Future of Iraq: The Spoils of War

7 January 2007 | Danny Fortson, Andrew Murray-Watson and Tim Webb

[kellynla]

The Independent cannot be posted. So here is the link. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2132569.ece

[kellynla]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2132569.ece

[kellynla]

I think I posted this correctly.
Here is the link to the article.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2132569.ece

[OXENinFLA]

Joy. Just what we need to hear right now.

"See see it was just about the oil!!"

BTW Wasn't this a recommendation from the Iraq Study group?

[OXENinFLA]

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200701071255.htm

"Iraq's oil reserves to be opened for exploitation"

London, Jan. 7 (PTI): Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law to be shortly introduced before the Iraqi Parliament.

According to a report in The Independent, the US government has been involved in drawing up the law. It would give oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972, a media report today said.

The huge potential prizes for Western firms will give ammunition to critics who say the Iraq war was fought for oil. They point to statements such as one from Vice-President Dick Cheney, who said in 1999, while he was still chief executive of the oil services company Halliburton, that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010.

"So where is the oil going to come from?...The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies," he said.

Oil industry executives and analysts told the newspaper that the law, which would permit Western companies to pocket up to three-quarters of profits in the early years, is the only way to get Iraq's oil industry back on its feet after years of sanctions, war and loss of expertise.

But it would operate through "production-sharing agreements" which are highly unusual in the Middle East, while the oil industry in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, the world's two largest producers, is State-controlled.

[Tennessean4Bush]

Private enterprise is the answer to make a country's natural resources the most valuable to its citizens.

[Cogadh na Sith]

They point to statements such as one from Vice-President Dick Cheney, who said in 1999, while he was still chief executive of the oil services company Halliburton, that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010.

SEE!? Right there! Right there!

It prooooooves that the neo-con cabal with it's Big Oil puppetmasters and Jewish financiers were already planning to invade Iraq in 1999 before King George was even crowned by the right-wing supreme court!

Do I really have to put a 'sarcasm tag'?

[ClaireSolt]

This has been in the workd for a long time. Of course, the authors of the article do not admit that socialists are running their oil bizes into the ground by neglecting maintenance, and that is what Sadaam did. They need private capital.

Many think that a revenue sharing plan between the three groups would go a long way to easing the sectarian strife.

[redpoll]

Of course it is about oil. Without oil the entire structure of the world economy collapses. That isn't hyperbole. It's just the truth. Yes, yes, yes, we can invest in alternative energy, and biodeisel, and nuclear power plants, and coal gasification, and windmills out in the ocean, but those things aren't there yet in large numbers. We need oil - and a peaceful enough world to allow large quantities of oil to get from one place to another. It is galling beyond words for the same people who scream "no blood for oil"' are also the same ones in the way of drilling in the Arctic, nuclear power, and practically every other alternative.

Aaarrrgh.

[OXENinFLA]

Private enterprise is the answer to make a country's natural resources the most valuable to its citizens.

I understand that. Hell if I owned a major company and was asked to go into a war zone and set up shop you'd be sure I wouldn't be cheap.

But of course the lefty moonbats will not understand that.

They'll be in glee again that they can pull out their "Blood for Oil" posters.

[lucysmom]

Many think that a revenue sharing plan between the three groups would go a long way to easing the sectarian strife.

Yes! With 60 to 70 percent of the profits going to companies exploiting the oil, the "strife" may be refocused.

[lucysmom]

Of course it is about oil. Without oil the entire structure of the world economy collapses. That isn't hyperbole...We need oil - and a peaceful enough world to allow large quantities of oil to get from one place to another.

What we need belongs to someone else, and what we've done to get it has not created a peaceful world.