OPERATION: Crusade

Author Unknown

Mission #1

The agents are sent to Vienna, home to OPEC headquarters, to investigate an OPEC minister (Mahmoud Husan) from the United Arab Emirates suspected of dealing with terrorists. If hard evidence of terrorist links can be obtained, the Agency can pressure the minister into becoming an asset capable of affecting the worldwide oil supply.

Resolution: The agents record a meeting of the OPEC minister, the CEO (Jacque Renard) of a French oil company (Petron), and a known terrorist (Ali Abdul-Qahhar). The CEO’s executive secretary is kidnapped by the terrorists to induce the CEO to go along with “the conspiracy”.

Mission #2

Petron is implicated in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal. The agents are sent to investigate Renard?s office at the company’s headquarters in Paris to discover more about the conspiracy.

Complication: The terrorists have what they need from Renard and have decided to eliminate him. When the agents break into the office, they find the CEO dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. A bomb is set to detonate in 30 seconds. Even if they disarm the bomb, they have to contend with agents of the French DST who have been tipped off that foreign agents are running an operation on French soil.

Resolution: The agents discover a file named Operation Crusade. In it they find records of Petron?s recent hostile takeover of Texoil, a small oil company in the US. They also find printouts from the website of EnviroGen, a California biotech researching oil-eating bacteria used to clean up oil spills.

Mission #3

Texoil is required to pay back an oil debt to the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve that it incurred during the 2005 hurricane season. Petron purchased Texoil and intends to introduce EnviroGen?s oil-eating bacteria to the tankers carrying Texoil?s repayment to the SPR site in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Renard and Husan hope to destroy over 50% of the US?s oil reserve thereby driving oil prices up and destabilizing the US government. They recruited Ali Abdul-Qahhar and his men to deliver the tankers to the SPR. The agents are sent to Louisiana to intercept the shipment and apprehend (or terminate) the terrorists.

Complication: The terrorists have purchased a nuclear weapon from Iran and are planning to smuggle it to Baton Rouge in the tankers. They will detonate the weapon and not only destroy the SPR, but the largest oil refinery in the US.
Resolution: After fighting a running battle with tanker-driving terrorists, the agents must disarm a nuclear weapon.

If you have an ongoing Evil Organization (like SPECTRE) in your campaign, you can have an operative use Renard, Husan and the terrorists as catspaws–they have no knowledge of the nuke. This would make more sense: Why would terrorists nuke the SPR when they could target a major city like New York?

Note: Wikipedia is an excellent source for background on OPEC, the SPR, and the French intelligence agency DST.