Halliburton’s move to Dubai is important, but not for the reasons stated.
While liberals claim they’re moving to escape with ill-gotten gains, the fact is this was a business decision, taken for sound business reasons, and technical reasons in which the Administration, or any Administration so constituted, is going to concur.
It’s not so much about Dubai’s rigid class structure, whites and Arabs on top, brown people dehumanized (although that helps). It’s not so much about escaping taxes (although that’s nice). It’s not even about avoiding the Democrats (although that is useful). It’s about oil, specifically the oil underneath Iraq, Iran and Central Asia.
From a base in Dubai Halliburton can negotiate more easily with the Iranians than it can from Dallas. The oil fields on the north shore of the Persian Gulf are not producing as they should, and Halliburton’s technology can help. The same is true for Iraqi fields near Basra and in the north, near Kirkuk.
An increased flow of oil, and thus oil revenue, gives both Shiites and Sunnis the incentive, and the power, to come to an agreement which has eluded them under President Bush. As a Dubai company Halliburton is better-poised to do these deals than its rivals, like Schlumberger.
If it can increase proven reserves and extraction rates, it can also give these countries the power to manipulate the oil market, dropping prices below what alternatives might cost, then ratcheting them up again once rival technologies are dead.
Then there’s Central Asia. (Map from Thesis, a Journal of Foreign Policy.)
Kazakhstan is teeming with oil, which right
now has to come to market via Russia. If Halliburton’s greasy diplomacy
can bring Iran and the Emirates together, that oil might flow through
Iran. From Dubai, unattached to the U.S. flag, Halliburton can also do
deals with Russia far more easily. Regardless of Vladimir Putin’s
ambitions, he needs more oil flow to carry them out, and Halliburton
technology is the key to that.
This move is also good for Americans, because it hopefully focuses our
attention on who the real enemy here is. It’s not Halliburton, not the
Iranians, not the Emirates not even the Russians.
It’s oil itself.
It is the world’s addiction to hydrocarbons which gives oil powers
their ability to control us. With the largest U.S. oil field services company
going away, and others likely to follow, even Texans are going to start
seeing the light on this.
Overcoming our oil addiction will take a war-time commitment. Using
less oil must become patriotic. Funding geothermal and wind and solar
start-ups must become war work. Setting a floor price for energy, under which alternatives can prosper, must become policy. Creating a hydrogen cycle to replace
our present carbon cycle must become our Moon Shot.
Halliburton’s move means Americans will support these ideas. They are
already ready for it. Let’s see if someone has the nerve to propose it.
