-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: August 21, 2007 12:29:39 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: We Went into Iraq for Its Oil and We're Not Leaving
Without It!
What Unites Iraqis:
Blocking Western Petroleum Companies
from Seizing Control of Their Oil
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
August 9, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/59318/
If passed, the Bush administration's long-sought "hydrocarbons
framework" law would give Big Oil access to Iraq's vast energy
reserves on the most advantageous terms and with virtually no
regulation. Meanwhile, a parallel law carving up the country’s oil
revenues threatens to set off a fresh wave of conflict in the shell-
shocked country.
Subhi al-Badri, head of the Iraqi Federation of Union Councils,
said last month that the "law is a bomb that may kill everyone."
Iraq's oil "does not belong to any certain side," he said, "it
belongs to all future generations."
But Washington continues to push that bomb onto the Iraqi people,
calling it a vital benchmark on the road to a fully sovereign Iraq.
Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio accused his own party of
"promoting" Bush's effort to "privatize" Iraq's oil under the guise
of a "reconciliation program."
As is the norm, nobody bothered to ask Iraqis what they thought of
the controversy until recently, when a coalition of NGOs and other
civil society groups commissioned a poll (PDF) to gauge Iraqis'
reaction to the proposed legislation. It found that Iraqis from all
ethnic and sectarian groups and across the political spectrum
oppose the principles enshrined in the laws. Considering the
multiethnic bloodbath we've witnessed over the past four years,
it's an impressive display of Iraqi solidarity.
The package of oil laws represent one of the clearest examples of a
dynamic that's fueled much of the country's political instability
but is rarely discussed in the commercial media. While the war's
advocates continue to sell the occupation of Iraq as part of a
grand scheme to democratize the region, anything resembling true
Iraqi democracy is in fact a tremendous threat to U.S. interests.
The law, after all, was not designed with Iraqis' prosperity in
mind; plans for throwing the country's oil sector open to (almost)
unregulated foreign investment were hashed out by a State
Department working group that included major players from the oil
industry long before the planning for the invasion itself.
These plans were discussed in the White House (under the guidance
of Dick Cheney) before that -- even before the attacks of 9/11.
The framework law -- from what we know from a series of leaked
drafts -- will hand over effective control of as much as 80 percent
of the country's oil wealth to foreign firms with minimal state
participation. According to an analysis by the oil watchdog group
Platform, Iraq stands to lose tens of billions of dollars in
potential revenues under the contract terms being considered.
The administration claims that offering such lucrative terms is
necessary given the dire need for investment in Iraq's war-torn oil
infrastructure, but those investments could just as easily be made
out of Iraq's existing operating budget or financed through loans
-- despite the chaos on the ground, Iraq's massive energy reserves
would be more than enough collateral for even the strictest lenders.
So while most oil-producing states are moving toward more state
control of their energy sectors -- according to the Washington
Post, "about 77 percent of the world's 1.1 trillion barrels in
proven oil reserves is controlled by governments that significantly
restrict access to international companies" -- Iraqi lawmakers are
under enormous pressure to go in the opposite direction. (See here
for a detailed critique of the framework law.)
It should come as no surprise that Iraqis overwhelmingly reject
this arrangement. According to the poll of 2,200 Iraqis released
this week, almost two-thirds of Iraqis said they would prefer
"Iraq's oil to be developed and produced by Iraqi state-owned
companies" over foreign companies. Less than a third favored
foreign control -- less than the number who expressed a "strong
preference" for the sector to remain under state control.
The findings cut across the divisions that have haunted the post-
war occupation: 52 percent of Kurds, 62 percent of Sunni Arabs and
66 percent of Shia Arabs favored state control. Significant
majorities in every metropolitan area and every region of the
divided country agreed.
Opposition to the privatization scheme that U.S. lawmakers have
pushed for with such zeal is reflected, too, in the Iraqi
parliament, where a growing number of lawmakers have come out in
opposition to the oil laws.
So, too have many experts in the field, including some of the
technocrats who originally drafted the laws. Tariq Shafiq, one of
the co-authors of the original version of the legislation, told
UPI's Ben Lando that "the version penned by oil experts has been
compromised by politics," and that he "no longer wants it
approved." Farouk al-Qassem, another expert who worked on the
original draft, came out against it earlier. "I think really the
majority of the oil technocrats are against it," Shafiq told Lando.
There's evidence to support that statement; last month, more than
100 Iraqi oil experts, economists and legal scholars criticized the
proposed legislation and urged the Iraqi parliament to put it on hold.
The most vocal opposition to the oil framework has come from Iraq's
influential oil workers' unions. Hassan Jumaa Awaad, president of
the Iraqi Oil Workers union, called the proposed hydrocarbon laws
"more political than economic" and "unbalanced and incoherent," and
said they threatened "to set governorate against governorate and
region against region." Iraq's oil unions have threatened to
"mutiny" if the law is passed as drafted.
In favor of the laws are the multinational energy companies who
stand to gain tens of billions more profits in Iraq than they could
expect from any other major oil producer's reserves.
They're supported by Iraqi separatists -- especially Shias in the
South and Northern Kurds -- who want control over the country's oil
to rest in the hands of the regional authorities they dominate.
They include Iraq's prime minister, Nouri Al-Maliki, and its
president, Jalal Talabani.
Faced with such broad and intense opposition to a set of laws that
were effectively crafted in Washington, London and Houston, the
Iraqi government and the U.S. authorities in Baghdad have kept
Iraqis in the dark over the details of the proposed legislation,
brought all manner of pressure on lawmakers and, when that failed,
used heavy-handed coercion to move the legislation forward.
According to the poll released this week, more than three out of
four Iraqis -- including nine of 10 Sunni Arabs -- say "the level
of information provided by the Iraqi government on this law" was
not adequate for them to "feel informed" about the issue. Only 4
percent of Iraqis feel they've been given "totally adequate"
information about the oil law.
But enough people did learn of the law and specifically its call
for the use of "Production Service Agreements" (PSAs) -- the
onerous contract form favored by the United States and Big Oil --
to elicit outrage among the Iraqi people. The Iraqi regime
responded by renaming the long-term contracts "Exploration and Risk
Contracts" (ERCs). According to Hands Off Iraqi Oil, a coalition of
civil society groups, ERCs are "the equivalent of PSAs under a
different name."
It's not just Iraqi citizens who have been kept in the dark; Raed
Jarrar, an Iraq analyst with the American Friends Service Committee
(and my frequent writing partner), has called Iraqi lawmakers to
get a reaction to the draft legislation, only to be asked if he
would send them a copy to review.
According to Greg Muttit, an analyst with Platform, by the time
Iraq's parliamentarians saw their first draft of the oil law, it
had already been reviewed and commented on by U.S. Energy Secretary
Sam Bodman, who "arranged" for nine major oil companies, including
Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips, to
"comment on the draft."
The regime in Baghdad, under pressure from Washington, has
responded to opposition to the law in a profoundly undemocratic
fashion. In May, Hassan Al-Shammari, the head of Al-Fadhila bloc in
the Iraqi parliament, told AlterNet: "We're afraid the U.S. will
make us pass this new oil law through intimidation and threatening.
We don't want it to pass, and we know it'll make things worse, but
we're afraid to rise up and block it, because we don't want to be
bombed and arrested the next day." Armed Iraqi troops have faced
down peaceful strikes called by the unions and arrested labor
leaders who oppose the legislation. Last week, the Iraqi oil
ministry directed "its agencies and departments not to deal with
the country's oil unions" at all.
At this point, progress on the oil laws is stalled in Baghdad. The
Kurds this week passed their own legislation, setting up what has
the potential to become a whole new front in Iraq's multifaceted
civil conflict. Senior Kurdish officials -- most of whom are
separatists -- have vowed to block any legislation that doesn't
include extensive regional autonomy over oil contracting, an issue
opposed by most Iraqis and a serious problem for Iraqi nationalists.
Ultimately, the turmoil around Iraq's oil is a result of commercial
interests being placed before the interests of the Iraqi people by
an administration that routinely privileges its "free-market"
ideology over common sense. Historians will no doubt note the great
irony of Iraq's proposed oil law:
What is considered a prerequisite for stability in Washington in
fact threatens to tear the country further apart.
Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL.com.
www.ctrl.org
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/
<A HREF="http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/">ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om