WAKE UP KURDISTAN !! : Axin Arbili in OpEd News

KurdishMedia.com - By Axin Arbili

There is no change for the better; there is no turning point in our history: The anti-Kurdish forces of the past are the anti-Kurdish forces of today. Despite the end of Saddam’s dictatorship five years ago, there is still no freedom for the Kurds, no free Kurdistan even in so-called liberated Iraq. Our enemies are busy, as ever, with maintaining the status quo in the Middle East, and they are successful. In return for Kurdish efforts of reconciliation and goodwill, Arabs, with the help of the Turks, have stopped the referendum in Kerkuk and are now doing everything to abolish that constitutional requirement and right. The Kurdish city and especially the oil there are still regarded “Arab patrimony”, and under Saddam this meant Anfal: large-scale ethnic cleansing, deportations, displacement, genocide.

The Kurdish genocide; the murder of more than 350,000 people, the displacement of millions; the depopulation and destructions of the Kurdish landscape seems to have quietly disappeared from collective conscious, from the collective memory and public political discourse; it has almost become irrelevant to our leaders. Nobody remembers the referendum in which the Kurdish people in the south declared their will for self-determination and independence; today we do not see the implementation of the only legitimate will, but we see the instructions and will of Washington, Baghdad, Damascus, Tehran, Ankara being implemented. The Kurdish leaders in Iraq have become collaborators and clients of US global empire.

The question to be asked and answered is thus: What did the Peshmerga actually fight for in “Operation Iraqi Freedom”? Did they really fight for Kurdish freedom or did they risk their lives so that instead of Sunni Arabs their Shiite kin get the opportunity to rule Baghdad and thus Kurdistan? The answer is quite clear. We missed a unique opportunity to tell our enemies and the world that we don't want to be part of that criminal and hated creation of British imperialism called Iraq; that we want the sanctity of our homelands recognized under international law, that we want a free and sovereign Kurdish society, protected by a Kurdish state and army; that the insults, intimidations, threats, aggressions, crimes against us must end for once and all. Instead of doing the right thing, the Kurdish leaders decided to become presidents and foreign ministers of that terror state of Iraq; we see how they listen to our enemies and follow imperial instructions; we see that there is no progress and peace for our nation. In the political and cultural realities of the world, we do not even exist. We are called Iraqis; south Kurdistan is just northern Iraq in the eyes of the “international community” and others.

The scale of racial hatred against any form of Kurdish independence or even a Kurdish city administration is unimaginably deep and egregious when we compare that the Arabs already have 22 (twenty-two) independent sovereign countries with tens of thousands of rich cities and a population of 350 to 400 million; that there are 7 (seven) independent sovereign Turkic states, 16 (sixteen) Autonomous Turkic republics, with a Turkish/Turkic population of more than 200 million; that the combined Arab und Turkish land masses represent a vast area stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to Central Asia and beyond; that Turks and Arabs fully enjoy all human and ethnic rights monitored under international law. Despite all of their territorial and material wealth (including the largest oil reserves), despite their numerous states, and despite calling themselves compassionate Muslims, Turks and Arabs are not willing to allow the Kurds, who have no other allies or kin, let alone friends, to exercise the same human and ethnic rights, to have their historical, moral, legal rights for self-determination and for their own sovereign country realised.

The “international community” couldn’t care less. Arab oil and Nato-membership of Turkey are too precious for the West to jeopardize by supporting the despised, poor and powerless Kurds. Consequently and historically the USA/EU/NATO have supported their client states rather than supporting democracy and justice in the region. Outside the western spheres, there is no such thing anyway. There are only vital strategic and material interests. There is no right or wrong, moral or immoral for the West when it comes to its vital interests; there is only the will and force to achieve the objectives by all means, at any costs, including genocides. In the Middle East, these are access and control of the energy reserves and expansion of control to yet uncontrolled regions (Iran, Caucasus, Central Asia, etc.). In the new strategy paper of the US military for the 21st century, it is now explicitly and officially stated what has been US foreign policy practice for decades and centuries: continuous warfare for depleting energy, food and water resources together with their European kin and local puppets. Since these resources are in other countries and belong to other peoples/races, the US military officially declares to continue targeting the indigenous populations whenever necessary; it other words, there is no distinction between civilian and military; the other culture as a whole is an enemy of the US if it’s in the way. Freedom? Democracy? Only the most naïve and manipulated can still believe in a benevolent Uncle Sam.

So while the Arabs are attacking us in “legal” ways and/or by using terror to prevent Kerkuk becoming part of Kurdish administration; all of the Kurdish territories are under constant attack by the Turkish air force to kill as many “Kurdish terrorists” (= free Kurds) as possible. The Turks are assisted by the Iranian army, and the actions of both the Turkish and Iranian military are approved and supported by the USA/West! On the one side Kemalists and Mullahs are conducting warfare against a defenseless people in open violation of all rules and conventions; on the other there is the “international community” deliberately looking away and allowing crimes against humanity. The UN general meeting demonstrated this once again openly and directly when representatives, including Ahmadinejad, delivered their speeches. He was talking about God, justice, beauty, harmony, brotherhood of man, while at the same time the Iranian army is carrying out its war against the Kurdish population; and the “international community” is wondering whether or not Iran has peaceful intentions toward the West. These are satanic double standards and they show unambiguously that the West is not bothered about the Kurdish situation and fate. The barbarism of the Turkish/Iranian military is matched by the selfish brutality of the West. While some delegations were absent; the foreign minister of Iraq, who is a Kurd, was present and listening. And not only was he present and listening, he actually applauded when this prophet of evil finished his deceitful speech. It was like a scene from a nightmare or directly from hell. I could only feel shame and anger as there can be no understanding let alone justification for such disgraceful behaviour. How can you, as a Kurd, applaud him when this man only has murderous contempt for you and your people. He is the head of a state which is determined to crush Kurdish rights, which imprisons, tortures and kills Kurdish intellectuals and human rights activists; which has been cooperating with the Turks for centuries in occupying and exploiting Kurdish lands; which has always been anti-Kurdish in theory and practice. Knowing all of this, how can you just sit there comfortably, listen and applaud this false prophet when you could, in your position as foreign minister, inform the world public of Iranian and Turkish atrocities?

Our enemies will not take us serious with such figures, they can only laugh at us and do what they like. No wonder that the world has no clue about our tragedy, that the only thing they can relate Kurds to is either terrorism or that we are just plain stupid or masochistic.

The Turks have been demonstrating their contempt for centuries. While we are begging for some democracy; their “constitutional court” is considering the closure of the only Kurdish party in Turkey just because this party wants a free and democratic society with equal rights for every one and, above all, because it is a Kurdish party that represents the Kurds. For the military rulers in Ankara, Kurds representing Kurds and insisting on Kurdish right is just another form of terrorism that needs to be eradicated. As all the previous Kurdish parties were shut down, it is more than likely that this one will also have the same fate. Even if it is not shut down now, it will be reminded of the Turkish sword hanging over its head, ready to be used at any time the party/Kurds say anything different than Kemalist state slogans.

We need to wake up and understand: Democracy is not in the interest of the ruling elites as it would mean the end of Kemalism/Turkish supremacy. Consequently there is no real democracy, all these Turkish parties, the parliament, the courts, the government only a façade for the “international community”. Behind the scenes, the US-backed generals pull the strings and make these puppets move as they wish. If one of them dares to get out of line, there is always the threat and possibility of a military coup to re-arrange and re-install the Kemalist order even more brutally. But as the Turkish society has been thoroughly Kemalized by the Kemalofascist military, bureaucracy, and judiciary for almost a century, and as it has also been thoroughly Islamized by the their Muslim leaders, with their strong economic base; there is no danger of any form of subversion from the Turkish people against the status quo or any wish for real democracy. As long as there is Western support and financing of the Turkish fascist order, as long as the Kurds have no voice and are powerless slaves of Western and local forces; the Turks, Arabs, Iranians, Westerners are quite content and happy with the status quo called “Middle East”.

Given these global, geostrategic, socio-political realities, any talk of democratization of such societies becomes ridiculous, absurd if not pathological. And it is absolute and utter hubris to believe, let alone to suggest that Kurds, as freedom fighters or as political fighters, could democratize Arab or Turkish societies in any way. Not only that Kurds don’t have the means, but they also don’t have the right to attempt any such mad thing. If these societies or states prefer a Kemalist, Baathist, Islamist system or whatever system they want, it is their decision and choice. These are separate societies, separate peoples, separate states. Even Israel, the nuclear and industrial superpower of the region, makes no claim or has a plan of democratizing the Palestinian Arabs or any other Arabs for that matter; how can Kurds talk about democratizing others?! This form of thinking is purely idealistic, wishful, delusional and thus a total waste of time. It will not help our cause in any way, it has just hindered it and blocked real progress, and thus it only has played into the hands of our enemies.

But we have no more time to lose. We are dealing with hostile barbaric forces which only have contempt for us if we try to civilize them with democratic rhetorics and plans. They insult us, spit into our faces, torture and kill us in return to demonstrate that there is no such thing as Kurdish rights. Look around, animals even have more rights in Turkey, Iran, Syria and in the world than Kurds. They make it absolutely clear and act upon the understanding that it's in nobody’s interest that we exist.. The Turks, Arabs, Iranians have been carrying out physical and cultural genocides against the Kurdish nation without any action, even without any real protest from that “civilized international community”. Although on legal and moral basis, these states ought to be sanctioned, boycotted and punished; you see how they are officially recognized and welcomed at every international forum and in every organization.

Wake up and understand; begging for democracy will not bring us anywhere. Has it brought us the freedom of our language, the freedom of speech, freedom for education in our native language; are there any Kurdish institutions, universities? Where are the Kurdish names for our children, towns, landscapes? While we should be demanding our right for self-determination and independence, we don’t even dare to ask for some form of autonomy. The Kemalist and Islamist Turks will not accept even the basic human and ethnic rights; and the democratic Turks are only a few and totally powerless. What they are selling as democratic reforms is meaningless in practice or simply a show for the entertainment of the EU.

Wake up and understand: The Turks are afraid of real democracy. They instinctively know that it would mean losing more or even all of their conquered lands. They are not the indigenous people of this region and thus feel insecure in foreign territory. 500 years of occupation of Anatolia has not changed this fundamental reality in the Turkish psyche. They are descendants of conquerors and occupiers and there is no way back. As the Ottoman Empire was created and maintained with the Turkish sword, so today physical force remains the only instrument to maintain what is left. With the end of their empire, there is only one remaining target: the Kurds. As long as there are Kurds, they will be reminded that they are illegal occupiers; that it is not their country; that they are intruders; thieves, murderers. Real democracy will necessarily lead to acknowledgement of these facts, recognition of the Assyrian, Greek, Armenian, Kurdish genocides, and to compensation. Therefore, real democracy is not in the interest of the Turkish people as a principle, and it will never happen under such conditions.

Wake up and understand: A peaceful, equal, democratic co-existence between the Turkish and Kurdish peoples within the same borders is impossible as the Turks don’t accept the Kurdish nation. Therefore, it is wrong to think and irresponsible to suggest that as Kurds we do not need our own protective state when history clearly demonstrates and teaches that peoples and populations were massacred and genocided precisely because they did not have their own protective states, precisely because they did not have borders to protect them from genocidal assault.

Has mankind changed meantime? Do we now live in a world of brotherhood and justice? Have we overcome our barbaric instincts of attacking and destroying other cultures, of conquering other countries and enslaving native populations? Do warfare and ethnic cleansing belong to the past? Do cultures and countries fully and harmoniously cooperate to overcome their problems? Has the fighting and murdering for resources stopped, has the desire for imperial world dominion ended, are conflicts now being finally settled peacefully?

No, nothing has changed and the US and their “allies” are making sure that nothing will change and business continues as usual.

Democracy is not their language, so it should not be the one to use when confronted by them. This is a life or death confrontation, it is literally about survival or total annihilation. There is no time for illusions and self-delusions, we finally need to wake up and do what is possible and necessary. Let’s be clear and remember: In the Turkish and world media, in the propaganda of Western real-politics, we are terrorists whatever we do or say; the Turks and others make sure that our legitimate demands are officially regarded as terrorism and fought.

We need to focus on the task ahead: It is to fight for the liberation of Kurdistan, for the creation of a united Kurdish state. This is our right and obligation – and it is justified historically, morally, legally! This must be our only goal and it must be the goal of all Kurds under foreign occupation. An independent sovereign state is not a theoretical concept, it is essential to the life and culture of a people; it is the home, shelter, protector of the people. It is the only guarantor of its future! How can one deprecate the importance of a state? How can one suggest that it is an ideological entity; that it is a bourgeois invention or plot? That is absolutely irresponsible and the propaganda of the enemy. Our only chance is a clear understanding of our situation and determined implementation of a strategy leading to the declaration of the state of Kurdistan. Otherwise there will be no freedom, no security, and above all, there will be no dignity, no honour for the Kurdish nation. Without our own state; the Kurdish people will continue being in slavery, will remain at the mercy of hostile, aggressive powers, and will be constantly at risk of total physical annihilation by these powers at any time.

There is no other way but absolute liberation. The West has and will not help. On the contrary, with the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, running through ancient Armenian and Kurdish territories, the American-Turkish-Israeli-Georgian alliance has been cemented for good. We must now seek for some kind of cooperation based on the principle that the enemy of your enemy is your friend. In our case, our enemies’ enemies are Russia and China. The US and Nato have plotted new strategies to harm these countries and keep them out of the central Asian oil and gas markets. Two new power blocks are forming now, the NATO plus local clients led by the USA/EU on the aggressive-imperial side and the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) and CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization) led by Russia and China on the defensive side. We are right in the middle of this confrontation, which seems to be inevitable and could lead to global wars. It will be impossible to remain neutral and if we don’t want to be crushed by both, we need to decide now where we will stand to achieve our goal of a free recognized Kurdistan.

• KurdishMedia.com - By Axin Arbili
• 28/09/2008 00:00:00

Kurdistan oil: small intreresting item

Zagros left off Iraq list

Calgary firm unable to bid on energy projects

Shaun Polczer, Calgary Herald

Published: Thursday, April 17, 2008

A small Calgary company exploring for oil in Kurdistan is in limbo after it was left off a list of eligible companies to work in Iraq.

Tiny Western Zagros Ltd. was omitted from a group of 35 oil and gas companies invited to bid on projects tendered by the Iraqi oil ministry.

Simon Hatfield, Western's president and CEO, said he was disappointed his firm didn't make the list, but vowed to press on with an exploration well later this month in the northern part of the country.

"Size seems to matter," he said of the list, which includes a cross section of the largest majors, independents and national oil companies in the world.

"It's not surprising to me that it's large companies that come out on the top of that list. Our hope is over time they (Iraqi officials) realize the value small to medium-sized companies like ours can bring."

Western Zagros was spun out of Western Oil Sands Inc. when it was bought by Marathon Corp. last year.

The company gained its Iraq concession about two years ago when it negotiated a contract with the Kurdistan autonomous authority.

Iraqi officials have said in the past they won't honour deals outside the central government, but Hatfield said there has been no indication that existing agreements will be revoked.

The Kurdish Globe, the region's only English newspaper, reported that Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani is in Baghdad to discuss the status of the contracts, which have been negotiated with 20 foreign firms.

The talks were reported to be "good and positive," according to the newspaper's website.

Hatfield said the Kurdish government has obtained a legal opinion in a British court that the deals are legal agreements, and expressed hope the dispute will be resolved before the end of the year.

"We did not enter into it lightly,"

he said.

"A lot of statements out of Baghdad are highly political. Some of the rhetoric surprises us sometimes."

About 120 companies applied for pre-bid screening. Nexen Inc. was the only Canadian producer to make the cut, although the Iraqi ministry said more companies could qualify in later licensing rounds.

Michael Harris, Nexen's vice-president of investor relations, said the company has no immediate plans to invest in Iraq. Rather, the pre-bid qualification allows it to "take a peek" at opportunities as they arise.

Harris speculated that Nexen was chosen for international experience in countries such as Yemen, where it maintains a sizable presence.

"It's a natural extension of our strategy to grow in the area," he said.

Steve Calderwood, who covers Nexen for Raymond James in Calgary, said Nexen's selection speaks to its experience and contacts in the international arena.

"If you had any dealings with the Kurdish regional authority, you didn't show up on this list. You have to have patience and deal with the right people."

Vincent Lauerman, who heads Calgary-based Geopolitics Central, said Iraq remains "extremely dangerous" even compared with Yemen, which has also experienced civil war and terrorism. Last week, Nexen evacuated dependents from the country following a pair of rocket attacks linked to al-Qaeda.

Despite progress by the U.S. military, Lauerman said it could be years before security has improved enough in Iraq for western oil majors to begin rebuilding the oil industry.

"It's going to take a long time with the American occupation if we're going to see Iraq as we know it. If the Americans were to pull out relatively quickly there's a chance you'd see the disintegration of the Iraqi state into three distinct pieces, maybe even more."

Nexen shares rose 59 cents in Toronto on Tuesday, to close at $33.99. Western Zagros added two cents to finish at $2.55.

Activism alert: FREE Occalan NOW!!

EU court annuls PKK terror ruling

© BBC NEWS (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe)

* THE PHOTO [© AP]: The PKK was among a number of groups the EU lists as terrorist.

© BBC NEWS (http://news.bbc.co.uk)

Thursday, 3 April 2008

A ruling to blacklist Kurdish rebel group the PKK as a terrorist organisation and freeze its assets has been overturned by an EU court.

The European Court of First Instance in Luxembourg said the 2002 decision was illegal under EU law.

The court said the EU had failed to tell the PKK in advance of the decision, as it was required to do.

The PKK, or Kurdistan Workers' Party, has been fighting Turkish troops in its campaign for greater autonomy.

Turkey has recently launched a series of cross-border attacks on Kurdish rebels who it says have used bases in northern Iraq to launch raids into Turkey.

'Procedural grounds'

A court spokesman said the ruling had been made "on procedural grounds" because the council of the EU had "failed to give the PKK an adequate statement of reason as to why they are on the list, which they are required to do".

A number of groups are listed by the EU as terrorist organisations, including the Basque separatists, Eta, the Tamil Tigers and Hamas.

Similar technical rulings have been made regarding other groups whose funds had been frozen: the People's Mujahedin of Iran, a Philippines' Communist Party official and Dutch group Stichting Al Aqsa.

The spokesman added that in the case of the People's Mujahedin, the council of the EU had responded to the ruling by keeping the group on its list but giving the group its reasoning for doing so.

That decision is currently being considered by the court.


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7328238.stm

Published: 2008/04/03 12:45:48 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

The "West's" view of the Iraki oil situation .

Exxon Mobil Lobby Spent $16.9M

Thu Mar 27, 2008

This is pocket change to Exxon, cheap protection for their racket. -oom

Exxon Mobil spent $16.9M lobbying
March 19, 2008
http://money. cnn.com/news/ newsfeeds/ articles/ newstex/AFX-
0013-23905827. htm
<http://money. cnn.com/news/ newsfeeds/ articles/ newstex/AFX- 0013-23905827. htm>

WASHINGTON (AP) - Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) Corp., the largest U.S. oil
company, spent more than $16.9 million to lobby the federal government
in 2007, according to a disclosure form. The company lobbied on
various appropriations bills and on legislation dealing with Federal
Aviation Administration reauthorization, patent reform, taxes and
royalties, international relations and trade agreements, lobbying
reform, railroad security and more, according to the form posted
online Feb. 14 by the Senate's public records office.

Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil spent $10.5 million in the second half
of 2007 to lobby on those issues. The energy bill President Bush
signed in December did not include billions of dollars in higher taxes
for large oil companies that many Democrats wanted to use to fund tax
breaks for various clean energy (NASDAQ:CLNE) industries.

Similar proposals were revived earlier this month and are working
their way through Congress. Besides Congress, Exxon Mobil lobbied the
White House, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, U.S. Trade
Representative' s office, the departments of Energy, Defense, Interior,
State, Commerce, Homeland Security and more. Lobbyists are required to
disclose activities that could influence members of the executive and
legislative branches, under a federal law enacted in 1995.

===

Iraq to pay oil firms to boost its output

By Randy Fabi and Ahmed Rasheed
http://www.guardian .co.uk/feedartic le?id=7397775
<http://www.guardian .co.uk/feedartic le?id=7397775>

BAGHDAD, March 19 (Reuters) - The Iraqi government is expected to pay
up to $2.5 billion to five top oil companies to increase the country's
oil output by nearly a quarter, a government adviser told Reuters on
Wednesday.In what would be the biggest foreign involvement for
decades, Baghdad is close to signing technical support contracts with
BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Total.

Thamir Ghadhban, energy adviser to Iraq's prime minister, said he
expected the contracts, which would add 500,000 barrels per day (bpd)
to current production of 2.27 million bpd, would be signed by early
next month.

"There is a rough estimate that it could cost about $400 to $500
million per field," he said in an interview."So a total could be up to
between $2 (billion) and $2.5 billion over two years that should be
paid by the government to companies.

"With oil prices at around $100 a barrel, the contracts could mean
extra revenues to Iraq of around $1.5 billion a month before costs,"
according to Reuters calculations.

Ghadhban said Iraqi representatives met with company officials last
week in Amman, Jordan, to discuss final details of the initially
two-year contracts, including whether payment would be by cash or by
oil."As far as we are concerned, everything is positive and it's a
matter of time for the minister of oil and oil companies to finalize
and shake hands," he said.

Shell is negotiating for the northern Kirkuk oilfield and is also in
talks, along with BHP Billiton, for the development of the Maysan
fields.BP also has its eyes on Iraq's southern Rumaila field, while
Exxon wants the contract for the Zubair oilfield in Basra.

Finally, Chevron and Total are looking to work together to develop the
West Qurna oilfield.

Ghadhban said he expected the companies to boost output by around
100,000 bpd at each of the fields
.

HEAD START

The ongoing talks have also given the five major oil companies a head
start in efforts to bid for future oil contracts.

"I have no doubt whatsoever those five major companies are going to be
qualified," he said. "They are major oil companies and of course they
will be qualified."

More than 100 companies have registered to compete for oil extraction
and service contracts to help develop Iraq's oil reserves, the world's
third largest.

Ghadhban said the government was expected to announce the list of
qualified companies next month, a month later than initially
expected.He said the technical support contracts with the five oil
majors needed to be finalized before the government could move on to
other contracts.

===

Forbidden fields: Oil groups circle the prize of Iraq's vast reserves

By Roula Khalaf and Steve Negus
March 19 2008
Financial Times

http://www.ft. com/cms/s/ 0/5b24f674- f5e6-11dc- 8d3d-000077b0765 8.html?nclick_ check=1

Royal Dutch Shell has been quietly working with Iraq's oil ministry
over the past two years, advising it on how to increase the production
of two oilfields. Under an agreement struck after the 2003 invasion,
no one from the company, Europe's largest oil group, has set foot in
the troubled country; instead, monthly face-to-face meetings with the
oil ministry have been held in Amman, the Jordanian capital, and
weekly contact has been maintained by video-link.

The Shell-financed project and the attention showered on Baghdad
appears to be paying off: Shell is now negotiating a technical support
agreement in which it will be compensated for helping upgrade
production of producing fields. The oil company will again set up a
team outside Iraq, helping, among other things, to bring new equipment
into the country and training Iraqis in its use. Shell is one of
several inter­national oil companies including BP and the US groups
Exxon Mobil and Chevron that have been tapping into Iraq's oil
industry by remote control. But now, five years after the invasion,
the oil groups are hoping to take their involvement in the country to
a new level. Baghdad, desperate to increase oil production yet starved
of investment, is starting to dangle what the companies have been
after all along: a chance to develop and later explore what may be the
world's most promising untapped oil reserves. Indeed, as the companies
gear up for technical support agreements, they are also registering to
pre-qualify for the first bidding round of oil development contracts
that are to be offered by Baghdad.

"The [initial projects] were done to work with the Iraqis, get a
feeling for fields and build relationships and knowledge," says one
oil executive, speaking of the assistance projects provided so far.

With parts of the global oil industry threatened with nationalisation
and much of the Middle East still closed to foreign ownership of
reserves, access to Iraq, with the world's third-largest oil reserves,
has long been viewed as a huge prize. Although no decision has yet
been made in Baghdad over the nature of the development or the
eventual exploration contracts that will be on offer, Iraq could prove
one of the rare countries in the region where companies will be
allowed to claim reserves as their own.

"This is the big frontier,"

says Raad Alkadiri, a senior director at
Washington-based PFC Energy. According to the oil ministry, only 27
out of 80 discovered fields are producing in Iraq, the result of
decades of under-investment. A report by Wood Mackenzie, the
consultancy, meanwhile says the scale of Iraq's remaining oil
resources surpasses all other countries in the Middle East, including
Saudi Arabia, and its high-quality reservoirs ensure that production
costs would be very low. But Iraq is also a dangerous frontier.
Companies invited to invest in its oil industry and satisfy
Baghdad's plans at least to double oil production from the current
2.5m barrels a day will be walking into a political, security and
legislative minefield. Their involvement threatens to exacerbate the
sectarian tensions that have torn the country apart since the US-led
invasion.

International oil companies acknowledge that security, although better
over the past year, will still need to improve significantly before
workers are dispatched to Iraq. The weakness of the central government
and its patchy control over the southern part of the country, home to
80 per cent of proved oil reserves, will also be taken into account.
Perhaps most important, however, is that they could be entering a
country with deep political fissures and lingering anger at foreign
intervention, without clear legislation allowing for foreign
participation. Despite American pressure and government desperation, a
law to regulate foreign access to the oil industry has languished in
the Iraqi parliament, a victim of sectarian disputes, particularly
between the Kurds and Arabs. Frustrated by the delays, and virtually
giving up on a successful outcome, the oil ministry has now invited
oil companies to pre-qualify for development of existing fields and
says a cabinet decision will be enough to legitimise foreign
participation. Later bidding rounds are envisaged for exploration
contracts.

Officially, companies say they will insist on having new legislation
in place before investing the billions of dollars that would be needed
for development and exploration. Yet the absence of a law is not
preventing them from embarking on negotiations.

"The companies are positioning themselves; they're playing the game and the oil ministry is trying to create a game for them to play,"

says Mr Alkadiri.

"Of course you can hit a whole set of problems and the companies are aware
of that and they will factor it in. But [outside Iraq] there are no
such reserves in an un­explored territory."

Adding to the complications is uncertainty over who has the rights to
sign contracts in Iraq. The Kurdish regional government, based in
Irbil, claims that the constitution gives it power over its own
resources within the borders of Kurdistan, while the government in
Baghdad rejects this claim completely. It insists it has the sole
constitutional authority to dispose of Iraq's oil resources. A further
difficulty is that oil is unevenly distributed throughout the ethnic
regions of Iraq, with resources concentrated in the Shia south of the
country and the Kurdish north. The minority Sunni Arabs, who formerly
controlled the levers of power under Saddam Hussein, can boast few oil
reserves in their ethnic areas. Their priority in negotiating in the
new Iraq has been to ensure they receive their fair share of oil
revenues. But the competing expectations of Iraq's communities have
never been confronted head on, and were sidestepped by the framers of
the constitution, agreed in 2005, by means of ambiguous language.
Specifically, the constitution' s article 112 says the "federal
government, with the producing governorates and regional governments"
should manage oil and gas, but only from "present" fields. The
document's Article 115, meanwhile, declares that "all powers not
stipulated in the exclusive powers of the federal government" belong
to local or regional authorities. The KRG has taken this to mean that
the federal government has the conditional right to manage fields
currently producing, but that a regional government such as itself has
the power to manage exploration and the production from newly
discovered fields. To exploit this loophole, the KRG has passed its
own oil law, which allows it to sign contracts with foreign oil
companies. It has signed such agreements with several (smaller) groups
from Norway, Turkey, Austria, South Korea and other countries in the
face of Baghdad's objections.

"In the Kurdistan region, there is a constitution and there is a law.
We have two instruments that we can rely upon: the law and the
constitution are a pair, and they're consistent and in harmony with
each other in our case," says Ashti Hawrami, KRG oil minister.

Baghdad, however, has declared the KRG contracts ­illegal,
blacklisting companies that deal with the Kurdistan region and, more
recently, ­cancelling export deals with South Korean and Austrian
groups that signed exploration deals with the KRG. This has kept
bigger companies away from the north. The Kurds' assertive attitude
has heightened the Sunni Arabs' attachment to strong central control
over the country's regions and their inclination towards economic
nationalism. Their political leaders have pressed for the constitution
to be rewritten to strengthen the federal government and reduce the
powers of the KRG. With no agreement on the constitution, the
hydrocarbons legislation which would set terms for foreign oil
companies along with an agreement on the sharing of oil revenues
locally was controversial from the start.

After months of wrangling, the Iraqi cabinet in February 2007 came to
an agreement on a draft framework that did not include revenue-sharing
legislation. Even that has not been passed by parliament. Moreover, as
talks over the oil law have dragged on, opposition to the
production-sharing agreements (PSAs) favoured by western oil
companies, once relatively muted, has grown among the majority Shia as
well underlining a resurgence in nationalism as much as a reaction
to Kurdish unilateralism. According to Hussein Shahristani, the oil
minister, the cabinet's approval of a draft hydrocarbons law last year
made no reference to PSAs, and what his ministry will offer companies
are "model contracts" that would attempt to balance investors'
expectations of financial return against domestic political concerns,
not least the determination of Iraqis to maintain ownership and
control of oil wealth. Kurdish officials, however, say the contracts
envisaged by Baghdad are PSAs in all but name.

"What's happening is that various parties are jostling for position
now rather than reaching agreement on the oil legislation,

says Yahia Said, Iraq expert and Middle East director at Revenue Watch, a project
at the London School of Economics.

"The KRG is trying to move with as many facts on the ground as possible and the federal government is trying to show that it's in control."

Apotential flashpoint for the oil dispute between Kurds and Arabs is in the oil field of Kirkuk, the
city that Kurds claim as part of their region but whose status is to
be settled by a long-delayed referendum. It is to minimise the risk
of such confrontation that the US has put enormous pressure on Iraq's
politicians to agree the hydrocarbons legislation. Judging it a
crucial element for Iraqi stability, the Bush administration listed
the oil law as one of the benchmarks the Baghdad government was
expected to achieve as the US military surge helped to reduce violence
over the past year.

Even with the likelihood of an oil law approval fading, US officials
continue to insist that it is essential for signing oil contracts with
foreign groups. For international oil companies, the hope is that as
the negotiations proceed over the next year, Iraq's political and
legislative landscape will gain more clarity. Iraqi experts, however,
warn that the oil law may be dead and Baghdad's only choice,
ironically, will be to fall back on legislation from the Saddam
Hussein era. Although meant to protect the nationalised status of the
industry, the legislation did not stop the previous regime from
negotiating specific contracts with foreign companies, which were then
agreed by the rubber-stamp parliament.

"The ministry might be able to get away with [contracts] by leaning on
Saddam-era regulations. Saddam negotiated contracts that were not PSAs
[the oil companies' preferred arrangement] but with Iraq the only
remaining major resource in the world, companies will have to have
some investment there," says Tariq Shafiq, a former director of Iraq's
national oil ­company.

Shut out elsewhere, executives await the end of a long exile Just
months before US tanks rolled into Baghdad and Saddam Hussein was
toppled, US government officials met allies from Iraq's opposition and
decided it was in the country's interest for a new government to open
its oil industry to foreign participation as quickly as possible,
writes Dino Mahtani.

The so called "Oil and Energy" working group of the US state
department, which met four times in 2002 and 2003 and included
influential Iraqi exiles, had put forward the idea as a crucial plank
in Iraq's postwar reconstruction plans. Increased foreign
participation in Iraq's oil industry, members argued, would help
revitalise its most important economic lifeline ravaged by years of
neglect and under investment under Saddam's regime. But it would also
get US oil companies close to Iraq's reserves, which remain
significantly under-exploited compared with those of other big
producers and, according to some geologists, could hold the world's
largest deposits, surpassing even those of Saudi Arabia. The Middle
East has largely been off-limits to international oil companies ever
since a wave of oil industry nationalisation swept the region,
starting in the 1950s.

In Iraq's case, the military coup that forced out the British- and
US-backed royal family in 1958 was followed by the gradual takeover
over the next 14 years of the Iraq Petroleum Company, previously a
concession that gave ownership of Iraq's oil reserves to a consortium
dominated by US, British and French interests. Access to Iraqi oil
today would give western oil companies an important foothold in the
Middle East, home to about 60 per cent of global oil reserves, at a
time when resource nationalism is on the rise and companies are having
trouble finding new oil reserves to replace those they exhaust. The
reserves they claim are a main determinant of their stock prices.

Western oil executives had long been impatient with the reluctance of
Middle Eastern countries to open up to foreign participation. This was
summed up in 1999 by the US vice- president Dick Cheney (below), then
a director at the oil fields services company Halliburton.

"Even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow."

he said in a speech to the oil industry. After
the US invasion, American officials collaborated closely with their
Iraqi political allies and oil industry executives. Many members of
the Oil and Energy working group had pushed for production-sharing
agreements to be introduced in Iraq after the invasion. These
arrangements would allow companies to claim a share of the reserves
produced as their own, at least for accounting purposes.

In effect, such contracts would amount to a significant step in
reversing Iraq's nationalisation process. The oil industry was
well-placed to lobby for such an arrangement. After the invasion,
former executives of big multinationals acted as consultants to the
new Iraqi oil ministry. The US then hand-picked oil ministry officials
under the coalition provisional authority, which eventually handed
over to the interim government of Iyad Allawi. This in turn advocated
partly privatising Iraq's oil industry. When a transitional government
came into place, the US backed Ahmad Chalabi a man who famously said
in 2002 that

"US oil companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil"

to chair Iraq's Energy Council.

Today, however, the openness of Iraq's oil industry to foreign
participation is still in doubt, not only because of the security
situation. Iraq has no national oil law in place. Its constitution is
vague about the degree of control regional governments can exert over
oil policy.

Iraqi officials know they will have the power to dictate terms to
foreign oil companies. "Iraq is definitely in the driver's seat. They
[the government] know they have one of the most prolific resources
left in the world," says Bob Fryklund, vice-president of IHS, the
international consultancy.

Energy producers such as Russia, Venezuela and Algeria have typified a
new wave of resource nationalism, in effect expropriating foreign
ownership of oil projects. In Libya, another country whose oil
industry has only just opened up to foreign participation after years
of sanctions, the government has now increased its take from all oil
projects to an average of 95 per cent, from 81 per cent in 2000. Even
in Kurdistan, where the regional authority has signed
production-sharing agreements, the government's take of future oil
produced is estimated at 87 per cent, says Mr Fryklund. Oil industry
executives say their companies will not invest if they do not get a
significant part of "the upside", industry jargon for expected
increases in production.

But Tariq Shafiq, a former director of Iraq's national oil company,
says companies would be prepared to accept variations of service
contracts that pay companies fixed returns rather than rewarding them
with control over reserves.

"Given how prolific Iraq is, the return
to international oil companies [under service contracts] would be just
as favourable as under investment [contracts]. And I believe the
companies are aware of that,"

he says.

===

US Company to Help Expand Iraqi Refinery
By SINAN SALAHEDDIN

http://ap.google. com/article/ ALeqM5i3MIE14CmM Tl3e-zkwuFBsPOsO eQD8VGQ6OG0

BAGHDAD (AP) Iraq's Oil Ministry has signed a contract with the
Colorado Industrial Construction Services Co. to help expand a
refinery in Najaf, south of Baghdad, an official said Wednesday. The
$85 million contract is designed to increase the refinery's current
capacity of 20,000 barrels of oil per day by roughly 10,000 barrels
per day, a senior ministry official said.

"We are expecting the work to be done in one year or one year and a
half," the official told The Associated Press, speaking on condition
of anonymity because of a lack of authorization to release the
information. The Colorado-based company did not respond to telephone
calls seeking confirmation.

The refinery, about 100 miles south of Baghdad, was constructed in
October 2006 to help meet increasing needs in central Iraq for
petroleum products, including kerosene. The U.S. company will build a
third production unit, the official said.

Last week, the oil ministry inaugurated a second production unit at
the facility and pledged more refineries would be built across the
country, including in Nasiriyah and Karbala, two other cities in the
predominantly Shiite south. Together the new refineries will be able
to refine more than 450,000 barrels daily, it said.

Iraq has the world's third-largest known crude oil reserves, with an
estimated 115 billion barrels, but it suffers acute shortages in
petroleum products as most infrastructure has been damaged or
destroyed after years of U.N. sanctions and then five years of war.

Iraq's three main oil refineries are running at roughly half the
700,000 barrels daily capacity they maintained before the U.S.-led
invasion on March 20, 2003. The shortfall has forced Iraq to turn to
imports from neighboring Iran, Kuwait and Turkey. The country has been
forced to import about 8,000 tons each day, or about 60,000 barrels,
according to figures released last month by the State Oil Marketing
Organization. Insurgents frequently attack pipelines, hoping to rob
the government of oil revenue.

Also of interest in very recent news:

Javno.hr

Global Insight: Violence in Southern Iraq threatening oil exports Petroleumworld.com, Venezuela - 7 hours ago New constitutional allowances for provinces to be bound together into autonomous regions of the likes of the northern Iraqi Kurdistan region are also coming ... Democracy in the making Ha'aretz all 710 news articles »

Heritage Oil announces intention to list on the London Stock Exchange Canada NewsWire (press release), Canada - 1 hour ago The timing is opportune given the high-impact drilling campaigns we will undertake in Uganda and Kurdistan this year. I am delighted to welcome General Sir ... Shareholders of Heritage Oil Corporation Overwhelmingly Approve ... CNW Telbec (Communiqués de presse) all 2 news articles »

BBC News

Return to Kurdistan BBC News, UK - 26 Mar 2008 Kurdistan's future will be difficult enough, with or without the oil from Kirkuk, and these passionate students are the key to the region's growth. ...

Ghana Broadcasting Corporation

Five Years On - Invasion And occupation CounterCurrents.org, India - 14 hours ago The Turkish government is negotiating oil concessions with the Kurdish “Regional” government and Turkish companies have been heavily investing in the area. ... Wobbling all over the place Economist all 9 news articles »

KRG Natural Resources Ministry: Oil, gas, mining sector appointments Kurdistan Regional Government, Iraq - 25 Mar 2008 As well as developing a robust private sector, the MNR’s petroleum programme will include the institutional development of a Kurdistan National Oil Company ...

San Diego Union Tribune

Iraqi Forces Clash With Sadr Militants in Basra for Third Day Bloomberg - 22 hours ago An oil pipeline in southern Iraq was on fire after a bomb exploded underneath it, the Associated Press reported, citing an unidentified official in Basra. ... The Shiite - Shiite "Awakenings"...or Chalabi's revenge ? uruknet.info Good Morning, Vietnam! Huffington Post Iraqi Prime Minister Gives Shiite Militia 72 Hours to Surrender Bloomberg Bloomberg - Bloomberg all 3,964 news articles »

AFP	Norway's DNO revises oil deal with Iraq's Kurdish authorities AFP - 14 Mar 2008 OSLO (AFP) — Norwegian oil company DNO International said Friday it had revised an agreement with Kurdish authorities on splitting oil production in two ...

Dispute over Kurdistan oil deals might be solved at federal court ... International Herald Tribune, France - 10 Mar 2008 A national oil and gas law is stuck in parliament, with Kurdish and Arab leaders fighting over who has the final say in managing oil and gas fields. ...

Oil-rich Kurdistan still under thumb of Baghdad ministers The Herald, UK - 20 Mar 2008 Kurdistan's oil minister, Ashti Harami, told us there are no limits to the success they can achieve: "You could create a new Dubai in every city in Iraq. ...

Iraq says it won't recognize oil deals with regional Kurdish ...
International Herald Tribune, France - 8 Mar 2008
AP ANKARA, Turkey: Iraq's oil minister said Saturday his government will not recognize any oil deals that the northern Kurdish self-governing region has ...

Chevron reportedly in talks to tap Iraq's oil

Chevron won't confirm or deny those reports, a company spokesman said Monday, yet Chevron has repeatedly expressed an interest in Iraq. The company has provided free technical training to Iraqi oil engineers in the five years since the U.S.-led invasion ousted Saddam Hussein.

"Generally, Chevron is interested in helping Iraq develop its industry, and we'd very much like to partner with them to help fulfill the government's production objectives," said spokesman Kurt Glaubitz.

The country's state-run oil industry has struggled with aging machinery and insurgent attacks on oil facilities since the invasion. Production averaged 2.4 million barrels per day in February, according to the Platts energy information service. Before the invasion, production averaged 2.5 million barrels per day.

But efforts to increase production and develop new fields have been stymied by Iraqi politics, as well as the widespread belief among Iraqis that the United States toppled Hussein to gain control of the country's oil.

Most of Iraq's known oil fields lie in the Kurdish north or the Shiite south. As a result, Sunnis who live in central Iraq worry that they could be cut out of any future oil boom. For several years, legislators from the three groups have argued over a proposed law that would divide oil revenue among the country's regions and set ground rules for foreign oil companies that want to work in Iraq.

The short-term contracts, called technical support agreements, may be an attempt by the Oil Ministry to make an end-run around legislators. The Iraqi Cabinet reportedly approved the move.

"It was a way to get things going without calling it a production agreement," said Frank Verrastro, director of the energy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "They've been sitting in abeyance for two years while oil prices have gone up. I think there's a growing realization (in the Iraqi government) that, 'Had we done this sooner, we'd be a lot better off today'."

Chevron Corp. and other international oil companies are negotiating with the Iraq Ministry of Oil to begin tapping into some of the country's largest oil fields, according to published reports.

Specifically, the companies are negotiating for two-year contracts that would help Iraq boost production at existing oil fields.

For years, the companies have had their eyes on long-term contracts to find and develop new oil fields in Iraq, which is believed to hold the world's third-largest oil reserves. The contracts under discussion are far more limited than that, but they represent an important step in opening Iraq's oil industry to foreign involvement after years of state control.

San Ramon's Chevron already has held discussions with the Iraqi Oil Ministry about one of the short-term contracts, according to reports in the Associated Press, Dow Jones, Reuters and United Press International news services. BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell and Total also are pursuing the contracts.

Under the technical support agreements, the oil companies would be providing studies, analysis, equipment and expertise at existing fields - not hunting for new ones. Exploring and developing new oil fields would require passage of the long-stalled oil law.

Chevron reportedly is negotiating for an agreement to help expand production at the West al-Qurna oil field, near Basra in southern Iraq. The ministry also wants to sign technical support agreements for the Rumaila and Zubair fields nearby, as well as the Kirkuk oil field in the north. And in what could be an effort to appease Sunnis, the ministry also said last weekend that it wants to develop the Akkas natural gas field in a Sunni-dominated corner of western Iraq.

The proposed oil law has often come under criticism from anti-war activists, who fear that the Iraqi government will be pressured into handing over too much control of its oil. The short-term agreements may not assuage those fears.

"My concern with these agreements is that they appear to be more than anything else a foot in the door, an opening for the oil companies while debate rages on over the long-term contracts," said Antonia Juhasz, author of "The Bush Agenda: Invading the World One Economy at a Time."

"It's for the Iraqis to decide the appropriate role of U.S. oil corporations in Iraq," she said. "The only time to be able to have this kind of negotiation is when there's no longer an occupation.

Turkish Parliament discusses Iraqi incursion behind doors

ANKARA TDN Parliamentary Bureau

Turkish Parliament yesterday discussed the results of the military's cross-border operation into northern Iraq in a closed session, which sparked a domestic debate between the brass and the opposition parties.

According to Turkish Constitution, the content of the closed sessions can only be made public ten years after the meeting was held. No reporting of its content can be made.

The meeting was called by the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) that slammed both the government and the military for an early withdrawal from northern Iraq, saying that they gave into pressure by the United States.

Cemil Çiçek, deputy prime minister, responded to the criticism of the representatives of CHP's deputies Onur Öymen and Şükrü Elekdağ. Nationalist Movement Party (MHP)'s Gündüz Aktan and Democratic Society Party's (DTP) Hasip Kaplan voiced their party's views during the session.

See also:

http://pma.com.tr/PROFILE.html

And my own article:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_ladybroa_080219_sibelgate_3a__us_offic.htm

Sibelgate: US officials visiting Turkey NOW

Iraq and Oil - the media begins to take up the issue

A Crude Case for War?

By Steven Mufson

Sunday, March 16, 2008; Page B01

It's hard to miss the point of the "Blood for Oil" Web site. It features one poster of an American flag with "Blood for oil?" in white block letters where the stars should be and two dripping red handprints across the stripes. Another shows a photo of President Bush with a thin black line on his upper lip. "Got oil?" the headline asks wryly.

This Story

• A Crude Case for War?
• Monday, March 17 at noon ET: Outlook: All About Oil?

Five years after the United States invaded Iraq, plenty of people believe that the war was waged chiefly to secure U.S. petroleum supplies and to make Iraq safe -- and lucrative -- for the U.S. oil industry.

We may not know the real motivations behind the Iraq war for years, but it remains difficult to distill oil from all the possibilities. That's because our society and economy have been nursed on cheap oil, and the idea that oil security is a right as well as a necessity has become part of our foreign policy DNA, handed down from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Jimmy Carter to George H.W. Bush. And the war and its untidy aftermath have, in fact, swelled the coffers of the world's biggest oil companies.

But it hasn't happened in the way anyone might have imagined.

Instead of making Iraq an open economy fueled by a thriving oil sector, the war has failed to boost the flow of oil from Iraq's giant well-mapped reservoirs, which oil experts say could rival Saudi Arabia's and produce 6 million barrels a day, if not more. Thanks to insurgents' sabotage of pipelines and pumping stations, and foreign companies' fears about safety and contract risks in Iraq, the country is still struggling in vain to raise oil output to its prewar levels of about 2.5 million barrels a day.

As it turns out, that has kept oil off the international market at just the moment when the world desperately needs a cushion of supplies to keep prices down. Demand from China is booming, and political strife has limited oil production in Nigeria and Venezuela.

In the absence of Iraqi supplies, prices have soared three-and-a-half-fold since the U.S. invasion on March 20, 2003. (Last week, they shattered all previous records, even after adjusting for inflation.) The profits of the five biggest Western oil companies have jumped from $40 billion to $121 billion over the same period. While the United States has rid itself of Saddam Hussein and whatever threat he might have posed, oil revenues have filled the treasuries of petro-autocrats in Iran, Venezuela and Russia, emboldening those regimes and complicating U.S. diplomacy in new ways.

American consumers are paying for this turmoil at the pump. If the overthrow of Hussein was supposed to be a silver bullet for the American consumer, it turned out to be one that ricocheted and tore a hole through his wallet.

"If we went to war for oil, we did it as clumsily as anyone could do. And we spent more on the war than we could ever conceivably have gotten out of Iraq's oil fields even if we had particular control over them," says Anthony Cordesman, an expert on U.S. strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who rejects the idea that the war was designed on behalf of oil companies.

But that doesn't mean that oil had nothing to do with the invasion. Says Cordesman: "To say that we would have taken the same steps against a dictator in Africa or Burma as we took in Iraq is to ignore the strategic realities that drove American behavior."

There is no single conspiracy theory about why the Bush administration allegedly waged this "war for oil." Here are two.

Version one: Bush, former Texas oilman, and Vice President Cheney, former chief executive of the contracting and oil-services firm Halliburton, wanted to help their friends in the oil world. They sought to install a pro-Western government that would invite the major oil companies back into Iraq. "Exxon was in the kitchen with Dick Cheney when the Iraq war was being cooked up," says the Web site of a group called Consumers for Peace.

Version two: As laid out in an April 2003 article in Le Monde Diplomatique, "The war against Saddam is about guaranteeing American hegemony rather than about increasing the profits of Exxon." Yahya Sadowski, an associate professor at the American University of Beirut, argues that "the neo-conservative cabal" had a "grand plan" to ramp up Iraqi production, "flood the world market with Iraqi oil" and drive the price down to $15 a barrel. That would stimulate the U.S. economy, "finally destroy" OPEC, wreck the economies of "rogue states" such as Iran and Venezuela, and "create more opportunities for 'regime change.' "

There are historical roots for all this suspicion. After World War I, the Western powers carved up oil-producing interests in the Middle East. In Iraq, the French were given about a quarter of the national consortium, and the U.S. government pressured its allies to turn over an equal share to a handful of American companies.

Even now, the fate of Iraq's concessions is laden with politics. Russia's Lukoil hopes to regain access to a giant field. China is seeking new fields. The big U.S. firms are angling to return to fields they ran before sanctions barred them during the 1990s. Smaller U.S., Turkish, European and Korean firms are gambling on new exploration deals with the autonomous Kurdish regional authority despite threats from Baghdad.

"One can imagine Iraq's oil fields as a pimple waiting to be pricked," says Antonia Juhasz, author of "The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time." She notes that the Bush administration put former oil executives on the reconstruction team, hired the Virginia consulting firm BearingPoint to write a framework for Iraq's oil industry, picked the Iraqis who took key oil ministry posts and has pressured Iraq to adopt a petroleum law favorable to international companies.

The petroleum law has become a rallying point for critics who say that the war was about oil. It would allow long-term production-sharing agreements, which Juhasz says are only used in 12 percent of the world "and only where the country needs to entice the companies to come." Defenders of the law, including exiled Iraqi oil experts, say that it provides for different types of contracts; how generous they are will depend on how well they are negotiated, but the law sets minimum conditions.

Greg Muttitt, another widely quoted war critic, who works for Platform London, a group of British environmentalists, human rights campaigners, artists and activists, says that an occupied country can't negotiate freely. What ended up in the proposed petroleum law, he says, was "pretty close" to what was in papers drafted by the State Department before the invasion. "Perhaps not surprising," he adds, given lobbying by U.S. officials and the role of former oil company executives in the reconstruction hierarchy.

That's the theory. The problem is: The petroleum law has not been adopted.

* * *

The idea that the Bush administration was in the tank for the oil industry glosses over a story of conflicting views before the U.S. invasion and the bungled execution of plans afterwards. There were two rival interagency policy groups before the war, one led by the Pentagon and one by the State Department. Some key differences were never resolved. Some Pentagon planners wanted Iraq to maximize oil output, while State worried that a flood of Iraqi oil could threaten Saudi interests and market share.

The notion of an oil war also conjures up an image of a swashbuckling, string-pulling oil industry that no longer reflects a business that in many ways has become cautious and fearful of political turmoil. Western oil interests did encourage the overthrow of Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadegh in the early 1950s and the war in Suez in 1956. But generally oil companies are content to forge alliances of convenience with leaders as diverse as Saudi kings, Angolan communists and Indonesia's late, long-time autocrat Suharto as long as they're predictable. On those leaders' politics, human rights record, ethnicity or religion, oil giants are agnostic.

"Companies don't like and won't make investments where there's uncertainty, and war is the biggest uncertainty of all," said Rob McKee, the former number two executive at ConocoPhillips and a former top U.S. official overseeing Iraq's oil sector. "On the other hand, companies were hoping that Iraq would open up, and as long as Saddam was there, Iraq couldn't. . . . From that point of view, maybe they were happy that there would be a change."

Still, the big firms had trepidations. In a conversation with a consultant shortly before the invasion, the chief executive of one of the five major oil companies described what he would say if asked to invest billions of dollars in Iraq after the war: Tell me about the contract system, arbitration, physical security and social cohesion, then I'll decide.

Five years later, he still hasn't decided, and physical security is so tenuous that the oil giants are still declining Iraqi invitations to send their employees to inspect existing fields.

This wasn't what Bush administration planners had expected.

Leading administration officials expected a postwar Iraq to reclaim its former position among oil exporters. "We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon," then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Congress just after the invasion, predicting that oil would generate $50 billion to $100 billion in revenues within two to three years. Ironically, Iraq might approach that figure this year because of high prices, not higher production.

Prewar planning settled who would oversee Iraq's oil sector. The Pentagon picked Phil Carroll, a well-respected former top executive at Royal Dutch Shell, who was succeeded by McKee. War critics point to such industry ties as evidence of nefarious influence, but former administration members say the choices were made on the basis of expertise. "If you wanted to get someone to help run an oil industry, who would you choose?" asked one person involved in selecting Carroll. "A broker on an exchange? An environmental expert? Or the head of an oil company?"

* * *

The controversial details were all part of the larger strategic picture. "When we first decided on the war, I don't remember oil playing an important part," says Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser under the elder Bush and a critic of the current president's decision to invade.

But that's because concern about oil supplies is part of the architecture of U.S. foreign policy. Scowcroft notes that oil can't be disregarded because Iraq and its neighbors sit on two-thirds of the world's oil reserves. But oil needn't be mentioned either because it's self-evident. War critics might call that the perfect conspiracy.

In a sense, though, all Americans are part of that conspiracy. We have built a society that is profligate with its energy and relies on petroleum that happens to be pooled under some unstable or unfriendly regimes. We have frittered away energy resources with little regard for the strategic consequences. And now it's hard and expensive to change our ways.

Zaab Sethna, a business consultant and former official of the Iraqi National Congress, says that he attended many Pentagon and State Department meetings and never heard postwar oil policy discussed.

But, he says, "Let's not kid ourselves. Iraq is sitting on a very large portion of oil itself and is in a key region of the world. And that makes it important for U.S. security interests. . . . The Iraqi opposition . . . realized that Rwanda wouldn't be getting the attention of the superpower."

Until Rwanda discovers oil.

mufsons@washpost.com

Steven Mufson covers energy for The Post.

Investigate Big Dick

By Stephen Pizzo, News for Real. Posted May 3, 2006.

Did Cheney and oil company execs lick their chops over Iraqi oil less than two years before we invaded Iraq? Shouldn't someone find out?

If the US Senate really wants to earn our respect, I have a suggestion for them: Hold bipartisan hearings into Dick Cheney's 2001 Energy Task Force.

If not now, when?

Low-wage working Americans can't afford to drive to their jobs? Already some folks have been forced to pawn personal items just to fill their tank for another week. How bad does it have to get before you guys up there start asking the questions you should have asked years ago -- and this time, demanding real answers.

So, Bill Frist, Harry Reid, pull together a bipartisan panel made up of your toughest, most skeptical prosecutional-minded members, hire a couple of junkyard dog lawyers to act as GOP and Dem counsels, and let the long overdue hearings begin.

Subpoena everyone who had anything to do with those meetings, including secretaries who transcribed the original minutes. Oh, and when you call oil industry execs back, put them under oath this time. Because they lied last time when they said they had no idea...

(Washington Post, May 2005) A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress ...The document, obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.

I mean really guys -- if not now, when?

Almost everyone else except Congress has tried to get this information out of the administration. The non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) filed suit in April 2002 seeking access to the records of Cheney's energy task force. But one of those "liberal activist federal judges" dismissed the suit. The Sierra Club carried its fight for those records all the way to the US Supreme Court, which in 2004 voted 7-2 to uphold "a paramount necessity of protecting the executive branch from vexatious litigation."

But just to make sure no one got lucky in court, the administration built a wide moat around all things it feels are none of our damn business; including whatever deals Cheney made in 2001 with energy company CEOs.

"WASHINGTON - As the Bush administration has dramatically accelerated the classification of information as 'top secret' or 'confidential,' one office is refusing to report on its annual activity in classifying documents: the office of Vice President Dick Cheney ... A standing executive order, strengthened by President Bush in 2003, requires all agencies and 'any other entity within the executive branch' to provide an annual accounting of their classification of documents. More than 80 agencies have collectively reported to the National Archives that they made 15.6 million decisions in 2004 to classify information, nearly double the number in 2001, but Cheney continues to insist he is exempt. (Full Story)

It's not as though we don't have good reason to suspect skullduggery was afoot at those meeting -- skullduggery that has now been allowed to manifest itself in the form of war, economic hardship for average Americans and record profits for the Big Energy folk who attended the meetings. Over the past four years we have learned little about what happened at those meetings, but what little we have learned startles even those of us who thought we had seen it all:

"Documents turned over in the summer of 2003 by the Commerce Department as a result of the Sierra Club's and Judicial Watch's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, concerning the activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force, contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as two charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and 'Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.' The documents, dated March 2001, also feature maps of Saudi Arabian and United Arab Emirates oilfields, pipelines, refineries and tanker terminals. There are supporting charts with details of the major oil and gas development projects in each country that provide information on the project's costs, capacity, oil company and status or completion date." (Full Text)

So, did Cheney and oil company executives lick their chops over Iraqi oil less than two years before we attacked over non-existent WMD? When the administration brushed off questions about Cheney's meetings by telling us they concerned "securing America's energy future," was this the plan they cooked up? To overthrow Saddam, set up a puppet government and pump, pump, pump? If so, that plan has gone terribly wrong.

So, shouldn't Congress find out? If not now, when?

Well, let me correct myself. Not everything went wrong for everyone; just 2,800 American kids who died and tens of thousands of Iraqis who died. Now American motorists are getting the shaft. But look who came out smelling like a rose. By disrupting oil supplies from Iraq, the world's third largest producer, and destabilizing the entire oil producing region, and now by threatening Iran, oil companies with oil assets in the Gulf, Alaska and other regions, have seen the price of their oil skyrocket. Clearly a seat at those energy task force meetings was a seat worth having -- worth billions.

"Last week, Exxon Mobil (the majority owner of Imperial Oil (AKA 'Esso') announced its first-quarter profits had risen 14 per cent to $8.4 billion over the same period last year. That followed similar announcements by Conoco/Phillips and Chevron, the next two largest U.S. integrated oil companies. Chevron's profits jumped 50 per cent to $4 billion while Conoco/Phillips saw its profits climb 13 per cent to $3.3 billion."

A citizen would think that such obscene profits, at the very time real wages of working Americans are falling, the cost of heating and cooling their homes rises every month and transportation costs soar, would provide Congress with some backbone.

Senators, this is where the proverbial rubber hits the road. Investigate. Not just Big Oil, but Big Dick as well. Inquiring minds want to know. We are waiting and we are watching. If not now, when?

Stephen Pizzo is the author of numerous books, including "Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans," which was nominated for a Pulitzer.