This is the world of oil. It has been the same for almost a century now and recent times are no exception. While Operation Shock & Awe was initiated against Baghdad, some seven years back — in March 2003 to be exact — warmongers kept insisting they were motivated by opposition to two T's: Terrorism and Terror. They claimed on the very floor of the United Nations that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction, the WMDs, that he was in direct contact with Al-Qaeda, and that he might be tempted to pass on these weapons to them. This was indeed not acceptable to the free world.

And now after almost 1.2 million deaths, it is all but certain that Iraq war was all about oil and strategic interests. The real reason was the desire for Western access to Iraq's vast, untapped crude reserves. It is now an established fact that Saddam had no WMDs and had no link to Al-Qaeda.

Another similar, interesting debate is coming to fore now. When Tony Blair followed George Bush into Iraq, he kept citing principles of the free world as the motivating force behind the decision — despite stiff opposition within. When it was proven that Saddam had no WMD sand no links to extremists and terrorists — Blair remained adamant, and he would do it all again in case opportunity came his way, because Saddam was a dictator, a tyrant, and all tyrants need to be opposed.

However, the debate has taken a new twist. It is being unraveled now, that despite all the assertion and lip service to a highly principled stand, the former British premier agreed, rather pushed, for a deal of swapping the convicted "Lockerbie bomber," Libyan national Abdel Basit Al-Megrahi. And this was not done out of compassion or on certain principled ground. This was done in exchange for access to Libyan oil for BP.

And despite all the lip service to democracy, talks of principled stands on virtually every issue the world is faced with, one thing could be said without fear of denial — the current Libyan regime is definitely not the most democratic one and its credentials on this account are simply weak — to say the least.

Indeed it is crystal clear that the issue under discussion here was not tyranny or dealing with a tyrant — the issue under hammer was oil and nothing else but oil. And it was big oil — pure and simple.

Johann Hari while writing in the Independent says BP (rather desperately) wanted to be able to drill down into Libya's oil, and tap the profits that would gush forth. Their then-CEO John Browne flew to Tripoli in the company of MI6 agents to find out what the regime in Libya wanted in return for opening the country's wells. It was, of course, clear that they wanted Megrahi back. BP then lobbied for the deal and the company has admitted it pushed Blair to exchange prisoners with Libya.

Blair responded to BP's lobbying. His Foreign Office Minister, Bill Rammell, assured Libyan officials that Blair did not "want Megrahi to pass away in prison." The then Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, said a desire for Libya's oil was "an essential part" of this decision. So Straw began negotiating a prisoner swap agreement, and urged the Scottish authorities to release the convict. He told the Scottish government in a leaked letter that it was "in the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom" to let Megrahi go.

And thus the interesting soap opera continued. Although Straw lobbied with the Scottish government to let Megrahi go, yet Scots insist they made the decision independently on "compassionate grounds." A year ago, Megrahi was sent home. He was battling with cancer and officially, it was assessed he only had three months to live. So in came the issue of compassion.

There are several facts that batter these claims with question marks. The most obvious is that, 11 months later, Megrahi is still around. Hari insists it's the most amazing medical recovery since Lazarus. Or is it? It turns out the doctors who declared him sick were paid for by the Libyan government, and one of them says he was put under pressure by Libya to offer the most pessimistic estimate of life expectancy. Indeed there is more than what meets the eye.

Of course some serious commentators, all around, argue that Megrahi was framed. It's a legitimate debate. But if he was, it should have been settled in court, at an appeal — not in a dodgy deal that smelled flesh and blood in lieu of oil. Many now insist principles were put to trash bag and the entire deal was done to favor Big Money — the BP. And interestingly at that juncture while the Megrahi episode was doing rounds, many termed BP as Blair Petroleum. The connotation was apparently not without some basis.

And interestingly last when Blair went to Libya, to promote the services of the mega-corporations that now employ him, he was greeted by none else than President Muammar Qaddafi himself — "like a brother."

With one Tony departing from BP as its CEO, the company is definitely on a lookout for a CEO. And who knows the other Tony replaces now the much maligned and the beleaguered Tony. Afterall improbable is definitely probable — at least in the oil world.