The oil rush

The oil rush

http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article2132500.ece

"The oil can is mightier than the sword," said the 19th-century US Senator Everett Dirksen. Nowhere does this seem more true than in contemporary Iraq where, despite widespread despair about the war's costs in terms of blood and treasure, US corporations look set to be some of the conflict's few winners. The announcement that the Iraqi government is planning to change its constitution to allow foreign extraction of oil will give Western companies access to the world's third largest oil reserves. Production sharing agreements (PSAs), lasting for up to 30 years, will divert up to 75 per cent of Iraqi oil revenues to Western drilling companies until their initial investment costs have been recouped. The importance of this cannot be overstated for a shattered country still reliant on oil for 95 per cent of its income.

...

But it doesn't demand the fevered imaginings of a conspiracy theorist to think that this law, struck while the beleaguered Iraqi government is facing opposition from all quarters, protects the interests of oil wealth (which is so well represented in the White House) more than it does the Iraqi people. Production sharing agreements don't apply in most other major Middle Eastern oil producers because they are widely thought to grant greater control to companies than governments. With economies so heavily dependent on oil, it's hard to see how countries can truly be self-governing if they sign away influence over their almost exclusive source of wealth.

Legitimate questions must be asked. How did this decision come to be made? How much pressure was President Nouri al-Maliki placed under to bend to the American corporate interests? Conservative US thinktanks such as the Heritage Foundation have been plotting the wholesale privatisation of the Iraqi oil industry for years. Since 2003, the supposed reconstruction of Iraq by US companies has left a bitter taste with most Iraqis who see a symbiotic relationship between the US military and big business that would make a British district commissioner in imperial Africa blush.

From the immediate aftermath of the invasion, the ill-fated US proconsul, Paul Bremer, denied the Iraqi government the ability to give preference to Iraqis in the reconstruction effort. Instead, US companies were awarded contracts totalling more than $50bn. And they have conspicuously failed to deliver. Despite billions spent, clean water, sanitation and electricity are below pre-war levels. The spectre of Americans scouting the country for oil at the same time as the death toll from the insurgency reaches new heights could shatter whatever residual faith is left among the Iraqis in the intentions of Western policy. Iraqis will reach the natural conclusion that, from the beginning, the Iraq adventure was an attempt to steal imperial spoils...


http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article2132500.ece

He was elected to the senate in 1950.

I stopped reading after that.

of an excellent analysis.