Geodog

Food for thought: Who is California's largest foreign oil supplier?

I was walking down the street a few days ago, and noticed a banner strung up on the local Friends (Quaker) Meeting House:

May we look upon our treasures, and the furniture of our houses, and the garments in which we array ourselves, and try whether the seeds of war have nourishment in these our possessions

-- A Plea for the Poor, Part X, by John Woolman (1720-1772)

Living in a town like Berkeley, where opposition to Bush's war is extremely common and therefore sometimes as mindless as support for Bush's idiocies appears to be in other parts of the country, this struck me as a remarkably self-aware and thought provoking comment. While I make some effort to reduce the size and effect of my footprint on this planet, as a Californian who drives a car, I am a consumer of Iraqi oil. According to a recent article in the SF Chronicle,

Before the war, Iraq had been California's biggest source of foreign oil. It accounted for 20.1 percent of all the state's imports in 2002.

And oil is once again flowing from Iraq to California.

Iraq's state-owned oil marketing company eventually reorganized and began awarding oil export contracts to foreign firms in June. The proceeds go to a fund controlled by the United States and its allies that is earmarked for rebuilding Iraq.

ChevronTexaco, based in San Ramon, was the first American firm to get a contract from Iraq, for 2 million barrels. It has since signed a longer-term deal for an undisclosed amount of Basra crude covering the period between early August and Dec. 31, … ChevronTexaco shipped 461,000 barrels of crude to Richmond, where the company has a refinery. Two other shipments totaling 1.05 million barrels went to El Segundo, near Los Angeles, home to another refinery.

ConocoPhillips, based in Houston, shipped 460,000 barrels of Iraqi crude to Los Angeles, according to the Energy Information Administration.

While I don't believe that Bush's War on Iraq is directly about getting access to Iraqi oil, I also have no doubt that if Saddam Hussein had ruled a land without oil, he would still be in power today, no matter what cruelties he was inflicting on the population of Iraq. So to what degree does my consumption of Iraqi oil make me an accomplice to Bush's war crimes? As John Woolman would say, it's worth thinking about.

* John Woolman turns out to be a fascinating character and important 18th century Quaker thinker. A man of humble origins, he was the author of the widely read Journal of John Woolman (also available online, and is perhaps best known for his lifelong and mostly successful efforts to get Quakers to give up slaveholding, and to make opposition to slaveholding a matter of doctrine. His journals look like they are worth reading, although they also look like heavy going for a 21st century reader.