Charles R. Smith
Wednesday, March 21, 2001

In February 1999, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson visited Saudi Arabia when prices were at their lowest. Richardson reportedly pressed Saudi Oil Minister Ali Naimi on the "oversupplied market" and expressed concern about "extreme price volatility."

Former Saudi minister Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani told a Houston oil conference that Richardson had "saved the oil industry" during that visit because his "intervention" had "persuaded" the Saudis to change policy by raising prices.

After Richardson's visit, Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, an industry newsletter, quoted Saudi officials as wanting "a price of $18 to $20 as soon as possible."

In 1999, then-President Clinton pressed OPEC to raise prices in order to finance the brutal Russian war in Chechnya. Clinton needed Russia's help settling that pesky little war in Kosovo. However, Bill was unable to aid Boris Yeltsin directly because of the rampant corruption inside Moscow.

Clinton quietly used OPEC oil diplomacy to supply Russia increased energy profits. The influx of cash into Moscow was mainly obtained through Iraqi oil sold by the U.N. and distributed through Russian suppliers. The cash paid for the Russian war and a new round of rampant corruption, centered on the former Soviet GAZPROM state oil company.

However, there were also unexpected results. The oil sales helped Saddam Hussein re-arm his military with a brand new Chinese-built air defense system. The move is also now seen as a major blunder that triggered the 2001 recession.

Anti-Energy Movement

In the 1990s, OPEC wanted to re-establish monopoly control by flooding the market with cheap oil. In 1973 OPEC cut off all oil to the West during the October war. The result was a sudden influx of investment in domestic and alternative production that peaked just before Clinton took office in 1992.

Clinton cooperated with OPEC by destroying domestic production. Clinton's main weapon was a war of propaganda waged by Al Gore. Gore led the attack on the U.S. energy industry using "green" policies of radical environmentalism. Despite the many variables in domestic energy, there is a basic flaw in the anti-energy argument. It is far more "environmentally friendly" to pump oil from static fields here in the U.S. than it is to import foreign oil in fragile ocean-going tankers.

OPEC in 2001 just squeezes harder, having learned never to let the U.S. go cold turkey again. The Clinton economy was built on artificially low cost foreign energy that has suddenly become very expensive. The United States is now more dependent on foreign energy than ever before.

Blackouts on the West Coast, skyrocketing gas and oil prices and an unstable stock market all add up to a recession in progress. There are no fast answers for eight years of declining domestic oil production and climbing oil consumption.

Chinese Army Inc. . Just as there is no quick fix for the energy crunch there is also no easy solution to the trade crash. During the 1990s, Clinton also sponsored a so-called trade boom with China that actually busted America. Hundreds of billions of dollars flowed out of America in the largest single trade deficit in history.

Today, firms backed by the People's Liberation Army dominate consumer markets in America. American workers, unable to compete against the slave labor amassed by the PLA, are losing manufacturing jobs to China at a rate never before seen. Chinese army firms compete unfairly against U.S. companies inside America for financing on the stock market, and even for U.S. government-backed loans.

For example, documents from the files of Chinagate figure John Huang show that $200 million in World Bank loans for a Chinese "Technology Development Project" actually went to weapons research labs and businesses wholly owned by the Chinese army. Huang later cited his Fifth Amendment rights more than two thousand times when asked under oath if he had ties to Chinese intelligence.

The funded projects included: