A look at key U.S. oil suppliers
By Associated Press
May 6, 2006
The nuclear standoff with Iran and insurgencies in Iraq and Africa
have rattled world energy markets. But the threat to supply extends
far beyond these hotspots.
The United States depends on resources from a number of overseas
markets, which threaten to become more of a risk.
Those suppliers also include:
â~@¢ Russia, whose brief energy conflict with Ukraine last winter
severely hit the European Union. Moscow, which is flexing its energy
muscle for geopolitical leverage, accounts for more than 10 percent
of the world’s daily oil output and a fifth of its natural gas.
President Vladimir Putin’s drive to reassert state influence over
the nation’s oil and gas sectors has spooked consumer nations.
â~@¢ Saudi Arabia, the world’s No. 1 oil producer and a key U.S.
supplier. It has been singled out as a target by Osama bin Laden, and
the country remains on alert after foiling an al-Qaida-linked attack on
its vast Abqaiq oil processing plant in February. That attack prompted
Kuwait to express concern about the security of its own oil facilities.
An additional threat to oil installations is the potential for
insurgency fomented by Tehran among the Saudi Shiite minority –
and those in neighboring oil-producing nations.
â~@¢ Venezuela and Bolivia, where moves by populist leaders to impose
more state control over the gas or oil sectors, gives them growing
leverage to use energy as a political tool. Bolivia, which recently
called out the army to enforce its claims, has South America’s
second-largest natural gas reserves after Venezuela.
Venezuela, whose President Hugo Chavez has threatened to blow up his
country’s oil fields in case of U.S. attack, is the fourth-largest
supplier of crude to the United States – for now. Chavez is
increasingly selling to China and Cuba, and his oil minister has
threatened to stop supplying America.
â~@¢ The Caspian Sea region, which has estimated oil reserves between
17 billion and 44 billion barrels and is potentially a key transit
point for oil to the West. But it is rife with ethnic conflicts in
Chechnya, Georgia and the autonomous enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Energy nationalism is also a factor – with Turkmenistan recently
declaring its on-land gas and oil fields off-limits to foreign
companies. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional alliance
led by China and Russia, last year called on the United States to
set a date for withdrawing forces from the region.
â~@¢ The East China Sea, where conflicting claims to rich underwater
gas reserves have added to historical rivalries between Japan and
China.
In the first three months of this year, the Japanese military said it
had scrambled fighter jets 107 times to intercept suspected Chinese
spy planes – most of them over the East China Sea – compared to 13
times in all of 2005.
Copyright 2006, The Albuquerque Tribune. All Rights Reserved.
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
