Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, has told Consumers for Peace that as much as 20 percent of EXXONMOBIL’s record $36 billion 2005 profit, or about $7 billion, is “a ball park number” for what can be considered war profits for the oil giant.
This is an estimate of the amount of profit that is essentially unearned and is traceable to oil prices that have been inflated because: (1) the Iraq War has severely depressed Iraq oil production and (2) because of fears that the Iraq War may spread, possibly affecting oil production in Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Noble Prize winning Joseph Stiglitz has also said that the war, in inflating oil prices, has brought huge profits to U.S. oil companies. Tyson Slocum, Acting Director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program, says that ExxonMobil accumulated a war profit in 2005 “in the billions”.
ExxonMobil was the number one seller of petroleum products and related services to the Pentagon with total sales amounting to $3.9 billion between 1999 and 2005.
For the years 2001, through the run up to the Iraq War in 2000 and the invasion in 2003, ExxonMobil was the number one supplier to the U.S. military. Coincidentally or not, ExxonMobil appears to have been the leading oil company campaign contributor from 2000 through 2002, with the top recipient of its largess George W. Bush.
In the last two years, ExxonMobil has lost a significant share of its U.S. military market to the foreign-owner BP and Royal Dutch Shell. BP was the top seller to the Pentagon in 2005 at $1.6 billion and Shell was the top seller in 2004, at $1.07 billion.
ExxonMobil has also lost market share at the Pentagon to Middle Eastern oil producing nations. Since the 2002 run-up to the Iraq invasion and up to 2005, the Pentagon has purchased $4.23 billion in petroleum products and services from Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar combined. This represents about 28 percent of the $15.2 billion that the U.S. military bought from the top 10 suppliers from 2002 to 2005
Pentagon oil purchase figures for FY 2006 are not yet available.
Fallujah Says it all
FALLUJAH - In 2004 the United States destroyed Fallujah. It was a war crime and a crime against humanity. This action typifies the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. This video shows what happened, and what continues to happen daily if on a smaller scale.
Watch the video preview of
"Caught in the Crossfire".
ConsumersForPeace.org, through the ExxonMobil War Boycott, is working to stop the killing in Iraq; to end the United States' occupation of Iraq; and to bring the perpetrators of the war to justice.
To assist you in boycotting ExxonMobil and firms connected to it through its board of directors, you may wish to have Democracy Dollars.
You may wish to write to the ExxonMobil Board of Directors
