The New Oil Law

If this report is true it is truly astounding. International oil giants would have unprecedented power in what is supposed to be an inependent nation with a national oil company. This should be front page news. However some playboy bunny's death will get more coverage!



New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Oily truth emerges in Iraq

Wednesday, February 21st, 2007

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.
jgonzalez@nydailynews.com


_____________________________



DeleteReplyForwardSpamMove...
Previous | Next | Back to Messages Save Message Text | Full Headers