Being as I started this thread, perhaps I should do some of the work. So here's some information about the planned Afghan pipeline.
The first thing to note is that it is indeed a natural gas pipeline. Although it is possible to
compress gas and ship it, it seems unlikely that anybody would do this to transport natural gas to the USA from Turkmenistan via a pipeline across Afghanistan and Pakistan, at least in the short term:
According to the
Energy Information Administration(EIA), net imports of natural gas accounted for 15 percent of natural gas use in the United States in 2002. About 95 percent of U.S. natural gas imports are from Canada. According to the EIA, net imports from Canada equaled 3.49 Tcf, and this level is expected to decrease at an annual rate of 1.4 percent to a level of 2.56 Tcf per year in 2025.
Liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports represent an increasingly important part of the natural gas supply picture in the United States. LNG takes up much less space than gaseous natural gas, allowing it to be shipped much more efficiently. For more information on LNG, click
here.
LNG that is imported to the United States comes via ocean tanker. The U.S. gets a majority of its LNG from Trinidad and Tobago, Qatar, and Algeria, and also receives shipments from Nigeria, Oman, Australia, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates.
According to the EIA, the U.S. imported 0.17 Tcf of natural gas in the form of LNG in 2002. LNG imports are expected to increase at an average annual rate of 15.8 percent, to levels of 4.80 Tcf of natural gas by 2025.
http://www.naturalgas.org/business/analysis.asp#dryng
So we're looking at a gradual shift away from importing gas from Canada to shipping it in from the rest of the world by 2025 - and imports currently account for 15% of supply. Not a huge incentive for the US to secure a pipeline for its own supply.
Nevertheless there were negotiations about a gas pipeline throughout the 90s - the idea being to supply the domestic gas market of Pakistan and perhaps India (although relationships between Pakistan and India could interfere with this). There were no plans to export the gas to the US or anywhere else. Thus the only benefit to the US would be indirect, if a US company made some money from the deal. Anyway, there's a timeline here:
http://www.worldpress.org/specials/pp/pipeline_timeline.htm
From this timeline, it looks as if the companies vying for the contract, Unocal and Bridas, were quite keen on the Taliban taking control if it meant a stable country and good security for the pipeline:
October 1996
Unocal expresses suport for Taliban takover, saying it makes pipeline project easier. Unocal later says it was misquoted.
June 1997
Unocal says peace is necessary for construction of pipeline, otherwise the project could take years. Bridas officials meet Taliban and say that they are "interested in beginning work in any kind of security situation."
Both quotes from the timeline.
There's another, more conspiracy-oriented, timeline here:
http://www.ringnebula.com/Oil/Timeline.htm
Negotiations, continue until Osama Bin Laden throws a spanner in the works by
bombing US Embassies in 1998. Clinton retaliates by firing
cruise missiles into Afghanistan and this blows the whole pipeline deal:
During the mid-1990s, Unocal had pursued a possible natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan's Dauletabad-Donmez gas basin via Afghanistan to Pakistan, but pulled out after the U.S. missile strikes against Afghanistan in August 1998.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/afghan.html#transit
Interesting, then, if Al Qaeda are no threat, that Clinton wrecked this supposedly important gas pipeline deal by attacking Afghanistan.
Today, the prospects for the pipeline ever being constructed are not good:
The Afghan government under President Karzai has tried to revive the Trans-Afghan Pipeline (TAP) plan, with periodic talks held between the governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Turkmenistan on the issue, but little progress appears to have been made as of early June 2004 (despite the signature on December 9, 2003, of a protocol on the pipeline by the governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan). President Karzai has stated his belief that the project could generate $100-$300 million per year in transit fees for Afghanistan, while creating thousands of jobs in the country.
Given the obstacles to development of a natural gas pipeline across Afghanistan, it seems unlikely that such an idea will make any progress in the near future, and no major Western companies have expressed interest in reviving the project. The security situation in Afghanistan remains an obvious problem, while tensions between India and Pakistan make it unlikely that such a pipeline could be extended into India and its large (and growing) gas market. Financial problems in the utility sector in India, which would be the major consumer of the natural gas, also could pose a problem for construction of the TAP line. Finally, the pipeline's $2.5-$3.5 billion estimated cost poses a significant obstacle to its construction.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/afghan.html#transit
In the end, Afghanistan’s pipeline dreams may hinge on simple economics. But even if the political situations in the region could be worked out, many analysts say the pipeline’s rate of return would not be very high. "A large multinational company would get maybe a 15 to 20 percent return. This is not much compared to the geo-political risk involved," said Hurst Groves, Director of Columbia University’s Center for Energy Studies.
Oil analysts uniformly deem a trans-Afghanistan pipeline largely out of reach for now.
"Until either Pakistan requires imported gas, or Pakistan and India trust each other sufficiently to allow India to source gas imports via its neighbor," says Lee, Afghanistan will need to find another means of restoring its tattered economy
http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/business/articles/eav060602.shtml
BBC News report of the deal to build the pipeline and the problems it will face:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/2608713.stm
So, the question remains: if this was a false flag operation, why pin the blame on Afghanistan?
Lastly, here is somebody debunking Michael Moore's version of events in Farenheit 9/11:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1178920/posts
and, for what it's worth, the wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline
