Talk:Arbusto Energy

message: I know that one major oil company-- Amoco-- had been working a deal with Banoco the state oil company for the same acreage Harken suddenly got, just before the Iraq war started.  We had worked with Banoco for a year and had a proposal in to them to lease the acreage.  Banoco told us they supported the proposal and then suddenly Harken received the same acreage. It was very fishy. We were told the Emir was involved, and I guessed that the Bahrainis wanted to have the US president's son tied to them during the Iraq war. Bahrain is one of the US's major military ports and and needs the US to have any kind of defense. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.23.198.162 (talk) 18:23, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Arbusto and bush are of cognate etymology and mean the same thing (shrub is just a synonym of bush, too), so GWB is correct here (for once!). - MPF 23:25, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  I know this isn't scientific but I don't have access to any paper Spanish->English dictionaries around here.  Google language translator here: http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en and the AltaVisto translator available here: http://world.altavista.com/tr both translate "Arbusto" to "shrub".  Anyway I'm happy with the page as it stands.  AlistairMcMillan 20:34, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: My Spanish-English dictionary gives both, hardly surprising as 'shrub' and 'bush' both mean the same. - MPF 21:23, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Comment

message: Someone (24.211.205.127) added this line:
*With this in mind, one must also consider that this was near the all-time peak of oil prices of $80-90/bbl, inflation adjusted. People were surely in a speculative mood, not imagining the price drop in the following 10 years.
But according to the data they linked, the price of Oil was actually in a dip, at $22.60 in Jun 1990. And apart fro, the spike due to  the first gulf war a few months later, the price of oil seems relativly stable for the next eight years.
MickWest 18:07, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Price of Oil at time of sale 

message: "Another investor was Ghaith R. Pharaon, a partner of Bakhsh's, who would later be involved in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International scandal, and is currently the target of an international dragnet."
The word "currently" in the quoted section needs to be clarified.  When was the article written?  Are there plans to delete this sentence when the investigation is concluded?  When did the investigation start, and when did it end.  If I come across the answers in my research then I will happily fill in the blanks.  Meanwhile, maybe somebody already knows and will be willing to fill in the blanks.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by IPanurge (talk • contribs) 13:48, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question About the Word Currently As Used In The Following Sentence: 

message: This article states some uncomfortable things about the Bush family.  I think some references are needed to back it up. 71.86.156.73 (talk) 04:19, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article 

message: It is not a question of whether the article says uncomfortable things about the Bush family. Wikipedia requires reliable sources. This article, unfortunately, looks like non-existent/unreliable/circular sourcing. The only reference in the article AT ALL is to support the seemingly irrelevant claim that the company's chief financial officer was K. Michael Conaway. The reference is to a self-published ebook from 2015 whose bibliography lists mostly wikipedia articles and youtube videos. The statement that Conaway was chief financial officer was added in 2008; classic circular reporting. I have deleted this.
None of the books mentioned in further reading are cited in the article. I have access to Rutledge's book, Addicted to Oil. Arbusto is mentioned once. Rutledge says Lewis Lehrman invested in Arbusto, then notes that Lehrman also signed the statement of principles of the project for the new American century, which he says was a neo-con something or other. That's it. Since it discusses almost nothing related to the contents of this article, I have deleted this reference.
I don't have access to Hatfield's Fortunate Son, but here's what the Publisher, Soft Skull, says on the book's Amazon page:
:Why was this book burned? What is in it that warrants censure? Despite a spectacular thrashing in public after Fortunate Son was first released by St. Martin's Press, author J.H. Hatfield has retracted nothing. He stands by his three sources that allege Bush was arrested for cocaine possession in 1972. Underneath heavy fire in the media, the former publisher panicked. But as Jenny Lyn Bader points out in The New York Times, "If he's merely a convicted felon...that doesn't preclude him from being a successful writer. Indeed, St. Martin's Press underestimates the forgiveness of the American people. People might not mind a former convict writing a book as long as the book is really good." Fortunate Son was #30 on The New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction Best-Seller list. Reader responses on the web show Americans outraged at this title's suppression: some saying that this book has changed their vote, while others don't accept that a meticulous, fact-checking biographer should be "baby seal-clubbed" with allegations about his past.
Great publisher's note, I'll consider sending my own books there. Still, if I can get access to the thing, I'll check so see whether something in the article comes from there. Beaty and Gwynne is a real book, but again no access. The google books preview shows one reference to Arbusto, dealing with Harken, unfortunately not fully available. If any of this other stuff is in there, I'll eat my fedora. Anything without RS goes. Rgr09 (talk) 12:34, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  No/bad references 

message: The article originally stated:
  It was later revealed that Bush made an investment of $50,000 while representing Salem bin Laden of the Saudi Binladin Group. This fact became controversial after the September 11, 2001 attacks due to Salem bin Laden being an older, half-brother of Osama bin Laden, who is alleged to have planned and financed the attacks. Upon Salem bin Laden's death in a 1988 airplane crash, in Texas, his interest in Arbusto (along with other Binladin Group assets), passed to Khalid bin Mahfouz.
This laughably incoherent statement accusing Bush of investing $50,000 in his own company on behalf of Salem bin Laden is a typical example of how a bad article turns into a hilariously bad article. Originally the sentence stated that James R. Bath, a Texas businessman who represented Salem bin Laden in a number of business deals, invested $50,000 in the company. Bath was changed to Bush by an anonymous IP who left the note "Bath???? Bush!!!! I swear to God, I'm so sick of the main stream media hiding the truth" Let this be a lesson to all who edit Wikipedia right after they wake up on Saturday morning with a hangover. What's sad is that this stayed in the article for a year.
I'm working on the Bath article now; when I have sources I'll put in a paragraph based on them. Rgr09 (talk) 02:32, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arbusto and Bin Laden 

message: Arbusto ceased to exist in 1984 when it was bought by Spectrum 7.  There is a separate article on Spectrum 7 which repeats most of the information in this article. Spectrum 7 was bought in 1986 by Harken Energy. There are two articles on Harken Energy; one on the company itself, now know as HKN, Inc., and one on the "Harken Energy Scandal"  All three of these articles cover all of the material in this article's "Controversy" section, and in much greater detail.  In addition, all of this material is also covered in the George W. Bush article.  I will remove the duplicated material from this article and see what's left.  It looks to me like this article is a candidate for merger. Rgr09 (talk) 00:17, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arbusto, Spectrum 7, and Harken 

message: The article originally stated:
  In January 1990 with the company in the same state as its previous incarnations, it was awarded a contract to drill for crude oil off the coast of Bahrain, a move that shocked industry insiders as Harken had no previous experience outside of the US or of drilling offshore.
This paragraph is about Harken Energy, not Arbusto. There is an article on this in the Washington Post: The Harken-Bahrain Deal: A Baseless Suspicion. I have removed the paragraph here, and will add it plus source to Harken Energy where it belongs. Rgr09 (talk) 00:52, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Harken exploration in Bahrain 

message: The article originally stated:
  In 1987 the Saudi investor Abdullah Taha Bakhsh bought most of Union Bank of Switzerland's shares in Harken becoming its third largest investor owning 17% of the company. He was represented on the board by Talat M. Othman. Another investor was Ghaith R. Pharaon, a partner of Bakhsh's, who would later be involved in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International scandal, and is currently the target of an international dragnet.
I believe most of the information in this paragraph comes from The Dubya Report, which in turn seems to have gotten some of it from an article in the Asian Wall Street Journal.  I don't have access to the WSJ article, but The Dubya Report does not say that Ghaith Pharaon was an investor in Harken Energy.  In any case, all this is twice removed from Arbusto. I have deleted the paragraph from Arbusto and will move what information I can verify to the Harken Energy article. Rgr09 (talk) 03:12, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ownership changes in Harken 

message: I rewrote the lead to give the beginning and end dates of the company, changed the main section heading to "Company history", and removed the further reading section and external links section, which included Hatfield's Fortunate Son, and an article in Harper's by Joe Conason, since neither were used in the article.  If either has relevant information, please leave a note here.
Possibly will add another section to the article on the claims about James Bath's investment in Arbusto and the claim that he was acting for Salem bin Laden when I find reliable sources for this.  Rgr09 (talk) 04:37, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rewrote lead, restructured article 

message: Paragraph on Bath and Arbusto done. The sources are the same ones in the article on James R. Bath.  I will move on to Spectrum 7 next.  [Arbusto Energy]], Spectrum 7, and Harken Energy Scandal all belong in the article on Professional life of George W. Bush.  Alternatively, we could have see main page links for the first three paragraphs there.  Rgr09 (talk) 08:19, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Bath paragraph