The anti-war group Peace, No War says: 'The Caspian Sea has potentially the world's largest oil reserves, likely making Central Asia the next Middle East'. And if you don't believe the war on terrorism is really a war for oil in disguise? 'May we suggest a refresher course in the Facts of Life', says Peace, No War.
Now, the news that Afghanistan's interim government is planning a $2billion pipeline to carry gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India, with the help of US company Unacol, is seen as final proof of a link between the West's war on terror and the West making money from oil. 'It's the oil, stupid: Afghanistan plans gas pipeline and, yes, Unocal is the lead company', says Buzzflash's link to the story.
Of course, the last piece in the puzzle is the personalities involved - Dick Cheney, one-time CEO of oil energy giant Haliburton and now US vice-president, and George W Bush, descendant of a long line of oil men. So is the war really about a handful of America's elite getting their greasy paws on more oil?
According to experts on Central Asia, it just doesn't add up. Such arguments 'will probably find support mainly among those who already have a fondness for conspiracy theories', says the BBC's Eurasia analyst Malcolm Haslett, who rubbishes the oil theory as an 'emotional' response to the war.
According to Haslett, 'it is undeniably true that Central Asian republics have very significant reserves of gas and oil' - but most Western oil companies have avoided Afghanistan precisely because of its 20-year history of instability and unpredictability, preferring instead to find alternate routes to get oil out of Central Asia. 'The West - and particularly the USA, has put almost all its efforts into developing a major new route from the Caspian sea through Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Black Sea', says Haslett - conveniently avoiding the one country, Afghanistan, that might never 'achieve the stability needed to ensure a regular and uninterrupted flow of oil and gas'. Even now, following news of the interim government's proposed pipeline, Unacol is denying involvement. 'Unocal is not involved in any projects (including pipelines) in Afghanistan, nor do we have any plans to become involved, nor are we discussing any such projects', a spokesman told BBC Online.
But still the idea that the war is an oil conquest is gaining ground. Since the Gulf War of 1991 through to the Kosovo conflict of 1999 to the war in Afghanistan today, the idea that Western powers bomb less powerful nations as a way of protecting their oil interests has become a pat explanation for every major conflict. Why?
There is a tradition on the left to see imperialist interventions abroad as always being about economic exploitation - as an attempt by Western powers to make some kind of profitable gain by interfering in other nations. This narrow focus on the economics of international affairs meant the left often ended up seeking an economic explanation for conflicts even where none existed.
So even the USA's shortlived and disastrous invasion of the dustbowl of Somalia in 1993 was seen by some as yet another potentially profit-making oil mission - with one journalist claiming that somewhere under Somalia's surface there could be 'significant amounts of oil and natural gas', ripe for the taking 'if the US-led military mission can restore peace'.
Going further back, at least one influential left-wing movement in Britain saw Margaret Thatcher's 1982 Falklands War as an attempt to protect British interests in the fish stocks around the Falkland islands (the islands themselves being too barren to provide any economic explanation beyond a few sheep).
This limited understanding of imperialism-as-economic-exploitation has gone even further with the emergence of the anti-capitalist movements in the late 1990s, and the increasing amalgamation of the anti-capitalists and the anti-war brigade. The anti-capitalists see a world in the grip of all-powerful corporate forces where armies, governments and oil companies are one and the same thing - and the war in Afghanistan as the latest stage in the political/military/corporate monolith's conspiracy to control the world. According to one European anti-war group, the US military is little more than the 'armed wing of globalisation' and its war in Afghanistan is 'all about oil, all about profits'. A US-based anti-capitalist movement describes the West's war as 'a bloody pursuit of more oil and more profits'.
This might sound very radical, but there's one big problem. The 'war for oil' theorists end up neither understanding the West's war on terrorism, nor opposing it.
Rather than understanding the war and what is driving it, many of the opponents of the war have evaded the real issues - instead going for a one-size-fits-all explanation by wheeling out well-rehearsed arguments about the West's interest in oil. But if the 'war for oil' idea sounded like a long shot in the Gulf War of 1991 and even more ridiculous during NATO's bombardment of Serbia in 1999, today, with a war on terror that seems to have no clear aims, methods or goals at all, it just sounds surreal.
And far from effectively opposing the war, most anti-war protests are more an expression of powerlessness in the face of big bad corporate interests than a defiant stand against war. The 'war for oil' theorists are more cynical of Western powers than critical of them. This is an important distinction - Bush, Blair and the rest can far more easily live with cynics than they could with genuine critics.
So Peace, No War members claim to 'pride themselves on their distrust for authority', and patronisingly encourage us to not 'swallow the lies of the government with all the gullibility of a three-year-old child in the lap of a department store Santa Claus' - as if we're all just automatons who believe everything we're told. 'Learn to identify and refute official misinformation', they say, painting a picture of self-interested faceless politicians in bed with self-interested faceless corporations.
But what kind of political movement can be built on the basis of opposing a conspiracy of evil oil-lovers? After all, if the world is controlled by a hidden, all-powerful force, with governments, armies and oil companies in their pay, there isn't much chance of standing up to them and changing things for the better, is there? This shows up the central problem with shouting 'it's about oil!' every time Britain, America or NATO launch a war. It's not only an ill thought out and kneejerk response - it is also a seriously ineffective way of opposing imperialism.
It's true that the war on terrorism is not about what is going on in Afghanistan - whether it be al-Qaeda, nation-building or oil interests for the West. It is a war with no clear strategic aims, carried out primarily for domestic and political purposes and to galvanise audiences at home and abroad. In this sense, the oil-critical opponents have completely missed the point....
The war in Afghanistan is not a sinister plot to control everything, but a response to a sense in the nervous West that everything is out of control.