The Afghan oil pipeline

[Caper]

I here this still being brought up by truthers. Did they ever build a pipe line through Afghanistan?

[Slayhamlet]

Nope.

Be sure to welcome them to 2004!

[maccy]

No, it hasn't been built.

And anybody who says it is an oil pipeline is starting their argument with a lie:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline

I suggest your first challenge to Truthers is to show you that an oil pipeline was ever planned for Afghanistan.

More discussion here:

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=69261

[CHF]

For some reason no one seems in a hurry to sink billions of dollars into building a thin metal tube transporting flammable gas across a war zone awash in AK47s and RPGs.

Quite simply, war is bad for pipelines.

[gumboot]

Whenever they talk about an Afghanistan Oil Pipeline I tend to hit them with

This Article (http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=no_war_for_oil) and This One (http://www.tenc.net/articles/jared/oil-1.htm).

-Gumboot

[Slayhamlet]

No, it hasn't been built.

And anybody who says it is an oil pipeline is starting their argument with a lie:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline

I suggest your first challenge to Truthers is to show you that an oil pipeline was ever planned for Afghanistan.

More discussion here:

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=69261

Funny how twoofers get everything backwards, isn't it?

And by "funny" I mean sad.

[AZCat]

For some reason no one seems in a hurry to sink billions of dollars into building a thin metal tube transporting flammable gas across a war zone awash in AK47s and RPGs.

Quite simply, war is bad for pipelines.

Not gas. Liquid.

Black gold.

Texas tea.

[maccy]

Not gas. Liquid.

Black gold.

Texas tea.

I don't follow this, are you joking? Or are you seriously suggesting that the planned pipeline will carry oil if it's ever built?

[AZCat]

I don't follow this, are you joking? Or are you seriously suggesting that the planned pipeline will carry oil if it's ever built?

They never made a sitcom about natural gas. :(

[gumboot]

No, it hasn't been built.

And anybody who says it is an oil pipeline is starting their argument with a lie:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline

I suggest your first challenge to Truthers is to show you that an oil pipeline was ever planned for Afghanistan.

More discussion here:

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=69261


To be strictly fair, there was in the Mid 1990's talk of a very small oil pipeline running from Kazakhstan to India to be built as a companion to the major gas pipeline.

-Gumboot

[maccy]

They never made a sitcom about natural gas. :(

A cultural wellspring of your fair land which is largely lost on us UKers (although it has been shown in a few non-peak filler slots).

Weren't there plans for a pilot of the Berverly Talibannies in the mid 1990s?

[maccy]

To be strictly fair, there was in the Mid 1990's talk of a very small oil pipeline running from Kazakhstan to India to be built as a companion to the major gas pipeline.

-Gumboot

I didn't know that, thanks. If I was a betting man, though, I'd bet that no CTist will ever mention it. :)

[AZCat]

A cultural wellspring of your fair land which is largely lost on us UKers (although it has been shown in a few non-peak filler slots).

Weren't there plans for a pilot of the Berverly Talibannies in the mid 1990s?

Ack! Sorry, I forgot that not all here have drunk at the well of American television.


If only I had motivation and a healthy dose of cleverness I might make up satirical replacement lyrics to the theme song...

[PhantomWolf]

Steve Coll actually deleves quite deeply into the Unacol Pipelines in his Ghost Wars book. There were to be two, running from Turkmenistan to Pakistan, one oil and one gas. What most Truthers likely don't know is that there was actually two competing plans, the other being pushed by an Argentinian, Carlos Bulgheroni. He had contacts in Pakistan inside the ISI and managed to get Pakistan's support for his pipeline plans while Marty Miller, working for Unacol, got the support of Turkmenistan.

Once Miller got the support of Turkmenistan, he started to lobby Washington and Pakistan. The Clinton Whitehouse really didn't have much interest in the area, but they supported the idea of helping to free Turkmenistan from the requirement to sent it's product through Russia, esentially they said they'd support it and them dropped it in a filing cabniet and let Unacol go and do it without further help.

In Pakistan Unacol came up to the problem of them already having a contract with Bulgheroni, something that Bhutto refused to dishonour and so Unacol basically had a contract to pipe oil and gas from Turkmenistan and that was it. They came uop with a deal with Pakistan whereas if they could supply the oil and gas, Pakistan would buy it, but Pakistan wasn't going to help them withthe pipeline since they were contracted to Bulgheroni.

As a result Miller and his associates ended up going to Afghanistan themselves, and trying to deal with the Taliban. They also invited them to the US and showed them around, including managing to organise a few meetings with officials from the State Department, but this was all done off the back of the company.

From the Taliban's point of view it was excuseable to assume that Inacol ands the US Government had a working relationship since the only Americans they really dealt with for a long time were Unacol people, but in reality the Clinton Whitehouse didn't pay a lot of attention to, and failed to give Unacol any help at all dispite the lobbying of the company.

The only connections between Miller and the other Unacol employees who went to Afghanistan and the CIA was that the CIA called them in for interviews about the Taliban and also about Bin Laden who was in the same area at the time. This wasn't really unusual though as they would do the same with a lot of businessmen that travelled to places that the CIA often couldn't go easily, such as Iran, North Korea, China and so on, so there was nothing overly suspicious there either.

[ref]

Whenever they talk about an Afghanistan Oil Pipeline I tend to hit them with

This Article (http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=no_war_for_oil) and This One (http://www.tenc.net/articles/jared/oil-1.htm).

-Gumboot

Good article the first one, thanks. I don't really care about Jared Israel (he invented the NORAD stand down theory) ;)

Most of the profits wouldn't even have gone to US, if the pipeline was built. That's one of the critical mistakes the truthers make. From the first above link: "most of the oil and gas from the Caspian is destined for markets in Russia, Europe and Central Asia itself"

And in addition:


In addition, if peace and stability were to return to Afghanistan, and a new pipeline to Central Asia was to be built, the principal beneficiaries would undoubtedly be the Afghans, as well as Pakistan, Turkmenistan, and the other Central Asians.

In brief, then, considerations of economic and political influence will undoubtedly play a part in western strategies in Afghanistan.
It would be strange if they did not. But the argument that these are the main motivations behind US actions, not the desire to stamp out international terrorism, will probably find support mainly among those who already have a fondness for conspiracy theories.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1626889.stm I like this quote:
There was discussion of the pipeline to carry gas to Pakistan, but it was abandoned way before current events because of political, economic and stability problems," said Paul Stevens, professor of petroleum policy and economics at Dundee University.
"So the idea that oil is now driving this war is totally unrealistic. It would be more sensible to be considering a pipeline on the moon.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1644813.stm

[danielk]

Whenever they talk about an Afghanistan Oil Pipeline I tend to hit them with

This Article (http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=no_war_for_oil) and This One (http://www.tenc.net/articles/jared/oil-1.htm).
An article from a guy called Silverstein, eh?! You won't fool me!1111!!!!111!!!!

[gumboot]

Good article the first one, thanks. I don't really care about Jared Israel (he invented the NORAD stand down theory) ;)


There's nothing more enjoyable that proving Conspiracy Theorists wrong by quoting other conspiracy theorists... ;)

My favourite quote in that first article is actually their quote from the Wall Street Journal:

Yet oddly enough, this isn't the first time that conspiracy theorists have sought to portray Afghanistan as the energy linchpin of Western civilization. Back in 1980, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan when the Cold War was raging, the Carter administration and the press argued that the occupation had dramatically altered the world balance of power. To take but one example, Newsweek said at the time that control of Afghanistan had "put the Russians within 350 miles of the Arabian Sea, the oil lifeline of the West and Japan. Soviet warplanes based in Afghanistan could cut the lifeline at will."

This was pure rubbish. Seven years earlier, when detente was near its zenith, The Wall Street Journal ran a rare story on Afghanistan headlined, "Do the Russians Covet Afghanistan? If So, It's Hard to Figure Why." Reporter Peter Kann, later the Journal's chairman and publisher, wrote that "great power strategists tend to think of Afghanistan as a kind of fulcrum upon which the world balance of power tips. But from close up, Afghanistan tends to look less like a fulcrum or a domino or a stepping-stone than like a vast expanse of desert waste with a few fly-ridden bazaars, a fair number of feuding tribes and a lot of miserably poor people."

-Gumboot

[WildCat]

A cultural wellspring of your fair land which is largely lost on us UKers (although it has been shown in a few non-peak filler slots).

Weren't there plans for a pilot of the Berverly Talibannies in the mid 1990s?
There was once a classic Saturday Night Live skit called the "Bel-Arabs"... sorry, but I can't find it on youtube...

[Lensman]

I remember the original Beverley Hillbillies, we had the series here on British telly (probably on ITV) in the '60s or '70s.

[Wolrab]

They never made a sitcom about natural gas. :(
What about "Terrance and Phillip"?