Small men casting long shadows

The control over the price of oil is in now in
the hands of global guerrillas -- the open
source, system disrupting, transnational crime
fueled, sons of global fragmentation covered by
this author. These actors can now, at will,
curtail the supply of oil through low tech
attacks on facilities in Iraq, Nigeria, central
Asia, and India. The amount of oil effectively
under their control exceeds five million barrels
a day, more than Saudi Arabia's two million
barrels a day of swing production.

Means and Motives

It's important to note that this capacity to
disrupt production is substantially different
than any terrorist threat we have faced in the
past. With terrorism, the potential of damage has
always been from single large attack on a major
facility or node (extremely difficult to
accomplish and relatively easy to recover from).
Today's threat is based on sustainable disruption
-- ongoing, easy, low-tech attacks that are
nearly impossible to defend against (everything
from pipeline destruction to employee kidnapping).

Massive decentralization coming if this keeps up.

There are a host of other reasons for it also.

Read it all.