this is so true (at least in my pea brain deductions) I had to post it.
From Dead Man Blogging:
"All About the Oil?
I don't know why, but I was thinking last night about whether or not it was reasonable that the US might have gone to war with Iraq to steal the oil. I was curious to see if we took ALL of Iraq's oil, every day, how long it would take to simply cover the costs of the war, let alone give us a profit. So I did some research.
The CBO estimated the costs of the war for Congress. Let's figure the cheapest possible war by their numbers:
9,000,000,000 initial deployment
6,000,000,000 for a 1-month war
1,000,000,000 per month occupation
5,000,000,000 to return troops home
This means, without ANY occupation, we're looking at a $20,000,000,000 price tag.
So, how long would we have to occupy Iraq to pay for that?
Iraq's oil production capacity is roughly 2,000,000 barrels per day. Oil is right now running about $25 per barrel. Every day, we could steal about $50,000,000 dollars worth of oil. Every month, we could steal about $1.5B.
The break even point for this war, where X is in months:
20B (initial) + 1B X = X * 1.5B
20B = 0.5B X
X = 40.
If we're there to steal Iraq's oil, it's going to take 3 1/2 years for us to start making a profit. This is using the cheapest figures. And these estimates were available before the war.
If you think GWB took us to Iraq to steal the oil, you must wonder how such a bad businessman is also so rich."
Posted by methodius at October 1, 2003 08:05 PM | TrackBack