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Iran Should Offer Fuel To DESC
A few days ago the U.S. Defense Energy Support Center issued a solicitation for one year of fuel supplies to be used in Afghanistan from July on.
It needs:
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67,320,000 U.S. Gallons – Turbine Fuel, Aviation
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12,240,000 U.S. Gallons – Fuel Oil, Diesel
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1,440,000 U.S. Gallons – Gasoline, Automotive, Unleaded
The total is 80 million gallons or 220,000 gallons per day.
Before the recent "surge" decision Stratfor estimated 75 million as the yearly demand for U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. So the the 80 million gallons request will cover most of what is going to be needed.
The Iranian government should urge one of its oil companies to make an offer to deliver the 80 million gallons at a very favorable, subsidized price. An offer the U.S. would have trouble to refuse. Another offer should be made towards the solicitation for trucking service to transport that fuel to Bagram and other bases in Afghanistan.
The current freight on board price of jet-fuel in Pakistan is $469.58 per metric tonne (about 300 gallons).
Iran could offer that for – lets say – $10 per mt.
That would of course be a lousy business deal. But such a deal would be a strategic game changer, lead to the lifting of some of the sanctions and alleviate joblessness. Once such a deal is established other deals will follow and the prices will get better.
Isn't there some crooked Revolutionary Guard general who wants to gets his hands into the transport part of such a deal to fill his pockets?
Currently the refinery capacity in Iran is not big enough to deliver that much on such short notice. But many Iranian refineries there are already going through upgrade processes and until they are ready additional imports could make up for the additional exports.
Today 80% of the fuel is coming from refineries in Pakistan and 20% from far away Baku, Azerbaijan, and from Turkmenistan.
A large tank truck carries about 10,000 gallons and smaller ones 5,000 gallons. Large trucks are not able to negotiate all the high passes routes into Afghanistan, but with a mix of 1/3 large and 2/3 smaller trucks the total necessary delivery per day is 33 truck arrivals. About 15 to 20 times as many trucks have to be on the road continuously and make the round-trip to achieve that.
That is currently quite a fleet of valuable targets on dangerous roads through Pashtunistan and the Khyber pass and a lot of the supply gets pilfered, captured or simply blown up.
Delivery from Iran would be cheaper and much less endangered by Taliban attacks.
But the U.S. will not ask Iran for this – if only to keep its face. But an offer from Iran companies towards the fuel and transport solicitation could be the opener for talks that might lead much further.
Hurry up, the deadline is soon.
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earlier coverage of Afghanistan logistics at MoA:
The New Route Plus Iranian Jet Fuel Supply To Afghanistan, Feb 20, 2009
The Pink Route To Afghanistan, Feb 3, 2009
The Costly New Supply Route To Afghanistan, Jan 26, 2009
New Supply Routes To Afghanistan, Nov 19, 2008
Fuel for War in Afghanistan Aug 20, 2008
The Road War in Afghanistan Aug 16, 2008
Fuel Tanker Attacks in Afghanistan Mar 24, 2008
At a slight tangent to this is Tom Englehardt’s latest dispatch entitled Inheriting Halliburton’s Army which features a piece by Pratap Chatterjee
The Military’s Expanding Waistline
What Will Obama Do With KBR?
While the article is mainly concerned with issues like
Sarah Stillman, a freelance journalist with the website TruthDig, tells a story she heard about a PowerPoint slide that’s becoming popular in Army briefings: “Back in 2003, the average soldier lost fifteen pounds during his tour of Iraq. Now, he gains ten.”
The article points out that the great new pizza and ice cream service soldiers get in the all volunteer army is entirely thanks to slaves from third world counties that Halliburton hires through contractors.
If you are wondering how it is that amerikan casualties have dropped so drastically in Iraq or why the amerikans are seemingly unconcerned about fatalities from the transport columns bringing supplies into Afghanistan, it is because the people injured by IEDs aren’t amerikans, they are desperately poor unwhite (therefore disposable)people selected from places which are not islamic and who are believed to have no interest in the outcome of the war. EG:
The majority of KBR’s labor force, some 40,000 workers (the equivalent of about 80 military battalions), are “third country nationals” drawn largely from the poorer parts of Asia. In April 2008, I flew to Kuwait city where I spent time with a group of Fijian truck drivers who worked for a local company, PWC, doing subcontracting work for KBR.
My host was Titoko Savuwati from Totoya Lau, one of the Moala Islands in Fiji. He picked me up one evening in a small white Toyota Corolla rental car. The cranked-up sound system was playing American country favorites and oldies. Six feet tall with broad, rangy shoulders, short-cropped hair, and a goatee, Savuwati had been a police officer in Fiji. He was 50 years old and had left at home six children he hadn’t seen in four years. When he got out of his car, I noticed that he had a pronounced limp and dragged one foot ever so slightly behind him.
We joined his friends at his apartment for a simple Anglican prayer service. Deep baritone voices filled the tiny living room with Fijian hymns before they sat down to a meal of cassava and curried chicken parts and began to tell me their stories. Each had made at least 100 dangerous trips, driving large 18-wheeler refrigeration trucks that carry all manner of goodies destined for U.S. soldiers from Kuwaiti ports to bases like LSA Anaconda. They sleep in their trucks, not being allowed to sleep in military tents or trailers along the way.
Savuwati had arrived in Kuwait on January 14, 2005, as one of 400 drivers, hoping to earn $3,000 a month. Instead, his real pay, he discovered, was 175 Kuwaiti dinar (KWD) a month (US$640), out of which he had to pay for all his food and sundries, even on the road, as well as rent. Drivers were given an extra 50 dinar ($183) allowance on each trip to Iraq.
“I came to Iraq because of the large amount of money they promised me,” he said, sighing. “But they give us very little money. We’ve been crying for more money for many months. Do you think my family can survive on fifty KWD?” He sends at least 100 dinars ($365) home a month and has no savings that would pay for a ticket home at a round-trip price of roughly $2,500.
I did a quick calculation. For every trip, if they worked the 12-hour shifts expected of them, the Fijians earned about $30 a day, or $2.50 an hour. I asked Savuwati about his limp. On a trip to Nasariyah in 2005, he told me, his truck flipped over, injuring his leg. Did he get paid sick leave? Savuwati looked incredulous. “The company didn’t give me any money. When we are injured, the company gives us nothing.” But, he assured me, he had been lucky — a number of fellow drivers had been killed on the job.
The next day, I stopped by to see the Fijians again, and Savuwati gave me a ride home. I offered to pay for gasoline and, after first waving me away, he quickly acquiesced. As he dropped me off, he looked at me sheepishly and said, “I’ve run out of money. Do you think you could give me one KWD [$3.65] for lunch?” I dug into my pocket and handed the money over. As I walked away, I thought about how ironic it was that the men who drove across a battle zone, dodging stones, bullets, and IEDs to bring ice cream, steak, lobster tails, and ammunition to U.S. soldiers, had to beg for food themselves.
Sorry for including that large quote b but I wanted to get the point across firstly that the Halliburton workers are slaves who cannot leave their jobs as badly as they may want to and that what little money the workers do earn is being used to prop up undemocratic, and dictorial third world regimes such as that of the Fijian military junta. It is likely that at least some of the difference between what Savuwati was promised and what he is paid is collected by agents close to the Fijian general’s regime who in turn enabled the recruitment of impoverished Fijians such as Savuwati.
Apart from the slavery issues which are shocking enough the corrupting effect of the involvement of nations such as Fiji in amerika’s imperial wars cannot be overstated. For many years Fiji was regarded as one of the ‘ideal’ nations to get UN bluecap soldiers from. For example Fijian soldiers were used in Haiti to prevent the elected government of Aristide resuming power after amerika pushed a resolution through the security council. They were cheap, got on well with the locals but since they came from a warrior culture, they also fought better than many other armies.
This seriously skewed the Fijian society until it has got to the point where Fiji, a country that has no real enemies, has an army large enough to stage a coup and take power when any elected government does something the army commander in chief disagrees with. Why wouldn’t they? Fijian soldiers have seen up close exactly how the world works in all sorts of far flung corners of the amerikan empire.
The peace of Fiji has been shattered by four coups since 1987! This is a serious issue for all people of the South Pacific because there are some real issues in Fiji, in particular the cavalier way the english abandoned hundreds of thousands of former Indian slaves when they pulled out at ‘independance’ in 1970. These issues can never be resolved while the voices of so many Fijians are suppressed, both Indo-Fijians and ethnic Fijians have suffered greatly under Bainimarama’s despotic rule and strict censorship.
These are the nations which amerikan imperialism is also destroying, the nations no one hears about or cares about. If Bainimarama didn’t have the returns from KBR-Halliburton coming in every month, the elite in his regime would suffer as badly as the average Fijian currently suffers, and immediate change would be forthcoming.
The issue of who supplies the av-gas to amerika in Afghanistan is as meaningless as it is distracting. If it comes from Iran, it won’t do anything for Iran’s relationship with amerika but it will help continue an awful war, one where few if any of the major players on the side of the coalition of the willing have any business being involved in, but where many humans on both sides who are caught up in the horror through no fault of their own, are used and abused before being slaughtered.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Feb 21 2009 23:56 utc | 7
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