Osama's Oil

Abstract

Osama Bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, the organization widely held responsible for September 11,2001 attacks on World Trade Center, said in a 1998 interview that he believed that Oil Prices, then trading at around $11 a barrel should ideally trade at around $144 a barrel. Oil touched around $144 a barrel in June 2008. At this price, the world would be paying around $3 trillion more for oil than at more reasonable prices of around $25 a barrel. What this means is that many nations with dubious links to militant religious ideologies, could be earning $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion more than their requirements. Assuming that oil lasts for 40 years, this would mean that Oil Exporting Nations would have around $60 trillion that they could invest in Oil Importing countries that they would essentially got from these nations themselves. And that could mean almost entire loss of financial sovereignity, if not political sovereignity. The author had written a paper proposing formation of Organisation of Petroleum Importing Countries (OPIC) in 2002. This idea becomes much more imminent in these desperate times of Oil Crisis. OPIC would be positioned against OPEC - Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries. OPIC would attempt to reduce demand of crude oil to 15 billion barrels or almost half the present consumption. This would be achieved by public transportation, car pooling, motorcycle usage, video conferencing, reducing transportation demand and conservation of fuel. OPIC would also encourage and evangelize on Vegetarianism. Unless the world becomes vegetarian, substantially land for biofuels would not be available. OPIC would attempt to convert the world to vegetarianism so that 200 million hectares of land is available for Biofuels. OPIC would also explore other fuel alternatives such as Hydrogen and Solar.