Slick Connections: U.S. Influence on Iraqi Oil

[babylonsister]

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/23353

Slick Connections: U.S. Influence on Iraqi Oil
Submitted by davidswanson on Wed, 2007-06-06 12:30. Evidence

By Erik Leaver, Carol and Ed Newman Fellow Institute for Policy Studies June 4, 2007

Feb.-March 2001: White House Energy Taskforce produces a list of "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts."1

December 2002-April 2003: U.S. State Department Oil and Energy Working Group brought together influential Iraqi exiles, U.S. government officials, and international consultants. The result of the project's work was a "draft framework for Iraq's oil policy" that would form the foundation for the energy policy now being considered by the Iraqi Parliament. The final report noted that that Iraq “should be opened to international oil companies as quickly as possible after the war.2 Later, several Iraqi members of the group became part of the Iraqi government. The Group included future Iraqi Oil Minister, Bahr al-Uloum.

January 2003: The Wall Street Journal reported that representatives from Exxon Mobil Corp., ChevronTexaco Corp., ConocoPhillips and Halliburton, among others, were meeting with Vice President Cheney's staff to plan the post- war revival of Iraq's oil industry.3

January 2003: Phillip Carroll, a former Chief Executive with Royal Dutch-Shell, and a 15-member "board of advisors" were appointed to oversee Iraq's oil industry during the transition period. According to the Guardian, the group's chief executive would represent Iraq at meetings of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).4 Carroll had been working with the Pentagon for months before the invasion -- even while the administration was still insisting that it sought a peaceful resolution to the Iraq crisis -- "developing contingency plans for Iraq's oil sector in the event of war." Carroll, in addition to running Shell Oil in the U.S., was a former CEO of the Fluor Corporation, a well-connected oil services firm with extensive projects in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and at least $1.6 billion in contracts for Iraq's reconstruction. One month after the invasion, Carroll took control of Iraq's oil production for the U.S. Government He was joined by Gary Vogler, a former executive with ExxonMobil, in Iraq's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. Mr. Carroll made it clear to Paul Bremer, the U.S. occupation chief who arrived in Iraq in May 2003, that, "There was to be no privatization of Iraqi oil resources or facilities while he was involved."5 Carroll leaves his job seven months later.

March 2003: Iraqi Oil Ministry was one of the few structures the invading forces protected from looters in the first days of the war.

April 2003: During the initial assault on Baghdad, soldiers set up forward bases named Camp Shell and Camp Exxon.6

April 2003: President Bush called for UN sanctions against Iraq to be dropped. The request sounds innocuous enough, but it masks an urgent U.S. desire for a free hand to start pumping Iraqi crude once again to raise funds for rebuilding the country.7


lots more...