Wasit Province is among the poorest provinces in Iraq.Posted on 09/06/2009 1:51:03 PM PDT by BGHater
When China’s biggest oil company signed the first post-invasion oil field development contract in Iraq last year, the deal was seen as a test of Iraq’s willingness to open an industry that had previously prohibited foreign investment.
One year later, the China National Petroleum Corporation has struck oil at the Ahdab field in Wasit Province, southeast of Baghdad. And while the relationship between the company and the Iraqi government has gone smoothly, the presence of a foreign company with vast resources drilling for oil in this poor, rural corner of Iraq has awakened a wave of discontent here.
“We get nothing directly from the Chinese company, and we are suffering,” said Mahmoud Abdul Ridha, head of the Wasit provincial council, whose budget has been cut in half by Baghdad in the past year because of lower international oil prices. “There is an unemployment crisis. We need roads, schools, water treatment plants. We need everything.”
The result has been a local-rights movement — extraordinary in a country where political dissent has historically carried the risk of death — that in the past few months has begun demanding that at least $1 of each barrel of oil produced at the Ahdab field be used to improve access to clean water, health services, schools, paved roads and other needs in the province, which is among Iraq’s poorest.
The ripples are traveling far beyond this province, too. Frustrations have spilled over into sabotage and intimidation of Chinese oil workers, turning the Ahdab field into a cautionary tale for international oil companies seeking to join the rush to profit from Iraq’s vast untapped oil reserves.
Wasit Province is among the poorest provinces in Iraq.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Good to see the the Chinese are getting in there are producing oil.
Too bad that American oil companies and oil field service companies have been cut out of the picture.
I think the Iraqis have a right to ask that local labor be used to produce the oil beneath their sands.
If they aren't hiring locals, then they have a right to be ticked off.
If these are Chinese supervisors and they are in fact hiring locals, then this project is exactly what they need to bring prosperity into their region.
There isn't enough here for me to decide if I side with the locals or not. The same kinds of complaints come up when American oil companies go into an area, hire thousands of locals, and pump millions into the local economy. There are always people with a political axe to grind who will make themselves out to be victims when the problem is merely that they aren't getting their payoff.
If the Chinese are using Chinese oil workers in lieu of Iraqis, then I don't blame them for complaining.
Kerry/Kennedy cut us out of the Iraqi deal. They wanted to give us a no bid contract but Kerry & the Congress said no way.
Pray for the Tea Party Express
I can’t see the Chinese throwing away the billions we have done throughour inept contracting programs, which encourage and reward corruption. If the Chinese want to use their own labor, why not?
Obviously, "No Bid" contracts were not the way to go as I have seen abuse in those proposals.
Actually it was going to be no bid as in higher than normal but since it was Halliburton or Exxon they said no.
Pray for America
My prediction that the Chinese will become the “ugly Americans” of the 21st century is right on course.
Twenty years from now our American style of “oppression”, “exploitation” and “global hegemony” will be wistfully recalled by the rest of the world as the good old days when the PRC takes its turn raping the 3rd world.
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