* Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil: Joshua Holland

[teryang]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15337.htm

Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil

<Even as Iraq verges on splintering into a sectarian civil war, four big oil companies are on the verge of locking up its massive, profitable reserves, known to everyone in the petroleum industry as "the prize." >

By Joshua Holland

10/18/06 "AlterNet"

<According to the New Yorker, at the same time, a top-secret National Security Council memo directed NSC staff to "cooperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered melding two seemingly unrelated areas of policy." The administration's national security team was to join "the review of operational policies towards rogue states such as Iraq and actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields."

...

But Big Oil had its sights set on a specific arrangement -- the lucrative production sharing agreements that lock in multinationals' control for long terms and are virtually unheard of in countries as rich in easily accessible oil as Iraq.

The occupation authorities would have to steer an ostensibly sovereign government to the outcome they desired, and they'd have to overcome any resistance that they encountered from the fiercely independent and understandably wary Iraqis along the way. Finally, they'd have to make sure that the Anglo-American firms were well-positioned to win the lion's share of the choicest contracts.>

my comment: the Iraqi people are determined not to have the Americans and British steal their resources by the imposition of a neo-colonial puppet regime. The defense contractor/banking/oil cartel alliance is in the awkward position of having secured nominal legal control of Iraqi energy resources while the insurgent forces resist their actual physical control with violence. Will the *regime be able to force unequal laws and contracts upon Iran as if it were a 19th Century colony. The man who negotiated the new debt structure of Iran, James Baker, is now styled as the fixer. Save the energy industries' plan Jim. Save the imperial conquest. Save the unequal agreements that put Anglo-American corporations in charge of Iraq's wealth. Can the energy resources and dollars flow to American corporations while human beings are turned to hamburger on a daily basis?

[whistle]

1. There it is, the whole reason why Bush invaded Iraq...oil!

[bigbrother05]

2. control of oil

[katty]

3. "Freedom's on the March": aka Resource Wars