The
5th Fleet together with troops are in the Middle East where there is lots of oil.
The
4th Fleet has been reactivated [cf.
Navy Reestablishes U.S. 4th Fleet] after 58 years of being moth balled, and has been sent to Central / South America where there is also lots of oil.
A website of the federal government tells us:
"Oil is the lifeblood of America’s economy."
(
Department of Energy [they removed it, so here is
The Wayback Machine copy of that page:
Department of Energy]). Which is the same thing as saying you are economically dead without your blood, your oil.
The struggle for
economic life then, would be the struggle for oil would it not?
Bush II put it in the cowboy language during a state of the union address to congress, saying that "
America is addicted to oil".
Alrighty then, here is a digest of our dealers who supplied us with the petroleum drug for the years
2003-2008 (imports in
billions of barrels):
===============================
OPEC countries (12,385,349) (42.8%)
non-OPEC countries (16,553,830) (57.2%)
------------------------------------------------------------
All countries (28,939,179) (100%)
===============================
===============================
Break it down:
Persian Gulf countries (5,141,389) (17.8%)
Canada (5,002,249) (17.3%)
===============================
Americas:
Mexico (3,466,520) (11.98%)
South / Central Americas (4,656,426) (16.1%):
Argentina (172,464), Belize (1,434), Bolivia (3,934), Brazil (372,205), Chile (18,862), Colombia (393,349), Costa Rica (4,450), Ecuador (501,895), El Salvador (6,296), Guatemala (33,659), Panama (695), Peru (63,662), Uruguay (4,432), Venezuela (3,079,089)
===============================
(
Department of Energy, compilation [they "lost" is so here is the
Wayback Machine copy]). The OPEC and non-OPEC percentages equal the total percentages that add up to 100%. (The Persian Gulf & Americas figures are just sections, so they will not add up to 100%.) Also note that some of the Americas are
OPEC members and some are non-OPEC.
The narrow
Strait of Hormuz, a strategic oil drug gateway, has the nation of Iran on one side, the
UAE and Oman on the other side where
headquarters for CENTCOM has several HQ bases.
Lately "
the terrorists" who
take up most GE news coverage are said to be controlled from
al-Queda in Yemen which controls the other critical oil drug gateway, the narrow
Strait of Bab el-Mandeb where the oil drug also passes through.
Clearly the fleets, the soldiers, and terrorism seem to be centralized
where the oil drug is found or transported from (for some "mysterious" reason).
The next post in this series is
here.