is the right word with regard to air strikes because they want options open for the president. general kimmit, let me ask you, there were conflicting reports over whether air strikes would be a viable option or scrapped. what about the do nothing option? is that viable? well, it s viable, only if we don t want the to have an iraq state. i think the air strike options in support of the iraqi security forces may be one of the best guarantees to keep this country together. the oil refinery city, the largest in iraq, in baiji. this is north of baghdad. taken by isis. you know, i ve talked to a bufrlg of people who have been in iraq as we talk about the southern oil fields. they sa no way they could make it down there. what does that tell you about this strategy from this not ragtag quite sophisticated terrorist group? well, it looks like rather than try to it continue the assault towards bag tad, they re trying to connel consolidate
are playing out. aren t they? they are, neil. and in some cases rightly so, as your previous guest noted, the world supply is tenuous at this point. disruptions in nigeria, sudan, the pipeline is down coming occupy kurdistan, the russian/ukrainian thing. venezue venezuela, all tributes to a razor thin margin. the saudis are able to produce about 3 million barrels a day, in terms of a world reserve, but that s pretty thin. now, that said, i don t believe that we ve seen the price spike that we may have anticipated, based on the iraqi crisis and i think that s because analysts are saying that they re not confident that the isis is going to be able to get into those southern oil fields of iraq, where about 90% of their daily production goes through the port of basra. if they re wrong, general? if they re wrong, then your previous guest, again, i think is on the mark. i d hate to pick a figure.
behind saudi arabia. there is the chart. you see the surge so far in oil prices. now $106 a barrel when you measure it on the nymex, the crude oil markets here. and that s the highest in about nine months. so a great deal of nervousness there. there had already been some supply disruptions and pipeline closures in the north earlier this year. so a lot of the oil analysts we re talking to say it s not that big of a surprise that there are some problems here, but the depth and the duration now of these problems is a big concern here. there s a lot of oil coming out of the south, the southern oil fields of the country now. the problems in tikrit and mosul, and in transporting the oil even by truck to jordan, those are still something that s a big concern. but overall, overall experts say they hope that oil exports will still be increasing this year. but when you see pictures like this and when you see armed convoys around refineries, that s why you see such nervousness in world markets. c
come from? we we weren t the ones that thought this up, it wasn t our intelligence report that contributed all of this. it went back to the clinton administration. and bill clinton made a speech in late 1998 that was as tough as anything i ever said about saddam hussein. and the likelihood he might eventually use weapons of mass destruction. congress passed legislation callicall ing for the overthrow of the government of iraq. the way things unfolded after the initial stages of the operation, do you wish you had done things differently? well, i can t i can t deny that there were complex problems to be dealt with in iraq. there were things that we had anticipated would happen that didn t happen and vice versa. we were concerned, for example, that the iraqis woulddi on fire all the southern oil fields, didn t happen. we preempted that. there was a conviction that if
stock exchange and other public areas. the protest movement began two months ago on september 17th. frustrations over the financial crisis are also playing out in greece. thousands of people poured into the streets of athens to commemorate a student uprising in 1973 but it quickly turned into a demonstration against new government austerity measures. the ruling coalition plans to submit a new round of budget cuts to parliament later today. u.s. secretary of state hillary clinton will go to myanmar next month to check on pro-democracy reforms there. it will be the first visit there by a u.s. secretary of state in half a century. it comes eight months after the long ruling military junta allowed the establishment of a military government. those are the world headlines, i m monita rajpal. world business today starts right now. it s 5:00 p.m. here in hong kong. hello, i m andrew stephens. it s 9:00 in london. i m nina dos santos. welcome to world business today. let s s