Iraq oil reserves bigger than US deficit!

So I was messing around with some facts on the war in Iraq this morning and stumbled upon the facts around the oil and gas reserves in that country.

“Iraq holds more than 112 billion barrels of oil – the world’s second largest proven reserves. Iraq also contains 110 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and is a focal point for regional and international security issues.”

The average prices on the markets on Thursday showed oil at around $72.00 dollars a barrel and natural gas at $5.237 per 1000 cubic feet. Total price of these reserves therefore equals $8.640 trillion currently. Assuming that when the economies start to turn that these prices will go up, you can see that Iraq is fairly wealthy in terms of resources.

So, and this may offend some folk, I truly believe that the war in Iraq is not so much about democracy, but more about controlling the power base. I do not believe that the US is going after the resources because of their value to the US. I believe that they are looking to control the eventual power base in Iraq to ensure they can control the power base.

Certainly the global power base could shift dramatically if the countries there decided to combine their resource wealth?