Is European Union manipulating refugee crisis to gain access to Libyan oil?

At a tactical level the high drama of the Refugee crisis in Europe is caused by many in Europe refusing to take in the refugees. It might simply be the cost of supporting refugees once they’ve arrived, or it might be racism. As I’ve written over the last couple days, my opinion is that this refugee crisis is a result of our collective dependence on crude oil to run our machines, and the subsequent belief of Western governments and oil companies that we must “meddle” in Middle Eastern politics in order to ensure access to crude oil.

I found the following video, from May 27, 2015, in which Amy Goodman (Democracy Now) interviewed Wikileaks Editor Julian Assange about secret documents he’d obtained describing European Union plans to destroy people smuggling boats in Libya. These boats are one of the ways refugee’s are making it from North Africa into Europe. By destroying the boats one hoped-for result is to prevent refugee’s from leaving North Africa and therefore not making it into the news by either drowning at sea or arriving on Europe’s shores.

Assange spends most of the interview talking about the precedent which would be set if the European Union violated Libya’s sovereignty to set foot on Libyan territory and destroy boats. He suggests this precedent could be a strategy for a deeper goal …

Namely, to establish a beachhead in Libya and therefore have better access to Libya’s oil reserves.

He goes on to talk about the overthrow of Libya’s former President Ghaddafi a few years ago. In the planning of that action, EU/US planners negotiated with Libyan rebels how much oil would flow to European countries as a result of toppling Libya’s government.

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About David Herron

David Herron is a writer and software engineer living in Silicon Valley. He primarily writes about electric vehicles, clean energy systems, climate change, peak oil and related issues. When not writing he indulges in software projects and is sometimes employed as a software engineer. David has written for sites like PlugInCars and TorqueNews, and worked for companies like Sun Microsystems and Yahoo.