Obama went to Jamaica this week, but it wasn’t for a vacation; he managed to bullshit them into signing an agreement whereby they would become basically the world’s largest natural gas (NG) storage and distribution facility. This is being promoted as “helping alleviate Jamaica’s poverty” (skyrocketing since the US banker-caused ’08 meltdown) and “helping to supply their energy needs”. Since we have been manipulating the oil/NG prices in an [illegal] effort to hurt Russia, our storage facilities in the US are running out of room. We are fracking the hell out of our own country, as well as giving the green light to an ever increasing number of deep-water and offshore oil drilling operations. The glut of oil/NG on the market, the lowered demand for fossil fuels, the desire of the oil companies to hold the oil and natural gas until the price goes back up through the magic of “market forces” (as though the reason for the declining prices were a bug-fucked mystery to the industry) have all combined to create such a serious glut of oil and NG that we don’t know what to do with it all. They were talking about building more sea tankers that would just float around the world’s oceans, loaded to the gills with the stuff. And maybe spilling some, but since we have already killed the oceans, why worry over that possibility, which the oil industry deems remote, in any case? No-one will seriously consider the notion of halting production and thinking about renewable or alternative energy sources, and although most NG fracking operations have been laying off thousands of employees due to the fact that they are losing money at a rapid clip now, the answer the industry demands through its well-established collective wisdom is to keep on doing what they are doing and just find (or create) a new market to dump the products on. We will soon enough find out how over-burdened they are with loans and how heavily the lenders have invested in NG-related derivatives products, but that will be a financial meltdown story for another day. No, the cartels have spoken: we shall frack and dig until every aquifer and waterway is contaminated, every state has its share of fracking earthquakes, and all the land, air and oceans are completely toxic. Hell, we’ll dig until the entire mainland US fucking caves in if we have to. There will not be any viable alternative researched or offered until we’ve gotten every last molecule of this shit on the market. Because, money. We went to the trouble and expense of digging it all up and goddamnit, someone will buy it. The administration, State Department, Pentagon, and Congress all agree, by the way, which is why they run all over the globe promoting the American fossil fuel industries and forcing reluctant countries to go along with the plan. One way or another.
But this Jamaica thing is a much better idea than floating storage facilities. Get Jamaica to import, store, refine and distribute the excess – it’ll create jobs, give them a place in the industrialized world, and put the cost on them. No reason why our oil companies should bear the entire burden of building tankers or new storage facilities here, eh? And this agreement binds Jamaica to purchase the shit and sell it to other Caribbean and Latin American nations, so it won’t be our problem any more, in any case. A whole new market of buyers just waiting for us. We can’t just let them continue to buy oil from – Ewwwww! – that socialist Venezuela, can we? But wait, there’s more! As extra tasty goody goodness, the privatization is built in. The agreement will create “new partnerships” that will “mobilize private sector projects”; i.e., American banks and corporations will have free rein to oversee, invest, invade, and occupy. This is the kind of prefab privatization the US does best. See the US corporate takeover of Ukraine vis a vis fracking and GMO agriculture for an example of the latest such corporate coups. And as with Ukraine, we have Joe Biden at the helm, acting in the interest of the corporate oligarchy, under his Caribbean Energy Security Initiative (CESI).
What else were those silly islanders doing with their beachfront property, anyway? Productively, I mean. You can tell they have never considered the wisdom of free market capitalism before; I understand they have never had an oil spill there or fracked the first acre. Such a waste of primo real estate, those Caribbean nations.
Obama visits Jamaica as part of regional “energy security” initiative
By Thomas Gaist 10 April 2015
US President Barack Obama landed in Jamaica Wednesday night, accompanied by US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. He was greeted on the tarmac by Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller.
On Thursday, Obama met to discuss regional energy issues with 14 Caribbean governments in an effort to achieve “cooperative solutions to promote energy security,” according to White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes.
Thursday morning, Jamaican officials announced a new energy pact with the US Department of Energy. The agreement aims to secure Jamaica’s role as a primary importer and distributer of liquid natural gas (LNG) produced by US energy corporations. US firms are seeking to become leading suppliers of LNG throughout the Caribbean.
“It is a good start and it signifies tremendous opportunities and possibilities going forward,” Caribbean Energy Minister Phillip Paulwell said in response to the deal. Paulwell denied that the deal signified a shift away from friendly relations with Venezuela, insisting that Jamaica intends to “work closely with both countries.”
Obama announced that the deal would include a new US-backed investment fund for “clean” energy infrastructure projects in the Caribbean. Obama vowed that the US would pursue a package of “new partnerships” as part of a drive to “mobilize private sector projects in clean energy for the Caribbean and Central America.”
The fund will be managed by US Vice President Joseph Biden’s Caribbean Energy Security Initiative (CESI), launched from the White House in June 2014. CESI aims to “transform the energy systems of Caribbean states,” integrating the region’s gas and petroleum sectors within the framework of a North American trade zone dominated by US energy corporations and banks.
Signatories to an official CESI Joint Statement issued from the White House in January 2015 included Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Colombia, Curacao, Dominica, Dominican Republic, France, Germany, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United Kingdom.
Obama’s Jamaica visit is part of a political offensive in the Caribbean aiming to alleviate the contradictions plaguing American capitalism through the seizure of markets and resources throughout Central and Latin America. Growing Chinese competition for economic influence in the Caribbean, including billions of dollars of Chinese investments in sugar production and infrastructure in Jamaica, including a $1.5 billion port facility to be built by the Chinese Harbor Engineering Company, is threatening US imperialism in a region it has long considered its “backyard.”
In his public statements yesterday, Obama promised that the new agreements would enable Caribbean countries to purchase energy at much lower prices. “Caribbean countries have one of the highest energy cost in the world,” Obama lamented.
US firms are desperate for new energy markets, with oil prices down 50 percent from mid-2014 amid an historic supply glut in the US oil market. The dumping of cheap energy onto Caribbean markets serves to relieve pressure in the US market, and may also serve to temporarily tamp down growing social unrest on the island, fueled by high prices for Jamaican energy consumers and decades of grinding economic crisis.
The US-controlled International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned in a recent assessment that economic conditions in Jamaica are threatening the breakdown of “social cohesion” on the island. Jamaica’s economy has shrunk by an average of .3 percent every year during the past two decades, and poverty has skyrocketed since the economic crisis began in 2008, with 25 percent living in poverty according to government statistics from 2014.
The Obama administration announced Thursday that a final decision has already been reached over whether to remove Cuba from the “state sponsors of terror” list. As part of moves to strengthen ties with Havana, Obama is expected to announce that Cuba will be taken off the US black list during the Summit of the Americas in Panama this weekend.
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