Iraqis miss oil fortune: report (billions going to foreign oil companies)

:nuke:

The report is available here:

Mr. Wolfiwitz / Cheney? Seem to remember something about "war paying for itself."

peace.

indict them all and fine them the billions they stole. Let them clean up the mess that's still in New O. for community service---they can help clean out refrigerators and sweep sludge piles and so on.

Cheney will have a heart attack, tho, which is too good for him.

Please please please make sure this story gets out!
America should leave Iraq, and should leave Iraq in control of its own resources.

lest some crazy mixed-up leaders in Iraq get the weird notion that the oil belongs to Iraqis and they think of using the Iraqi Army to nationalize oil production.

The article is very circumspect about actually naming any of those "multinational oil companies" that are lining up to steal Iraq's natural resources. The money quote, as always, is buried near the bottom of the short article:

Louise Richards, chief executive of aid charity War on Want, said: "People have increasingly come to realise that the Iraq war was about oil, profits and plunder."

do you blame them. Hey I got a really good idea why not take the oil revenues and pay for the reconstruction. :sarcasm:
If anyone thinks that our government is not corrupt needs their head examined.

The U.S. Troops need to be pulled out now!
The U.S. is stealing their oil under the disguise of "Free Trade" and killing people for it!!!

I knew that this is what it was all about!
They want to keep the troops there until the oil fields are secured!!!
LYING THIEVES!!!:argh:

Somebody at CNN has to get this out!

of liberal crazies :spank:

We already know what CNN is like.

they need to get more use out of their Situation Room.

:-)

Hey, DICK!!!! Tell the American people how you and your secret group PLANNED to sell off Iraq's oil resources BEFORE THE WAR!!!!!

Hey, DICK!!! You greedy muther pucker!!!! Tell the Americans (YOUR PEOPLE) about your profiteering scheme!!! Be sure to let them know about your buddy, "Prince of Darkness" Perle's "war business" meetings, too.

YOU SICK, BARBARIC FUCKS!!! :grr:

You can't beat the combination of War Profiteering and Crony Capitalism in the Bush-Cheney Cabal.

Vice President Dick Cheney, the former head of Halliburton, who has steered numerous no-bid no-compete contracts for the War on Iraq to his former company holds Halliburton stock options which have risen 3,281% since 2004, says New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg, in a report published by Raw Story (http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Cheneys_stock_options_rose_3281_last_1011.html)

Lautenberg claims that Cheney's stock options, which were worth $241,498 a year ago are now valued at more than $8 million.

“Halliburton has already raked in more than $10 billion from the Bush-Cheney Administration for work in Iraq, and they were awarded some of the first Katrina contracts," Lautenberg said in a statement. "It is unseemly for the Vice President to continue to benefit from this company at the same time his Administration funnels billions of dollars to it. The Vice President should sever his financial ties to Halliburton once and for all.

Pentagon auditors have also reported on Halliburton's war profiteering and fraud-driven business, but the company has never been actually indicted.

In the highly profitable War on Iraq, Halliburton was found to have served US troops toxic water, as well as marked up meal and gas prices to egregious levels.

Halliburton fraud is so common in fact that mainstream media hardly ever report it anymore.

branch.

Like we didn't know already.

No wonder all those foreign insurgents are coming in from Syria and Iran and places north, south, east and west of there. They're real upset the Iraqis are being stolen blind. If the Iraqis cared they'd probably foment their own insurgency.

:sarcasm:

You're poor, and black, and trying to survive the hell of Katrina. You go into a store, and get baby formula, diapers, and a loaf of bread, and you're a looter, a thief. You're rich, and white, and you use other people's children to fight and die, so that you can steal another country's resources, and you're...a member of the Bush administration.

To any lurking freepers, or Bush fans, you are lying, hypocritical sacks of shit for enabling this. We WILL take back the country in 2006 and 2008. If we don't, there won't be any country left for us to take back.

We don't have to wait til then to get out of Iraq, and have all of these contracts...weren't they negotiated by Paul Bremmer?...declared illegal, null and void. We also need to see the real information concerning the Dick's energy meetings. Then, along with the Dick, the whole administration needs to stand trial at the Hague.

"You're rich, and white, and you use other people's children to fight and die, so that you can steal another country's resources, and you're...a member of the Bush administration."

Owners of mineral rights in the US normally get 1/8 to 3/16 of the gross oil sold on their place. Some get more, but they have to take a working interest, which means they also have to pay part of the overhead. If the people of Iraq want to keep all their oil profits then they will need to be the operators.

No company in the world can force its individual self onto any particular formation. wooops, 'cept in countries we're savin' o'course!

Let's face it, these guys are thieves, and these wells used to have other operators. Saudi sure didn't settle for 18%, did they?

And they need to do it again, and most likely they will.

(Saudi sure didn't settle for 18%, did they?)
They probably did until their lease or agreement run out, by then they had the knowledge, training, and money to take it on by themselves.

Are they supposed to lie down and have their country raped of its natural wealth?

"The terrorists want to control the oil. Our way of life will be at risk". George W. Bush (Nov. 2005)

The Hand-Over That Wasn't: Illegal Orders give the US a Lock on Iraq's Economy
by Antonia Juhasz

Officially, the U.S. occupation of Iraq ended on June 28, 2004. But in reality, the United States is still in charge: Not only do 138,000 troops remain to control the streets, but the "100 Orders" of L. Paul Bremer III remain to control the economy.

These little noticed orders enacted by Bremer, the now-departed head of the now-defunct Coalition Provisional Authority, go to the heart of Bush administration plans in Iraq. They lock in sweeping advantages to American firms, ensuring long-term U.S. economic advantage while guaranteeing few, if any, benefits to the Iraqi people.

The Bremer orders control every aspect of Iraqi life - from the use of car horns to the privatization of state-owned enterprises. Order No. 39 alone does no less than "transition from a … centrally planned economy to a market economy" virtually overnight and by U.S. fiat.

Although many thought that the "end" of the occupation would also mean the end of the orders, on his last day in Iraq Bremer simply transferred authority for the orders to Prime Minister Iyad Allawi - a 30-year exile with close ties to the CIA and British intelligence.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0805-07.htm

Only then will they receive 100%

That's what I thought.

sure as hell aren't going to go to the Iraqis. Wolfowitz and his boys had this worked out a loooong time ago.

is that we(the taxpayers) are actually paying out more to the Iraqis in various forms of funding than we are taking back in through oil revenues or whatever. We're actually spending several billion a month on this war and both us and the Iraqis are losing out.

How about a windfall profits tax on the war profiteers?

oversight processes in place?

:sarcasm:

but we all saw this coming, didn't we ..... this administration is criminal.

A good book on this subject by Linda McQuaig.

oh wait a minute, didn't American taxpayers foot the bill?

How many barrels of oil per death?

Not that I advocate that kind of violence but they are just trying to get back at Hallibarfon and the rest of the corporations under the BushCo umbrella.

"In order to make major quantum increases in oil, we need to have production-sharing agreements," Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi said recently.

But critics note that the terms of such contracts, now keenly promoted by the U.S. and Britain, bar local authorities from amending them in the future and are subject to confidentiality provisions.

Developed in the 1960s, the contracts keep legal ownership of oil reserves in state hands, thus avoiding allegations that national wealth has been transferred to foreign hands. But in practice, they give oil companies the same results as the concession agreements they replaced. PSAs guarantee investors stable taxes for the life of the project.

Iraqis will not be able to contest the contracts in their own courts, because they require that all disputes be heard by international investment tribunals. Such tribunals have traditionally ruled based on commercial interests rather than on national interests, international law or human rights.

"This report calls for full and open debate in Iraq about the way oil resources are to be developed, not 30-year deals negotiated behind closed doors," the authors said in a statement, warning that oil companies, backed by the might of the United States and Britain, may take further advantage of the fragile state of the government in Iraq.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=31153