Today the burning the desire of the White House to preserve its alleged “sole superpower” status by using all sorts of deadly weapons in various regions of the world. It goes without saying that such a modus operandi results in thousands of civilian casualties and a massive outrage of the international community that seems to be fed up with countless bloody wars, cases of armed aggressions and new weapons sales that provide the US with a hefty income of billions and billions of dollars.
However, lethal weapons alone would have never allowed the US to get away with all the crimes it has been committing that is why it is relying heavily on dollar as a tool of American power in the post WWII world. According to economists from different countries, the United States share in the world gross domestic product does not exceed 22%. In comparison, the share of US dollar in international transactions exceeds 80%. For sure, Washington gets fairly worried when any state tries to get away with US dollars but over the years we’ve seen a number of such attempts and they are far from being isolated. The most scandalous among them was the intention of French President Charles de Gaulle to abandon American currency all together. For this purpose, the French banks collected as many US as they possibly could, the load was then loaded on a ship that was sent to the US to exchange those papers and get a much more substantial currency of the time – gold. And although the operation was a success, the noble metal wasn’t used in the transactions of French banks and provided the economy of France with zero benefits. As for Washington, it didn’t take this situation lightly, that is why it decided to turn its back on the guarantee to back every US dollar banknote by a gold equivalent.
Among the latest tools that Washington would use lately are its sanctions regimes, which are being introduced by the US against a certain states and then all of Washington’s satellite states are demanded t to observe them. It’s hardly a secret that Europe has been suffering the most from such policies, since they would ruin the economies of EU states eventually by imposing significant financial losses .
However, the US doesn’t seem contended with the amount of tools it has to meddle with the processes that are happening across the world. As it’s been recently announced by the White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer the sitting US president Donald Trump, is striving to ensure the “energy domination” of Washington in the world. Last April Trump made his first steps by killing the restriction on the extraction levels during offshore drilling, thus increasing the production of oil and gas in the areas of the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans and the Gulf of Mexico.
US President has also significantly expanded his rhetorics about the energy dominance of the US that he envisioned, while describing his desire to transform the US into an exporter of oil, gas and coal, as an attempt to stabilize world markets.
Trump’s Special Assistant for International Energy and Environment, George David Banks would comment these plans by noting that high hydrocarbons production levels will allow the United States to occupy an adventurous position, thus obtaining an upper hand in the competitive struggle.
In a similar vein, the White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer would describe this strategy as attempt to strengthen America’s “leadership abroad”. When demanded by media representatives about America’s intention of competing with the Persian Gulf states by undermining the hydrocarbon prices, Spicer announced that by selling oil in gas the US will be able to obtain certain economical advantages, while admitting that there’s a political dimension to this decision.
The “political aspect” of this new US strategy can be witnessed in the incredibly amount of pressure the US applies on its EU allies in a bid to put an end to the construction of the Russia’s “Nord Stream-2″ gas pipeline that would provide Europe with cheap gas. To strengthen this position, Washington, used the propaganda machine it controls to launch a massive disinformation campaign that is aimed at persuading the people across the world that it was Russia that made energy trade a political issue, while the US seeks to create a cheap LNG route from the US to the EU to replace cheap Russian gas with its own supplies.
An insignificant increase in America’s oil production levels has already affected oil prices, but to a certain extent, since it’s the growing production levels of Nigeria and Libya are driving the prices down. Now the US has announced that it local producers can still continue operations if the price hits $ 25 dollars per barrel. This was stated by the chairman of the board of directors of Pioneer Natural Resources Scott Sheffield in his interview with Bloomberg.
Should the oil prices be kept at the level of 40 dollars per barrel for an extended period of time, half of the world’s oil production sites will become unprofitable. The extraction will be equally unprofitable on the deep sands of Brazil and the oil sands of Canada. A great many of oil producers will have to leave the market if they they do not reach a political agreement with the United States.
Last year, the United States began exporting LNG from the Gulf of Mexico and shipped more than 5 billion cubic meters to various countries of the world. By 2020, the total amount of gas shipped is expected to reach 83 billion cubic meters a year.
Recently, Washington has been forcing the EU countries to abandon Russian gas supplies in favor of America’s LNG import, although this is economically unprofitable. According to the IMF, in April the price of Russian gas at the border with Germany reached 183 dollars per thousand cubic meters of gas. At the same time, across the EU market gas is being traded at the level of 188 dollars per thousand cubic meters of gas without delivery, and the price of American LNG is way higher than that. So, according to the US Energy Ministry (EIA), in February, its customers in Spain, Portugal and Turkey had to pay 245 dollars per thousand cubic meters of gas.
Nevertheless, in April the Polish PGNIG announced a contract with the only American LNG exporter, Cheniere, and the Minister for Strategic Energy Infrastructure Peter Naimsky, in order to please his masters in Washington, announced that America’s LNG supplies would significantly reduce Europe’s dependence on Gazprom. The government spokesman, however, indirectly confirmed that the supplies are cheap and its exporters would be great if the supplier is going to pay transport costs on its own. Vice-president of PGNIG Maciej Wozniak, however, refused to announce the price of the LNG supplies that are to be delivered to Poland this summer.
Of course, it is up to Polish politicians to decide whether or not Polish consumers must pay some extra for the chance of Poland being able to keep on following Washington’s orders.
But it also perfectly illustrates the future of this new energy policy for many countries, upon which Washington will now forcefully imposing its energy deliveries.
Grete Mautner is an independent researcher and journalist from Germany, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
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