For some people it was a huge success. First, lets look at a excerpt from a speech Cheney gave back 99′ while he was with Halliburton.
By some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three per cent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? Governments and the national oil companies are obviously in control of about ninety per cent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greeter access there, progress continues to be slow.
Seems like he got the “prize”. I’d say the oil companies have unfettered access now. They even got to write their own contracts and did not have to spend any money on exploration, which by the way was getting very expensive. Too expensive to do actually.
Also, think of all the money in defense contracting. They build buildings and then get to knock them down and rebuild them again. You can’t beat that. That’s good steady work.
Let’s not forgot, it brought about a huge new industry. Corporate security forces i.e. Blackwater.
From a strategic point of view, it puts us in striking distance to people that are sometimes unfriendly to the US and/or also have more oil.
