Juan Gonzalez: Oily Truth Emerges in Iraq

from the NY Daily News, via CommonDreams:


Published on Thursday, February 22, 2007 by the New York Daily News
Oily Truth Emerges in Iraq
by Juan Gonzalez

Throughout nearly four years of the daily mayhem and carnage in Iraq, President Bush and his aides in the White House have scoffed at even the slightest suggestion that the U.S. military occupation has anything to do with oil.

The President presumably would have us all believe that if Iraq had the world's second-largest supply of bananas instead of petroleum, American troops would still be there.

Now comes new evidence of the big prize in Iraq that rarely gets mentioned at White House briefings.

A proposed new Iraqi oil and gas law began circulating last week among that country's top government leaders and was quickly leaked to various Internet sites - before it has even been presented to the Iraqi parliament.

Under the proposed law, Iraq's immense oil reserves would not simply be opened to foreign oil exploration, as many had expected. Amazingly, executives from those companies would actually be given seats on a new Federal Oil and Gas Council that would control all of Iraq's reserves. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0222-21.htm

who could have ever imagined such a thing...

especially on Peak Oil and Global Warming. "Blood for Oil" is the other side of the "Global Warming" - "Peak Oil" coin. (Three sides coin? Oh well).

War can change a lot:

"... Take, for example, the massive Majnoon field in southern Iraq near the Iranian border, which contains an estimated 20 billion barrels. Before Saddam Hussein was toppled by the U.S. invasion in 2003, he had granted a $4 billion contract to French oil giant TotalFinaElf to develop the field.

"In the same way, the Iraqi dictator signed contracts with Chinese, Russian, Korean, Italian and Spanish companies to develop 10 other big oil fields once international sanctions against his regime were lifted.

"The big British and American companies had been shut out of Iraq, thanks to more than a decade of U.S. sanctions against Saddam.

"But if the new law passes, those companies will be the ones reviewing those very contracts and any others....."