A war for oil

Mikhail Khodorkovsky tells John Laughland that American control of Iraq will be good for Cadillacs but bad for Russia

Opponents of the impending Anglo-American war against Iraq say that it will push up the oil price and thereby damage the world economy. This is the least of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s worries. Aged 39, Mr Khodorkovsky, is the chairman and CEO of Yukos Oil, Russia’s second-largest oil company. He is convinced that the medium-term effect of a new Gulf war will be to drive the oil price down to levels which will radically rewrite the map of world oil production, and give the USA total control of supplies. From this, the war for American gas-guzzlers, Khodorkovsky thinks we will all suffer.

Described variously by business magazines as ‘the toughest Siberian shark’ or ‘a Russian bad boy’, Khodorkovsky, a former head of the Moscow Komsomol, is the quintessential Russian oligarch. One of the most powerful men in his country, with gross revenues of over $9 billion a year, he used to support Boris Yeltsin but now apparently has Vladimir Putin’s ear. He is built like a boxer and his flunkeys have the sinister air of night-club bouncers. But when I tell them I have just returned from Iraq, they wince as if a strong electric current had suddenly jolted through their collective testicles. ‘You have touched a very sensitive point,’ says Khodorkovsky, fidgeting but smiling winsomely.

He has good reason to wince. ‘If America decides that the regime in Iraq has to be changed, that is what they will do,’ he tells me bluntly. ‘But the consequences will be very costly.’ Iraq is now the only secular state in the Middle East, he says: if things go wrong, the regime could be replaced by Islamists.