I ask, who will benefit from these oil deals if there is no law to guarantee where the money goes and who spends it?

The Kurds are still part of Iraq and they are acting in their behalf not the national.



Energy companies that make deals with the Kurdish government may strike oil, but they’ll have trouble selling it, warns Iraq’s Oil Minister.

“Iraq’s neighbors - Syria, Iran and even Turkey - have said they will only allow oil over the border to market that is being exported by the federal government,” Dr. Hussein al Shahristani told CBS News.

This is the latest salvo in an escalating fight between Iraq’s national government and Kurdish regional authorities. At issue is how Iraq’s vast oil wealth will be shared out, and who will control the commercial terms under which foreign companies operate.


LINK

Well if the Iraq government locks horns with the Kurds over oil, there may be some troubled times ahead. IMO.

Political progress is never gonna be a success, there are too many wanting too much.

Wanted to share an interesting report on the Iraqi oil thing.


Violence, corruption and smuggling are hindering efforts to exploit Iraq's massive oil reserves.

By Christoph Reuter (ICR No. 232, 07-Sep-07)
When United States-led coalition forces invaded Iraq, criticism against the war was voiced with the slogan "No blood for oil". Iraq’s giant reserves, which are believed to be the second or third largest in the world, were perceived as the main reason for attacking Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime.

On the face of it, this theory seemed reasonable. At the peak of Iraq’s oil production in 1979, nearly four million barrels were pumped a day. That figure fell to 2.6 million barrels per day in 2002, shortly before the invasion. In Baghdad soon after the war, US officials confidently predicted that with a bit of effort, production would reach 3.5 million barrels a day within 18 months, and five or six million barrels a day within few years.

Instead, Iraq today produces just 1.95 million barrels a day, according to the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, the US agency responsible for overseeing Iraq's reconstruction. Just 27 of the 78 known oil fields are working. Violence, corruption and smuggling are hindering efforts to exploit Iraq's oil.


LINK

Here is the context of Greenspan's statement about Iraq was all about oil.


Here is the sentence in The Age of Turbulence, the 531-page memoir of former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan, that caused so much turbulence in Washington last week: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." Honest and accurate, it had the resonance of the Bill Clinton's election campaign mantra, "It's the economy, stupid." But, finding himself the target of a White House attack -- an administration spokesman labeled his comment, "Georgetown cocktail party analysis" -- Greenspan backtracked under cover of verbose elaboration. None of this, however, made an iota of difference to the facts on the ground.

Here is a prosecutor's brief for the position that "the Iraq War is largely about oil":


LINK

Advocating "going after Saddam" during the January 30 meeting, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, according to O'Neill, "Imagine what the region would look like without Saddam and with a regime that's aligned with U.S. interests. It would change everything in the region and beyond. It would demonstrate what U.S. policy is all about."

That the mentality that got us in this mess.

Kurds are at it again. They don not want to be part of Iraq and they are only concerned with a Free Kurdistan.


SULAIMANIYA, Iraq, Oct. 3 — The Kurdish regional government has reached four new oil-exploration deals, further straining relations with many Iraqi leaders in Baghdad, who want to maintain a more centralized control over the country’s enormous oil reserves.

The new deals are the latest in an effort by the Kurds to build their own oil industry while national oil legislation languishes in Parliament. A similar agreement reached last month with the Hunt Oil Company of Dallas was criticized as illegal by the Iraqi oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani.


LINK

Seems like this would be a good thing to say is a success. So why the silence?


WASHINGTON (AFP) - The White House on Wednesday declined to criticize four controversial oil deals inked by Iraq's Kurdistan regional government in defiance of criticisms from leaders in Baghdad.

The US State Department had questioned a previous deal between the Kurdish regional government and Texas-based Hunt Oil Company, noting that it might fall afoul of a hoped-for but long-delayed law on national oil revenue sharing.

"I don't know anything about those other deals," spokeswoman Dana Perino said, adding: "I believe that the central government still has to approve final contracts before they can be made final."


LINK

"I don't know anything about those other deals," spokeswoman Dana Perino said,

BS. They know. They just can't do anything about it till the oil law is signed.

One of Bush's oil buddies is getting the deals, sound about right?

An Oil Union signs deal with government.


BASRA, Iraq, Oct. 11 (UPI) -- One of Iraq’s two major oil unions has apparently signed a truce with its nemesis, the federal government, over challenging the draft oil law.

The Al-Sabah newspaper reports the General Unions of Oil Employees in Basra, also known as the General Union of Oil Workers, reached an agreement at a recent meeting.

The two sides have been at odds over a variety of working conditions demands, as well as a draft oil law that the unions claim was made without enough input and contained oil contracts they fear will give too much to foreign and private oil companies.


LINK

One of Iraq’s two major oil unions has apparently signed a truce with its nemesis, the federal government, over challenging the draft oil law.

What oil law? The one that is all but dead at the moment? Doesn't sound like this accomplishes much to me. They agreed to a dead proposal.

I think the Baghdad govt is trying to get a bunch of support and will try to re-introduce it.

An interesting take on Oil and Iraq.


If the war in Iraq was fought on behalf of major international oil companies, consider it lost. The race to gain access to the grand prize of Iraq’s vast energy reserves is actually being won by small risk-takers willing to carve out a profit at great risk, while the majors wait for firm legislation and improved security that may never come.

Iraq’s unproven reserves could top 200 billion barrels--second only to world leader Saudi Arabia’s 262 billion barrels--and there is no question that the country’s potential has oil companies very excited, despite the decades of under-investment and conflict under Saddam Hussein that kept production hovering around 3 million barrels per day before 2003, less than half Saudi Arabia’s daily output.


LINK