When good ports go bad...

international | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis Tuesday January 20, 2004 17:37 by Jay

Bad Luck today hit Europes Gas supplies as everyones favourite us vice president makes a packet on brent oil futures.

After Um Qasr, and the Niger Delta it seems that the 'exploding Port' curse of KBR [Kellogg Brown & Root] has struck again.

Today saw the worlds second largest Natural Gas gateway [Skikda, Algeria - built and maintained by KBR in a $2.5 billion deal] go up in flames in an unfortunate accident which saw petoleum prices skyrocket in advance of Opecs Feb 11 meeting.

The good news for KBR is that 6 weeks ago they got a $160m US bankloan to continue vital quality control work on the plant, though unfortunately for the bank that money will now likely be written off.

For Bush-puppet President Bouteflika, the news is not all that good as the Algerian economy will now nosedive due to their overreliance on both Gas and KBR/TotalFinaElf/, and its erstwhile CEO, Tricky Dick Cheney, who set up their 2.5 billion deal just before he left KBR parent Halliburton, in 1999.

Expect Algerian GIA upsurgence as the bills don't get paid over the coming months and the economic downturn is exaccerbated.

Berties EU won't be too thrilled either as Algeria is where most of the great continents LPG comes fom.

The impact on OPEC & the global economy is less clear but one has to imagine the the Saudis, close friends of the Cheneys/Bushes, will be quite happy with todays inflated prices and the portents for 2004/5 output & prices. Some would say the uncanny bad luck experienced by KBR around the globe is forming a pattern which is continuing to benefit certain interests.

Its a funny old world indeed...here in Dublin where Halliburton/KBR also have a port project [the Dublin Port Tunnel is run by them, not that they do any actual digging], we're hoping that the their expertise in collapsing civil engineering doesn't become evident.

Though, worst case scenario the company'll do what they did in exploding port scenarios in Iraq, India, Yugoslavia; Colombia, Gabon and Nigeria.Knock it down.Bring in the [US] Army.Build another one.

Tubthumping i think they call it.