“I wanted to give you just a list of some of the facilities and objectives we have in entering Baghdad. This city is the heartbeat of Iraq, and here they are marked in red on this next slide. We’ll find the Iraqi Directorate of Military Intelligence and Ministry of Defense, their Secret Police complex, Army storage depots and barracks, SCUD missile factory, Baath Party HQ and Presidential Palace, the Ministry of Propaganda, command centers and bunkers, the National Air Defense Operations Center, and a host of economic infrastructure targets. These would include the bridges, power stations, TV and radio transmission sites, and the Ad Dawrah Oil Refinery. Also on the list is the Iraq Museum, right in central Baghdad.”
Coleman could see that last objective didn’t seem to fit with the others, so he offered an explanation.
“This museum holds thousands of artifacts, the cultural heritage of not only Iraq, but the world itself. In any operation on the scale we are now planning, there is going to be a breakdown of local civil authority, and the chances are therefore high that we could see that facility heavily looted, or even destroyed. I’m here to tell you that will not happen, and I’ve been assured that I will have the full support of General Walker in this. We will have some of our paramilitary people on the ground riding with forces entering the city, and they will take a particular interest in the places just I’ve highlighted on this map.”
Walker stood briefly and spoke. “You’ll not only my support, but this is a directive that comes down from the Joint Chiefs. So Mister Coleman here is the Hammer of God when it comes to any and all matters concerning these targets. His people are going to have broad authority, to the point where they will be authorized to commandeer and direct any element of our military to assure they secure those objectives—including the museum. Consider it the top of the list he has just presented here. I want no questions in the field as to the who, what, when, where or why of this. Just listen up if you meet CIA in the field, and do whatever they order.”
“Thank you, General Walker. You might all take comfort in the fact that I’m CIA also with the Paramilitary Division, so please don’t think of me as a meddling civilian. That said, I’ll yield the podium now so you can speak to the SOUTHCOM operations.”
Walker resumed his post and changed slides to show the situation in the south from the Kuwaiti Border north to Basrah and beyond.
Ladies and gentlemen, in the south there will be no politics involved, and I will be quite frank and call it like it is. General Bergman’s operation there is all about the oil. It’s been about the oil since the day he put his troops ashore at Salaha in Oman, and it will continue to be about the oil from this day forward. We have just successfully defended production facilities and fields friendly to the West in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Now we’re after the other fellah’s luggage. The Joint Chiefs have directed me to proceed with Able Fire with the aim of securing and controlling as many of the fields and production sites you now see on this map.”
They were all there, Rumailah and Zubayr southwest of Basrah, the big Siba Gas fields near Abadan, and the Al Qurna and Majnoon fields north of Basrah.
“Gentlemen, control of these production sites and proven reserves is the principle strategic goal of this war—not only for us, but given this latest intelligence from General Goldman, apparently for the Chinese as well. The President has been informed and has approved the Joint Chief’s assessment on this.”
The General switched on his laser pointer, circling locations on the map as he continued.
“We do not anticipate difficulties in securing the two main segments of the big Rumailah field, but that field is in active production, and so we want to tread lightly. Any air or indirect fire missions must be approved at brigade level, which means no battalion fire missions. This smaller field here is the Zubayr Field, just forward of that town. As we take that, you will note that geography will no longer be our friend. On our right is the marshland of Abu Al Khasib, still passable in places as it approaches Basrah, but on our left the heavy marshland of Hawr Al Hammar will impede all mechanized operations. There is a gap here at the north end of the Rumaliah Fields that leads to Al Qurna at the confluence of the Euphtates and Tigris Rivers. The West Qurna Field is tucked right into that elbow, just north of the Euphrates. Majnoon, is here in this region between the Tigris and the Iranian border. That field is largely undeveloped, but crazy with oil reserves, which is what the word Majnoon means—crazy.”
“Sir,” came a question, “do you figure the Chinese have their eyes on those two big northern fields?”
“Well, as West Qurna and Majnoon are the second and third largest fields on the planet for proven reserves, I’d say that was a good bet. If they do get in there before we do, moving them out won’t be easy. We would have to fight our way over the rivers at Al Qurna, or swing all the way out west to Nasiriyah. There it is, gentlemen, plain and simple. We need to get there before the Chinese do, and Get Some.”
That got another “Uraah,” much to Walker’s satisfaction.
“Music to my ears,” he said, and flipped to the next slide, which was the underlying rationale and need for the operations now being planned. A huge portion of the world’s total daily oil supply was coming from fields that had been discovered before 1970, and after that, fewer and fewer resources were surveyed and found. In those older fields over 80 percent of them had peaked and were already in decline.
A perfect example was Canterell, Mexico’s big offshore field discovered in 1976. It had a meteoric rise to just over 2 million barrels per day because of a massive gas bubble that maintained pressure on the oil reservoir making it easy to extract. Then production started to falter as the pressure lowered. This prompted Mexico to consider injecting water or steam to keep up the pressure, as the Saudis had done in their supergiant Ghawar fields, and in the end, they decided to inject nitrogen at the turn of the century. Over the next four years, Cantarell was the fastest growing field in the world, and then production faltered again, and would never recover. Once the world’s number two field behind Ghawar, it reached “Peak oil” in 2004 and saw production fall by 14% per year to just 400,000 BB/d.
Too many other fields had faced the same fate, and in the United States, production levels were only increased because they were literally squeezing oil embedded in shale by “fracking,” a costly process that needed solid oil prices to remain profitable. The steep decline of the supergiants meant the world would need to find another 40 million barrels per day to meet current demand—four times the production of Saudi Arabia. This is why the untapped proven reserves in fields like West Qurna and Majnoon were now key strategic resources.
China had already maneuvered into the good graces of the Hussein regime in Iraq, and had courted the Mullahs In Iran to gain pipeline routes that would bring that oil to China. It was why Admiral Sun Wei had amassed a forty ship fleet in the Indian Ocean to control and guard the Gulf of Oman. And it was why the navies of the United States and Britain, the founders of the industry that had discovered all that oil, were there to give challenge and renew those old claims. Churchill had fretted over the assets and operations of British Petroleum in 1943 when Heinz Guderian went to Baghdad. Now the British and Americans were going there, not for the city, not to liberate anyone, but to unseat a government hostile to their interests in those vast oil fields in the south. Without question, World War Three was an “Oil War.”
Chapter 18
One aspect of that oil war would unquestionably involve the sea lanes. Thus far, the West had cleared the Med, albeit with the cooperation of the Chinese Navy, which migrated through the Suez Canal and Red Sea into the Arabian Sea. The lightning campaign in Sinai had also cleared those last two vital transit lanes, though commercial traffic was not yet moving through the canal.