Authors: Patrick Robinson
OIL STRIKE ON PATAGONIA COAST
HIGHLIGHTS MALVINAS OUTRAGE
“Hullo,” muttered James. “The bloody gauchos are at it again.” This was a statement of such astonishing unawareness that even Jimmy, with his Aussie brand of outback humor but high intelligence, was moved to reconsider.
“Tell the truth, I’m not so sure what a bloody gaucho is, except he rides a horse, carries a knife, eats a lot of beef, and doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anyone.”
As a description of the native Argentinian horsemen and cowboys, there was an element of truth in this. However, the badly missed point was the gauchos didn’t give a rat’s ass about the oil strike either. This was a matter for the big hitters of Argentinian business.
The
Buenos Aires Herald
had published a story that speculated, with much authority, on a possible rich seam of oil and gas discovered a few miles to the north of the Patagonian port of Rio Gallegos. It had absolutely nothing to do with the Argentinian naval base located in that city.
Rio Gallegos had long been a seaport for the export of coal from the huge mines found 150 miles west of the city. There had also been oil discoveries in the region, of sufficient volume to justify a sizeable refinery in Rio Gallegos. But according to the
Herald
, this new dis
covery was right on the coast, stretching out under Argentina’s coastal waters.
They quoted an executive from the Argentine state oil company, who said:
It cannot be a mere coincidence that the Patagonian oil fields plainly run from the coalfields to the coast, and then in a dead straight line to the Malvinas, where the biggest oil and gas strikes in recent years have been confirmed.
The
Herald
reasoned:
If that is true, then the oil fields on the islands MUST be the property of Argentina, since we are the clear and rightful owners of the Malvinas, and the ONLY country with coastal waters and seabed above the oil.
Argentina’s claim on the islands has always been correct and unchallengeable politically, even the British understand that. It now appears to be unchallengeable geologically. The rock strata that has housed the oil for thousands of years is purely Argentinian, not British.
Their absurd claim to own the Malvinas would be as if we claimed their North Sea oil because a few Argentinian families had settled on the east coast of Scotland.
Until now, the oil companies have always stated the oil on the Argentine mainland and the oil in the Falklands are separate issues. However, last month’s new discovery north of Rio Gallegos has joined up the last dot in a long chain of Argentinian oil fields. The oil is ours, obviously ours. All of it.
And what is our government, and indeed our military, doing about it? THEY OWE THE PEOPLE AN EXPLANATION…VIVA LAS MALVINAS!!
“Christ,” said Jimmy.
In an entirely separate story in the business section there was a long article about the financial ramifications of the new strike—the likelihood of 500,000 barrels a day, the need for yet another huge refinery
in Rio Gallegos, and the prosperity that would occur in southern Patagonia.
On the editorial pages, there was a piece by the editor of the
Herald
, pointing out the new strike had made the Malvinas even more difficult to reclaim. The British were now backed by the giant American oil corporation that had joined BP in the oil fields southwest of Port Stanley. They would likely dig in even more fiercely, probably even refuse to negotiate further.
“The British government has never been anything less than dogmatic, unreasonable, and forever obdurate,”
he raged.
“Perhaps now is the time for Argentina once more to consider the military option.”
“Christ,” repeated Jimmy. And then, slowly, “I’m telling you, that oil business causes more bloody trouble on this planet than any other issue in the entire history of mankind. Except religion.”
He pulled up a map on his big computer and punched in the buttons that would reveal the coast of southern Patagonia and its proximity to the Falkland Islands.
“I’ll say one thing,” he muttered, “it is a bloody straight line, and no error.”
He pondered the story, trying to work out whether it had anything to do with the United States and its national security. And the answer was clearly no.
If the ole gauchos wanna fight the Brits over those rat-hole islands again, well, let ’em
.
It really is not our business.
Nonetheless, he logged all the data in his special computer file, the one designed purely as a reminder to him, any time he wanted to check a global issue.
But the impending row over the Falklands stayed on his mind, and at the end of the afternoon he made a copy of the articles in the
Buenos Aires Herald
. Then he posted them off, regular mail, to Admiral Morgan. He just scrawled “FYI” at the head of the first sheet and left it at that.
Seven days later, however, on Monday, November 9, there were two developments that caught his interest. The first was a memorandum from Ryan Holland, the veteran career diplomat from Mississippi, who was now the United States Ambassador to Argentina. His communiqué had been sent directly to the State Department, but was then forwarded to the CIA and the NSA.
It read:
Continued Friday and Saturday night disturbances in the Plaza de Mayo. That’s the huge square in front of the Presidential Palace in the center of Buenos Aires. The crowd appears to grow in size every night. On Saturday the police estimate there were 12,000 people, all chanting Viva las Malvinas!!
I mention this because there have been no such demonstrations here for many years. I cannot understand this sudden rise in public indignation over those damned islands. Though I did notice a hot editorial in the
Herald
the other day, claiming the oil recently discovered on the Falkland Islands was in fact the property of Argentina.
The
Herald
’s editor, a nice enough guy with a plainly hysterical streak, was actually recommending the use of military force again. I expect it will all blow over, but those crowds were very substantial, and loud, getting louder. At no time did the President appear on the balcony of the Palace, and there was no indication of any official action being contemplated.
Ryan Holland, Ambassador to Argentina.
One hour after Lt. Commander Ramshawe read the communiqué, his direct telephone line rang. Admiral Morgan on the line.
“Hey, Jimmy, thank you for the cuttings from Buenos Aires. Very interesting. Just remember it’s easy to dismiss stuff, easy to say it’s not our business. But remember last time, we ended up standing up to our armpits in that mess. The Brits and the Argentinians were really slugging it out, fighter-bombers hitting the Atlantic by the dozen, warships hitting the bottom of the Atlantic. It was a very nasty, bitterly fought war…and the USA was right in the middle of it, helping Ronnie Reagan’s best friend Margaret Thatcher to win it…”
“Sir, I was only about four years old at the time.”
“Well, you should have been paying attention.”
“Yessir. But I’m definitely paying attention now. I just read a communiqué from our Ambassador in Buenos Aires…”
“Ryan Holland, right? Cunning old guy. Doesn’t make many mistakes, and more important, doesn’t waste a lot of time on rubbish.”
“Nossir. Want me to tell you what he says?”
“Sure. Always listen to Ryan Holland, my boy. He usually knows what he’s saying.”
Jimmy read. And at the end of it, Arnold Morgan was very thoughtful. “Kinda fits with what the
Herald
was saying, right? Growing indignation about the Brits’ claim, not only on the islands, but also on the oil.”
“Well, presumably we supported that claim in 1982, so we’re kinda stuck with it now, huh?”
“Yes. We are. That’s why these observations in Buenos Aires may well be important.”
“Well, Ryan says he is not seeing anything official.”
“It doesn’t need to be official, does it?” said Arnold Morgan. “Argentina has spent a lot of time being ruled by a military junta. And officers from all three services have enormous influence in that country.
“In 1982, a couple of Admirals were almost entirely responsible for that war. And if there was anything similar going on right now, it would be very difficult to run the plotters to ground. Doesn’t mean it isn’t happening though, does it?”
“No, it doesn’t. Just as the United Nations search team couldn’t find Saddam’s nuclear program in Iraq, didn’t mean he didn’t have one, did it?”
“No, Jimmy. It did not.” The Admiral spoke thoughtfully. “It meant the UN guys could not find it. That’s all.
Can’t find
and
doesn’t exist
are not the same. And only a left-wing politician could think they were.”
“Do you think we ought to do anything?”
“Well, not in a big hurry. But I would not be surprised if something was brewing. And it might not hurt to have the CIA check out the military bases along that southern coast of Argentina. Just in case. Just in case they pick anything up.”
“Okay, sir. I’ll get right on it, and anything shakes loose I’ll keep you informed.”
“Right, and get some reading done on the 1982 war in the South Atlantic. You never know, you might be glad of the knowledge someday. Read Admiral Sandy Woodward’s book. It’s the most accurate and interesting account.”
“Okay, sir. See you soon.”
For the following few days, Jimmy Ramshawe tried to understand the causes and results of the Argentine decision to make a military landing on the Falkland Islands twenty-eight years ago. It was, he decided, pretty damned obvious they decided to go for it after a slashing British government defense review in 1981 that saw both Royal Navy aircraft carriers
Hermes
and
Invincible
sold to India and Australia, respectively.
It was also, he considered, a blinding error of judgment on Argentina’s behalf: to misjudge both the dates upon which the carriers would actually
leave
England and the fact that Margaret Thatcher was a very determined Prime Minister—a lady of whom President Reagan once said, “She’s the best man they’ve got.”
Anyway, so far as Jimmy could see, it was a total screwup, bound for failure from way back, and a lesson for those determined to pick a fight with someone much tougher than they look.
It was a quiet time, globally and politically, coming up to Christmas, and no one was getting wildly excited about anything, not even the Palestinians. Jimmy’s studies were seriously interrupted only twice, both times by Lenny Suchov over at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
The first time was to reveal the Russians never did issue another formal press release about the Siberians who had died in the plane crash in the tundra. At least they did not issue one that named the dead. They only announced the wreckage had not been found, and there were elements of doubt about who was and who was not on board. The military authorities therefore considered it “inappropriate” to make any formal statement about the disaster.
As Lenny had predicted, no one in the media felt much like braving the arctic weather and conducting their own search in northern Siberia. Especially as the government had cordoned the entire area off, banned private aircraft, and banned private investigations.
“All that,” said Lenny wryly, “to prevent a search for an aircraft that was not there in the first place. Clever, hah? No one could get caught doing one single wrong thing.”
This left, of course, only the missing, and their distraught families. And three days after his first call, Lenny was back on the line with a
report, meticulously put together by the CIA’s men in Moscow and Yekaterinburg. It contained the names of nine people who had just vanished.
But the list was distinguished by one fact: none of their families knew of any flight that would have taken their husbands, sons, fathers, or brothers away to the far north. No one knew anything about any conference in Murmansk. And it was most unusual for any of them, apparently, to travel by Russian Air Force jet.
These were extremely distinguished men, all of them occupying positions of the highest order, both corporate and governmental. It was only provincial government, but this particular province was bigger than the USA. These were very important men.
There was Sergei Pobozhiy. Vanished. Went to his office that day, never seen again. There was Jaan Valuev, the OJSC boss. Gone. A billionaire, Chairman of Barcelona FC, and no one knows where he is, or where he had gone that day. There was Boris Nuriyev, the Senior Financial Vice President of LUKOIL, the biggest corporation in Russia. “
Where the hell was he?”
demanded Lenny, adding,
“People of that importance
cannot
just vanish, trust me. Not even in Russia.”