Oily Truth Emerges in Iraq
By Juan Gonzalez
02/23/07 "NYDN"
-- - -Throughout nearly four years of the daily mayhem and
carnage in Iraq, President Bush and his aides in the White House
have scoffed at even the slightest suggestion that the U.S.
military occupation has anything to do with oil.
The President presumably would have us all believe that if Iraq
had the world's second-largest supply of bananas instead of
petroleum, American troops would still be there.
Now comes new evidence of the big prize in Iraq that rarely gets
mentioned at White House briefings.
A proposed new Iraqi oil and gas law began circulating last week
among that country's top government leaders and was quickly
leaked to various Internet sites - before it has even been
presented to the Iraqi parliament.
Under the proposed law, Iraq's immense oil reserves would not
simply be opened to foreign oil exploration, as many had
expected. Amazingly, executives from those companies would
actually be given seats on a new Federal Oil and Gas Council
that would control all of Iraq's reserves.
In other words, Chevron, ExxonMobil, British Petroleum and the
other Western oil giants could end up on the board of directors
of the Iraqi Federal Oil and Gas Council, while Iraq's own
national oil company would become just another competitor.
The new law would grant the council virtually all power to
develop policies and plans for undeveloped oil fields and to
review and change all exploration and production contracts.
Since most of Iraq's 73 proven petroleum fields have yet to be
developed, the new council would instantly become a world energy
powerhouse.
"We're talking about trillions of dollars of oil that are at
stake," said Raed Jarrar, an independent Iraqi journalist and
blogger who obtained an Arabic copy of the draft law and posted
an English-language translation on his Web site over the
weekend.
Take, for example, the massive Majnoon field in southern Iraq
near the Iranian border, which contains an estimated 20 billion
barrels. Before Saddam Hussein was toppled by the U.S. invasion
in 2003, he had granted a $4 billion contract to French oil
giant TotalFinaElf to develop the field.
In the same way, the Iraqi dictator signed contracts with
Chinese, Russian, Korean, Italian and Spanish companies to
develop 10 other big oil fields once international sanctions
against his regime were lifted.
The big British and American companies had been shut out of
Iraq, thanks to more than a decade of U.S. sanctions against
Saddam.
But if the new law passes, those companies will be the ones
reviewing those very contracts and any others.
"Iraq's economic security and development will be thrown into
question with this law," said Antonia Juhasz of Oil Change
International, a petroleum industry watchdog group. "It's a
radical departure not only from Iraq's existing structure but
from how oil is managed in most of the world today."
Throughout the developing world, national oil companies control
the bulk of oil production, though they often develop joint
agreements with foreign commercial oil groups.
But under the proposed law, the government-owned Iraqi National
Oil Co. "will not get any preference over foreign companies,"
Juhasz said.
The law must still be presented to the Iraqi parliament. Given
the many political and religious divisions in the country, its
passage is hardly guaranteed.
The main religious and ethnic groups are all pushing to control
contracts and oil revenues for their regions, while the Bush
administration is seeking more centralized control.
While the politicians in Washington and Baghdad bicker to carve
up the real prize, and just what share Big Oil will get, more
Iraqi civilians and American soldiers die each each day - for
freedom, we're told.
Juan Gonzalez is a Daily News columnist. Email: jgonzalez@edit.nydailynews.com
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