 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
| Archive |
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| PROGRAMMES FINDER |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
Pipeline Politics
How does America's appetite for oil influence its foreign policy?
While opponents saw the recent war in Iraq as a crude 'oil grab' designed to give America access to the world's second largest reserves, political leaders in both the United States and Britain have insisted that oil was not a motive.
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed the idea as “nonsense”, and President Bush has repeatedly stated that Iraq's oil belongs to the Iraqi people.
In 'Pipeline Politics', a series of four radio documentaries broadcast this Autumn on BBC World Service, broadcaster and writer Maurice Walsh takes a considered look at the connections between oil and US foreign policy.
It takes more than 22 million barrels of oil every day to keep the American economy on the road – and more than half of US consumption comes from overseas.
In the first of four programmes on America's relations with oil-producing countries, writer and broadcaster Maurice Walsh considers America's ties with the world's largest producer of oil: Saudi Arabia.
While critics of the Iraq war condemned it as an “oil grab”, Washington insisted the campaign had nothing to do with oil.
In his second programme looking at US relations with oil producers, writer and broadcaster Maurice Walsh explores proposals to privatise Iraqi oil production and bolder plans to use Iraqi oil to transform the Middle East.
Washington has many disagreements with Venezuela's radical president, Hugo Chavez; but it also wants Venezuelan oil.
In his third programme on US foreign policy and oil, writer and broadcaster Maurice Walsh considers the sometimes tense relationship between America and one of its oldest overseas oil partners.
Work has now begun on a controversial 1,000 mile pipeline to bring oil from the Caspian Sea to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.
In the last of his programmes tracing links between oil and US foreign policy, writer and broadcaster Maurice Walsh examines the role of American diplomacy in promoting this gigantic civil engineering project, and considers how the Caspian oil industry is expanding Washington's political and military influence in Russia's back-yard.
Pipeline Politics was first broadcast on BBC World Service in October 2003 |
| |
|
|
|
