for the poor and oppressed oil companies struggling to earn a living in Libya. Evil dictator Muammar Gaddhafi was siphoning off their sweet, sweet profits to do horrible things such as build new infrastructure, roads, schools and hospitals for the already richest and most well-off residents of North Africa, the Libyans. Gaddhafi’s theft of the oil companies’ rightful profits was wholly responsible for Libya becoming by far the richest nation on a per capita basis in North Africa, and in fact the 3rd wealthiest nation in the whole continent of Africa.
The oil companies were so oppressed by evil Gaddhafi’s siphoning of profits that even a shitty upstart computer fruit company named Apple was able to overtake Exxon Mobil in market capitalization. Thankfully his rule has been overthrown and the oil companies, bringers of all things that are good in the world, such as SUVs, private jet planes and plastic bags can continue providing America with the wealth it deserves, and all those upstart dirty sand people can return to their rightful place as dirt farmers and overachieving American university medical school students.
ENI leads Libya oil race; Russia, China may lose out
Mon Aug 22, 2011 3:22pm GMT Print | Single Page [-] Text [+]
(Updates with comments from firms, Russia)
By Svetlana Kovalyova and Emma Farge
MILAN/LONDON Aug 22 (Reuters) - Italian oil company Eni led the charge back into Libya on Monday as rebels hailing the end of Muammar Gaddafi’s rule warned Russian and Chinese firms that they may lose out on lucrative oil contracts for failing to support the rebellion.
Gaddafi’s fall will reopen the doors to Africa’s largest oil reserves and give new players such as Qatar’s national oil company and trading house Vitol the chance to compete with established European and U.S. oil majors.
“We don’t have a problem with Western countries like the Italians, French and UK companies. But we may have some political issues with Russia, China and Brazil,” Abdeljalil Mayouf, information manager at Libyan rebel oil firm AGOCO, told Reuters.
The comment signals a potential setback for those countries which opposed tough sanctions on Gaddafi or pressed for more talks and would leave European and U.S. companies to capture billions of dollars worth of oil exploration and construction contracts in the OPEC member nation.
Shares in Eni , top producer in pre-war Libya, gained as much as 7 percent, as its chairman Giuseppe Recchi said Libyan oil and gas flows could restart before winter. Brent oil futures LCOc1 fell just over a dollar a barrel on the anticipated resumption of Libyan exports
Shares in Austria’s OMV and France’s Total also rose by 3-5 percent and U.S. oil and oil services firms with operations in Libya followed the trend.
Italy’s Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said staff from Eni had arrived to look into a restart of oil facilities in the country’s east.
Libya’s GDP per capita and human development index are both well within the top 1/3 of nations in the world, it’s debt is less than 10% of GDP, it enjoys free universal health care for all people and has life expectancy basically the same as the United States. It has a well developed school system and nearly all people finish at least a high school education. Yes, it has some problems with lower female school enrollment, but then even the wealthiest and most “liberalized” muslim nations in the world share this problem.
Gaddhafi was also planning to re-invest a further $150 billion dollars of sovereign wealth funds back into the economy to build new infrastructure, hospitals, schools, roads, airports etc.
But oh no, those poor oppressed Libyans didn’t have a Western-style democracy, clearly the answer is to bomb their country back to the stone age to take out their leader
Wow, you’ll fight for change within your employment, but when it comes to adjusting your lifestyle to changing times you’re just like everyone else. Stuck in the stone age, or rather… fossil fuel age. I very much doubt gas prices will drop just because Western nations have a better hold on some of the last drops now. We will still pay more, up to the point where there’s none left. It’s at that point where we will see if those in power included us in their contingency plan.
*edit: Maybe I should clarify that I wasn’t trying to make this a personal attack, rather an attack on the general reliance on fossil fuels despite the barrel draining.
Technically we were fighting against change, since the changes introduced would negatively affect us as well as the general public. But I believe we’ve been over this, since nobody responded to my last post on the subject it kinda died…
Meh, I’m budgeting a bit more for gas each week, a bit less into debt payment. For now I am ok.
