firms.

Strictly in terms of oil, a war in Iraq is counterproductive.

Additionally, such a war is likely to push oil prices up. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, ”for every dollar-per-barrel increase in oil prices, about $4 billion a year would leave America's $11 trillion economy, and other importing countries would lose another $16 billion per year.”

Israel understandably did discuss with the USA its role in a showdown with Iraq. Russia, unsettled as it is by America's growing presence in central Asia and exercised by its determination to take on Iraq - may be trying to lure Israel away from its automatic support of US goals by dangling the oiled carrot of a joint pipeline.

Russia also hopes to neuter the rapprochement between Israel and the Islamic nations of Turkey and Azerbaijan, traditional adversaries of Moscow. Israel is the second largest buyer of oil from Azerbaijan. It is one of the sponsors of a pipeline from the Baku oilfields to the port of Ceyhan in Turkey. The pipeline stands to compete with a less costly and more hostile to the West Russian-Iranian route.

These are momentous times. Oil is still by far the most strategic commodity and securing its uninterrupted flow is essential to the functioning of both developed and developing countries. There is a discernible tectonic s.h.i.+ft in production and proven reserves from the Persian Gulf, the US except Alaska, the North Sea, and Latin America to northern Europe, Russia, and the Caspian Basin. Yet, oil is still a buyers' market. OPEC has long been denuded of its mythical power and oil prices - even at the current interim peak - are still historically low in real terms.

But Russia stands to gain whichever way. Middle East tensions, in Palestine and Iraq, have ratcheted oil prices up resulting in a much-needed budgetary windfall. Russia's mostly-privatized oil industry has cleverly ploughed back its serendipitous profits into pipelines, drilling, and exploration. When the dust settles in the deserts of Arabia, Russia will emerge victorious with the largest oil market share. Israel is not oblivious to this scenario.

Russia's Idled Spies

By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

Also published by United Press International (UPI)

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Sweden expelled yesterday two Russian diplomats for spying on radar and missile guidance technologies for the JAS 39 British-Swedish Gripen fighter jet developed by Telefon AB LM Ericsson, the telecommunications multinational. The Russians threatened to reciprocate. Five current and former employees of the corporate giant are being investigated.

Ironically, the first foreign buyer of the aircraft may well be Poland, a former Soviet satellite state and a current European Union candidate.

Sweden arrested in February last year a worker of the Swiss-Swedish engineering group, ABB, on suspicion of spying for Russia. The man was released after two days for lack of evidence and reinstated. But the weighty Swedish daily, Dagens Nyheter, speculated that the recent Russian indiscretion was in deliberate retaliation for Swedish espionage in Russia. Sweden is rumored to have been in the market for Russian air radar designs and the JAS radar system is said by some observers to uncannily resemble its eastern counterparts.

The same day, a Russian military intelligence (GRU) colonel, Aleksander Sipachev, was sentenced in Moscow to eight years in prison and stripped of his rank. According to Russian news agencies, he was convicted of attempting to sell secret doc.u.ments to the CIA. Russian secret service personnel, idled by the withering of Russia's global presence, resort to private business or are re-deployed by the state to spy on industrial and economic secrets in order to aid budding Russian multinationals.

According to the FBI and the National White-collar Crime Center, Russian former secret agents have teamed with computer hackers to break into corporate networks to steal vital information about product development and marketing strategies. Microsoft has recently admitted to such a compromising intrusion.

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