Some highlights:
Prior to 1972, US and UK oil giants command some three-quarter share in Iraq's oil. The consortium known as the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) was made up of BP, Shell Standard Oil, Mobil and Total. But in 1972, it was nationalised by the revolutionary Iraqi regime. Negotiations over nationalisation were fierce, and Geoffrey Stockwell, who headed the IPC team, had some extraordinary clashes with both Saddam Hussein and Iraq's vice-president, Salih Mahdi Ammash.
Ammash said Iraq would "go through any battle with the companies that was necessary", and resort to "all means necessary". The companies would thus also "lose Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti oil because if their Arab brethren did not stand by Iraq, they would use force to stop this oil flow".
After a painful battle, the IPC finally signed the nationalisation agreement in 1973 and was then compensated for its lost oilfields.
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Thus, the major oil companies with deals in Iraq are French's TotalFinaElf (with estimated reserves of 12.5 to 27 billion barrels), Russia's Lukoil, Zarubezneft and Mashinoimport (with estimated reserves of 7.5 to 15 billion barrels) and China's National Petroleum Company (with estimated reserves of two billion).
What about the US/UK oil giants then? Again we go back to the 1970s. The 1972 nationalisation of IPC resulted in these oil giants losing their oilfields in Iraq and were compensated. Thus a regime change could pave the way for these oil giants to show that the compensation deal was signed under duress.
A legal loophole? These US/UK oil giants - Shell, ExxonMobil and BP will be fighting for their old IPC possessions!
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Former CIA director James Woolsey, who is close to the Iraqi opposition groups, recently told the Washington Post: "It's pretty straightforward. France and Russia have oil companies and interests in Iraq. They should be told that if they are of assistance in moving Iraq towards decent government, we'll do the best we can to ensure the new government and American companies work closely with them. If they throw in their lot with Saddam, it will be difficult, to the point of impossible, to persuade the new Iraqi government to work with them."
As France's behavior becomes increasingly bizarre and seemingly incomprehensible, I wonder more and more about their motivation.
We can immediately dismiss any humanitarian argument ("war is never the solution; poor innocent Iraqi civilians will get killed") as transparently cynical and hypocritical.
Part of it, I'm sure, is a vainglorious wish to be considered the foremost counterweight to the hyperpuissance that is the United States.
But another part is an entirely legitimate desire to protect their own commercial interests. Obviously they can never expect to preserve current sweetheart deals with the dictator after he is overthrown.
But what Woolsey was telling us with the above quote was that we shouldn't drive France, Russia and China all the way to the wall, when it comes to divvying up the oil after the war. Although I tend to give the U.S. administration the benefit of the doubt, I still wonder if we really did provide enough incentive to these three veto powers to sign on to the coalition.