Iraq...It really is quite simple...

Iraqis Resist US Pressure to Enact Oil Law
By Tina Susman
Los Angeles Times
May 13, 2007
The problems of the oil bill bode poorly for the other so-called benchmarks that the Bush administration has been pressuring Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's government to meet.Those include provincial elections, reversing a prohibition against former Baath Party members holding government and military positions and revision of Iraq's constitution. Republican leaders in Washington have warned administration officials that if the Iraqi government fails to meet those benchmarks by the end of the summer, remaining congressional support for Bush's Iraq policies could crumble.Their impatience was underscored Wednesday by Vice President Dick Cheney during a visit here. "I did make it clear that we believe it's very important to move on the issues before us in a timely fashion, and that any undue delay would be difficult to explain," Cheney told reporters.

But Iraqi lawmakers show little sign of bending to accommodate Bush on an issue as crucial as oil. "We have two clocks — the Baghdad clock and the Washington clock — and this is a perfect example," said Mahmoud Othman, a lawmaker from the semiautonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq. "This has always been the case. Washington has been pushing the Iraqis to do things to fit their agenda."
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/2007/0513iraqisresist.htm

Our Man In Iraq
Ronald Jonkers is advising the Iraqi government on a new oil law.
By Daphne Eviatar
The American Lawyer
April 25, 2007
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This month, the Iraqi parliament is expected to vote on a new oil law. Assuming that the government doesn’t dissolve amid the chaos, the new law will determine how the country’s highly coveted natural resource will be exploited for decades to come—and who’s likely to reap the profits. It will also influence when U.S. troops leave Iraq, since it’s one of the key benchmarks set by the Bush administration.
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What’s really new about the law is that it would open the Iraqi oil industry’s doors wide open to foreign investment. Under Saddam Hussein, foreign investment was strictly limited, as it is in most major Middle Eastern oil-producing countries. Under the new law, the Iraq National Oil Company would have exclusive control of only about 17 of Iraq’s approximately 80 known oil fields.

The law would also allow the government to negotiate different kinds of exploration and production contracts with foreign oil companies, including Production Sharing Agreements, or PSAs. Energy lawyers favor these because they allow oil companies to secure long-term deals and book oil reserves as assets on their company balance sheets. A report on the future of Iraq’s oil industry from the International Tax and Investment Center, an industry organization whose board includes senior officials of the world’s largest publicly held oil and oil services companies, as well as partners from five Global 100 firms, confirms that’s exactly what the energy industry has been pressing for.
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Critics worry about the multinationals’ commitment to the country (or lack thereof). Under the proposed law, foreign companies would not have to invest their earnings in Iraq, hire Iraqi workers, or partner with Iraqi companies.

Critics also resent the secrecy surrounding the process. Not only were negotiations behind closed doors, but the proposed law wasn’t publicly available until recently, although the British and American governments, and many oil companies, were given early drafts, says Greg Muttitt, codirector of Platform, a London-based oil industry watchdog: “Iraqi civil society has been excluded from the process. Even Iraqi MPs are seeing the law for the first time now.”
http://www.law.com/jsp/tal/PubArticleTAL.jsp?id=1177491865424

US commander warns Iraq on lack of progress
Cites growing opposition to war seen in Congress
By Michael R. Gordon, New York Times News Service | June 12, 2007

BAGHDAD -- The top American military commander for the Middle East has warned Iraq's prime minister that the Iraqi government needs to make tangible political progress by next month to counter the growing tide of opposition to the war in Congress.

In a discussion that mixed gentle coaxing with a sober appraisal of politics in Baghdad and Washington, the commander, Admiral William J. Fallon, told Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in a meeting Sunday that the Iraqi government should aim to complete a law on the division of oil proceeds by next month.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2007/06/12/us_commander_warns_iraq_on_lack_of_progress/

First in the War, Then in the Oil Grab
Congressional Complicity
April 5, 2007
By RICHARD W. BEHAN
http://www.counterpunch.org/behan04052007.html
The US Congress has gone beyond compliance with George Bush's illegal war, and is now technically an accomplice-it is assisting with full knowledge in the perpetration of a crime. Congress has attained this status through two grave errors, one of omission and one of commission.

The Error of Commission

The Iraq Accountability Act passed the House as H.R. 1591 and slightly differently as S. 965 in the Senate. The versions await reconciliation in conference committee. Both bills set deadlines for troop withdrawal, both appropriate the money the President requested for prosecuting his war, and both require the Iraqi Parliament to pass its "hydrocarbon law," to enable the sharing of oil revenues among the Iraqi people.

Revenue sharing surfaced publicly when President Bush announced his troop surge initiative on January 10. It was one in a series of mandatory "benchmarks" he established for the Iraqi government to meet. "To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy," Mr. Bush said, "Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis." On the surface that is a benign, compassionate thing to do for a war-torn people.

As usual, it seems, Mr. Bush was consciously deceiving us. He failed to tell us the whole truth. The Iraqi hydrocarbon law also privatizes 81% of Iraq's currently nationalized petroleum resources, opening them to "investment" by Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, and two British oil companies, BP/Amoco and Royal Dutch/Shell. (For further details, see Joshua Holland, "Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil,") These companies expect to sign the rarely used and notoriously profitable contracts called "production sharing agreements" which guarantee them extraordinarily high profit margins: they might capture more than half of the oil revenues for the first 15-30 years of the contracts' lifespan, and deny Iraq any income at all until their infrastructure "investments" have been recovered.

So the Iraqi people will share among themselves all the revenue from 1/5th of their country's oil reserves. But they will get only a fraction from the remaining 4/5ths, where the American and British oil companies expect to generate immense profits. (Read more in Crude Designs, Greg Muttitt, ed., a report by the UK's Platform Group.)
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President Bush, then, is commanding the Iraqi Parliament to enact a law that was drafted first in President Bush's State Department. It requires Iraq to engineer the foreign capture of its own oil.

And Congress has agreed to this. That is complicity.

Was Congress ignorant of the consequences of the deceitful "benchmark?" No. Representative Dennis Kucinich offered an amendment to eliminate it from H.R. 1591. In a letter to his Democratic colleagues, Mr. Kucinich said, "By requiring the enactment of this law by the Iraqi government, Democrats will be instrumental in privatizing Iraqi oil."
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Congress is aware of the first small lie about Saddam Hussein's terrifying weaponry and savage antipathy. But it seems unable to acknowledge the far more significant lie about the war's purpose, and fails even to conduct a serious inquiry into it. This serious error of omission allows the criminal war to continue unchecked.

Congress meanwhile addresses the summary dismissal of 8 US attorneys, casually ignoring the greatest Presidential malfeasance in our history.

The US Congress is surrounded by a mountain of evidence of impeachable offenses, but insists "impeachment is off the table." To citizens recalling their high school classes in civics and U.S. History, that is intolerable. It seems to violate the oath to uphold and defend the Constitution every member of Congress has taken.
Richard W. Behan lives and writes on Lopez Island, off the northwest coast of Washington state. He is the author of Plundered Promise: Capitalism, Politics, and the Fate of the Federal Lands (Island Press, 2001) and he is working on his next book, To Provide Against Invasions: Corporate Dominion and America's Derelict Democracy. He can be reached at rwbehan@rockisland.com.
(This essay is deliberately not copyrighted: It may be reproduced without restriction.)
http://www.counterpunch.org/behan04052007.html

U.S., Congress, Committee on International Relations, Special Subcommittee on Investigations, Oil Fields as Military Objectives: A Feasibility Study, Report Prepared by the Congressional Research Service, 94th Cong., 1st sess., August 21, 1975, (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1975), Parts I and II, pp. 1-39.
ABSTRACT
The possible use of U.S. military force to occupy foreign oil fields in exigency first surfaced as a serious issue in January 1975. This paper provides perspective, so that the Congress if need be could participate most meaningfully in deliberations to determine the desirability and feasibility of any such action.

Analysis indicates that sustained sanctions by all or most of OPEC's members would disrupt America's fundamental lifestyle and degrade U.S. security, although survival would never be at stake. By way of contrast, the vital interests of our major allies could quickly be compromised.

Any decision to ease agonies at home and (if need be) assist allies would be conditioned by political, economic, social, legal, and moral factors, but if nonmilitary facets were entirely favorable, successful operations would be assured only if this country could satisfy all aspects of a five-part mission:

--Seize required oil installations intact.
--Secure them for weeks, months, or years.
--Restore wrecked assets rapidly.
--Operate all installations without the owner's assistance.
--Guarantee safe overseas passage for supplies and petroleum products.
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/Petroleum/fields.htm

Iraq Oil Law Details Untouched Fields, Blocks -Document
by Hassan Hafidh
Dow Jones Newswires 3/5/2007
URL: http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=42120

Mar 05, 2007 (Dow Jones Newswires)
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Development of the long-delayed draft law has suddenly picked up pace in recent weeks, with hopes that it may be approved by lawmakers later this month. It is expected to open the country's 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the world's third largest, to foreign investors.
In the latest draft, the law lists some 51 oil fields in various parts of Iraq that are ready for development, and 65 exploration blocks.

The potential oil wealth of the country is broken down into four appendices.

The first details the 27 fields already in production, including the South and North Rumala fields and Majnoon in the south, which is in need of further development.

The second names 25 fallow oil fields with proven reserves positioned near those that already pump crude. On paper, they are the easiest to develop because of their proximity to existing infrastructure. They include Rattawi, Siba and Howzah in southern Iraq, Mansouriyia, Nahrawan and Himreen in the center and Ismail, Makhmour and Qarah Jwaq in the north.
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The third appendix lists 26 fields scattered across the country, which aren't close to producing fields, making them a costlier challenge to develop. They are found in the provinces of Muthanna, Anbar, Suleimaniya, Kirkuk and Najaf, among others.
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The fourth names 65 blocks to be explored, with the majority in the Western Desert within the Sunni-held and strife-torn Anbar province northeast of Baghdad.
Copyright (c) 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
http://www.rigzone.com/news/article_pf.asp?a_id=42120

The Iraq Study Group
RECOMMENDATION 62:
• As soon as possible, the U.S. government should provide
technical assistance to the Iraqi government to prepare
a draft oil law that defines the rights of regional and
local governments and creates a fiscal and legal framework
for investment. Legal clarity is essential to attract
investment.
• The U.S. government should encourage the Iraqi government
to accelerate contracting for the comprehensive well
work-overs in the southern fields needed to increase production,
but the United States should no longer fund such
infrastructure projects.
• The U.S. military should work with the Iraqi military
and with private security forces to protect oil infrastructure
and contractors. Protective measures could include a
program to improve pipeline security by paying local
tribes solely on the basis of throughput (rather than fixed
amounts).
• Metering should be implemented at both ends of the supply
line. This step would immediately improve accountability
in the oil sector.
• In conjunction with the International Monetary Fund, the
U.S. government should press Iraq to continue reducing
subsidies in the energy sector, instead of providing grant
assistance. Until Iraqis pay market prices for oil products,
drastic fuel shortages will remain.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/document/2006/12iraqstudygroup.pdf