Is the world better off without Saddam, George?

[El Kabong]

I agree, Arafat made a lot of mIstakes. And as walrus stated Obama has saId some things that didn't add up.

Slim, regarding your previous post about Bloomberg and the Iraq oil production I still haven't researched it but if memory serves me correct the oil is in the Kurdish stronghold areas which were rather well put together when Saddam wasn't bombing them. Is that part of the story to your knowledge, I forget where that post was @SlimTrae

About 20% of the oil is in Kurdish areas but these fiels are mostly used up now and won't produce much in the future. Almost all Iraq's oil is in the Shiite south and this oil has hardly been developed at all. It's the biggest undeveloped oil region on the planet by a country mile, there's a hundred and fifty trillion dollars under the ground there. This used to be owned by Saddam's Sunnis and now the Shiites(and Shiite Iran) control it and the Sunnis are eating dust. Can you see why they're so pissed off now?

Well slim posted a link about Bloomberg reporting rapid increase in current Iraqui oil production levels. Not so much about untapped stuff.

That's how they can rapidly increase production levels! Because they have vast reserves of untapped oil!

There's no other country in the world that has anything like Iraq's potential. It's very high qiuality low sulphur oil and it's literally just under the ground. In 2003 loads of Iraqis digging air raid shelters on their land before we invaded did a Jethro Clampett and struck oil on their land there's so much, but there are supergiant fields that western companies mapped out decades ago that have never been drilled. Hundreds of trillions of dollars worth. By comparison the only country in the world with more oil, Saudi, has pumped more than 50% of its oil and production has been declining for years even though they're pumping as much as they can.

Meanwhile in the rest of the world energy companies are reduced to drilling in over 10 000 feet of seawater to tap relatively tiny amounts of oil. That stuff costs more than the current price of oil just to get it out of the ground so it's uneconomic. Iraqi oil costs a dollar a barrel to produce.

Which explains this:

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Jed......Jed Clampett