Many may not know this, but ENRON was up to their knees in the whole Afghan Pipeline, Taliban negotiation scandal thing that Michael Moore reported about in Farenheigt 9/11. Here's the skivy:
ENRON started building the world's largest natural gas power plant in the world in Dahbol, India in 1994. To supply gas to it, they also entered into a contract with the government of Turkmenistan in 1996. All together they invested over $ 4 billion in this scheme.
The success of the plant depended on having a pipeline built between Turkmenistan and the Pakistan coast, which hit a snag. An Argentinian company had contracted with the Rabani regime to build a pipeline, but Unocal didn't like this. They wanted to control the pipline, so the CIA and Pakistan ISI overthrew Rabani by backing the Taliban and their rise to power. Immediately Unocal created CENTGAS along with Delta Oil (owned by one of Osama bin Laden's brother-in-laws) and started negotiating with the Taliban. However the Taliban, who should've been grateful to the US for their success in throwing out Rabani should have given the OK, but as it turns out they were real Islamic fundamentalists and they had some issues. The pipline never got built, the Dahbol plant never got its Turkmen gas, and in 2000 ENRON finally gve up and mothballed the plant. The US gave the Taliban an ultimatum soon after that and then 9/11 happened. ENRON went bankrupt in December of that year.
Well the saga continues apparantly. N.M.Rothschild Investment Bank is negotiating to buy the defunct Dahbol Plant. Maybe the world will soon get it's pipeline afterall. It always bugged me that with the Taliban gone and a Unocal consultant in power in Afghanistan, with a signed agreement between all of Afghanistan's neighbors and US military intstallations dotting the proposed route of the pipeline, that construction never got going.
Here is why. With no pipeline construction plan in place and no viable way to import gas to Dahbol, the plant can be had for pennies on the dollar. I'll bet you dollars to donuts after the Rothschilds deal to buy the plant is settled, US oil company involvement in the pipeline will resume and construction will finally begin.
I could be full of it, be it all clicked for me when I saw this article.
http://www.rediff.com/money/2002/may/24dpc1.htmFunny how things always work out nice for that family...