Dave, you are still flat out batshit deranged if you think poppies into oil is a viable crop and income source.
Afghanistan produced 4200 tons of gum opium. The flower is not a high-yield crop containing any appreciable energy or Afghans would use it instead of wood or imported kerosene to heat with.
If you take your 42 hundred tons, and say you get the equivalent in weight of diesel oil to gum…and you figure that much of it is not easily transportable and you will lose 30% of energy gain and revenue in the helo, truck transport plus the refining losses at the 500 million dollar refinery the US would have to build and operate. And then learn like most bio-oils like corn, peanut oil by a factor of another 20% loss in energy value – you get [(0.50 oil equivalent gain)X4200 tonsX2000 lbs/ton]
Then divided by {7.3 lbs per gallon diesel X 42 gallons a barrel}
Which results in an annual “oil crop” of 13,986 barrels of oil that has to pay the incomes of 1.8 million farmers and their families and another half million getting income from moving the opiate gum. Now, at oil 100 bucks a barrel, you get a national crop worth 1.37 million dollars.
About 60 cents a person.
Deranged fantasy. That’s all. Like a gold from seawater fantasy.
To make it simpler to understand, the price of a kilo of diesel oil is 3.85 gallon X (7.3 lbs/gallon/2.2 lbs per kilo) or a dollar and 16 cents a kilo. The price of a kilo of opium gum to the farmer is 420 dollars a kilo. The markup by middlemen as it leaves Afghanistan (inc Taliban and AQ middlemen) raises it to 2.8 – 3.6 billion.
Better we just buy up the opium crop at 20% more than Taliban pay until the deal for power-sharing in Afghanistan is concluded between them and Bush’s “Noble Afghan freedom-lovers”. Then we can pay the Taliban directly and not hassle the Pashtun tribes any more as long as they agree to not allow terrorists to operate from their turf in Afganistan. The Taliban were originally heading for strict control of poppies as “un-Islamic” while Bush’s allies were the ones pushing the crop. We buy the crop for 3 1/2 billion – tie it to reconstruction, fair price for farmers, nothing for AQ – and the Talis doing no more support of attacks from people in Afghanistan on people outside Afghanistan – and it’s cheaper than 2 months of OPS in country by “Our Heroes in uniform”.
Excellent article on the opium economy and what we should do about it, disregarded by Bush, but heeded in spirit by Defense Secretary Gates who is now pushing non-military solutions:
http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNACY288.pdf
Since you and I likely see eye to eye on the folly of the war on drugs and warring on every Pashtun village growing opium poppies as subsistance crop – and the collapse of the “oil from poppies!!” as a credible alternative – you will find the US AID report a good read, I hope.
I encourage others to read it and understand the problem and why there is no military solution to Afghanistan. Nothing our “Heroes in Uniform!” can do about it, or the Taliban now coming back to get their share of power.
The key is to control the opiates, and keep AQ out of any power-sharing solution or further access to the illegal drug cashflow.
We can likely live with the Taliban if they agree to live by a few conditions in return for us getting out of their lands and out of their faces – since the “democratization and modernization and women throwing off their Burquas” initial Bush-Neocon strategy was another pipe fantasy.
Note: I just noticed that the report said “metric tons” so my math is off by 200 lbs a ton. But the basic point on oil vs. opium values to Afghan farmers and middlemen in power remains.
