March, 1990.
For Louis Visconti, every one dollar decline in the price of crude oil represented a paper profit of thirty million dollars. For Saddam Hussein, the president of Iraq, a similar price decline represented huge losses. In view of the dire financial plight into which his country had fallen, oil prices meant everything. With annual oil production of three million barrels per day, every one dollar drop in the price of crude oil meant an annual loss more than one billion dollars.
Since the end of its costly war with Iran in 1988, Iraq's economic condition had been deteriorating. Saddam resented the fact that his country had borne the full weight of resisting Iran. He complained bitterly that Iraq's sacrifices had not been fully appreciated by its Arab neighbors, particularly Kuwait. His resentment, festering for a long time, was approaching the boiling point.
By contrast, Kuwait, the world's sixth largest oil producer, was flush with cash. It's assets abroad exceeded one hundred billion dollars. The ruling family and other wealthy Kuwaiti investors held an additional fifty billion dollars privately. Kuwait's income from diversified investments actually exceeded that from oil sales. Consequently, they had little incentive to increase oil prices in 1990. Such increases would slow the world economy and depress the value of their investments, the main source of their income. Kuwait's intransigence on crude oil pricing further enraged Saddam.
Another extremely contentious issue between Iraq and Kuwait was the huge banana-shaped Rumaila oil field. The pool, just over ten thousand feet below the desert surface, straddled the border between the two countries. With reserves of more than thirty billion barrels, it was one of the world's largest reservoirs, more than three times the size of Alaska's Prudhoe Bay field. More than ninety percent of the fifty mile long formation was inside Iraq, yet most of the oil pumped from it was by Kuwaitis. Aware that Kuwaiti pumps could theoretically drain the pool, Saddam claimed full ownership and accused them of stealing Iraq's oil. Storm clouds were building.
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THE TAINTED TRUST (Volume 2 of The King Trilogy)
Mystery / ThrillerNo one wept when Jim Servito died. He left an estate amounting to $325,000,000 when his wife, Karen killed him in Caracas. He had accumulated the fortune the old fashioned way: he stole it from the U.S. and Canadian Governments using a brilliant and...
