Questions Without Answers-Those So-Called Oil Contracts in Iraq

[babylonsister]

http://www.counterpunch.org/gerard07072007.html

Questions Without Answers
Those So-Called Oil Contracts in Iraq

By JEAN GERARD

So-called "oil contracts" have been on the table of the Iraqi Parliament for months, and the fluff of lies printed about them in U..S. media is nauseating.

Every report I have been able to find in the general media has been long on inferences and short on facts. The result is that the average American knows nothing about them, and even those of us who try to follow important policy matters cannot find out more than the simple assertion that there are such things as Production Sharing Agreements, and that their signing is one of the "benchmarks" the US has put up as a requirement for our withdrawal of military forces.

These "contracts" are literally a matter of life and death in Iraq, admitted by Prime Minister Maliki himself to be "the most important law in Iraq." They are proposals for agreements between the Iraqi government such as it is and the world's largest energy corporations which will determine for a decade or more just how much oil can be pumped out of which fields by whom and how the enormous profits will be shared.

Traditionally the revenue from these fields has been controlled by the Iraqi government as a state-owned resource. Present proposals will probably reduce the amount of control the Iraqi state maintains, while the oil companies are likely to benefit from Iraq's present weakness which will force them to sign agreements to their disadvantage. Making agreement on the contracts one of the "benchmarks" for the US military departure from Iraq is a form of arm-twisting pressure, saying, in effect: "If you want us out, sign the proposals!".

The most recent report in the New York Times (7/3/07) says "Maliki's Cabinet Approves Oil Law Draft" and goes on to state that this means the Parliament can now begin to debate the proposed contracts. This is touted as "a major sign of progress" and will work "to boost reconciliation between Iraq's Sunnis and Shiites." Without stating any particulars at all, the article denigrates the disagreements among Iraqi factions as "bickering" and states that negotiations have been "plagued by squabbling." Use of such prejudicial words minimizes the importance of the proposals at the same time it tells nothing about what those proposals are.

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Questions, questions and no answers. All the cabinets and parliaments in the world will not make it come out right so long as people of ordinary intelligence are excluded from information about what is really going on behind the scenes.