Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil (Part Two)

[donsu]

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/43077/



The Bush administration has co-opted the compassionate language of debt relief to ensure that Big Oil gets its way in Iraq.


With 140,000 U.S. troops on the ground, the largest U.S. embassy in the world sequestered in Baghdad's fortified "Green Zone" and an economy designed by a consulting firm in McLean, Va., post-invasion Iraq was well on its way to becoming a bonanza for foreign investors.

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.

-snip-

According to Alexander Cockburn, Chalabi also orchestrated the ouster of Mohammed Jibouri, executive director of the state's oil marketing agency, who had offended the Swiss giant Glencore by telling its executives that they couldn't trade Iraqi oil after their extensive dealings with Saddam Hussein.

An emerging, although still fragile, civil society was another source of potential trouble. Iraqi trade unions were a thorn in the side of the CPA -- shutting down the port of Khor az-Zubayr in protest of a rip-off deal with the Danish shipping giant Maersk, halting oil production in the south to demand the rehire of laid-off Iraqi workers and kicking Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root out of their refineries. Perhaps it's not a coincidence, then, that the only significant law that Paul Bremer left on the books from the Hussein era was a prohibition against organizing public-sector workers. Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi analyst with the NGO Global Exchange, told me, "They're having a lot of legal problems."
-snip-
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you really have to read part two straight through to see how this scam is being run. lot of complications and tangled webs, smoke and mirrors.

the article ends with:

What is clear is that the future of Iraq ultimately hinges to a great degree on the outcome of a complex game of chess -- only part of which is out in the open -- that is playing out right now, and oil is at the center of it. It's equally clear that there's a yawning disconnect between Iraqis' and Americans' views of the situation. Erik Leaver, a senior analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, told me that the disposition of Iraq's oil wealth is "definitely causing problems on the ground," but the entire topic is taboo in polite D.C. circles. "Nobody in Washington wants to talk about it," he said. "They don't want to sound like freaks talking about blood for oil." At the same time, a recent poll asked Iraqis what they believed was the main reason for the invasion and 76 percent gave "to control Iraqi oil" as their first choice.

[acmavm]

1. L:et's see if the Iraqi people let them have the oil. If the Kurds

gain independence, they might. But the rest of them just might do a deal with Russia or China.

Have to wait and see.

[bigbrother05]

2. Read the whole thing yesterday

Thanks for posting, I summed it up as to why we the American Tax payers, are not getting
the internal policies, that are being made, we were lied to. The admin. told us that the Iraq oil would pay for reconstruction.
The hold up on not withdrawing our troops, is that there are several oil companies wanting a piece of the pie, in distribution of the oil, that we as tax payers will have to pay for again, when we purchase it. It will divide the Iraq state, and will only benefit the oil companies not the Iraq people, good policy for americans, not for Iraq, this is why their election did not work, this is why our soldiers are dying, this is why Iraq elected officials are dying, they have to find someone in charge that will follow their plan for the oil. Stay the course, is not a policy, its a phrase of no meaning, we must demand what the hold up is, demand what policies are being put in place.