Tony Blair’s £1m-a-year paymaster seeks giant Iraqi oil deal

[sabra]

Source: UK Times Online

A Middle Eastern investment fund that pays Tony Blair about £1m a year as an international adviser is in talks to develop one of Iraq’s biggest oilfields.

Mubadala, a United Arab Emirates investment firm, is in negotiations to join a consortium of western oil companies developing the Zubair oilfield in southern Iraq. More than £6 billion of investment is required for the project.

Blair has always insisted that the Iraq conflict was never linked to the country’s vast oil reserves, but he was facing criticism this weekend over his role with Mubadala. The investment firm, which receives 80% of its revenues from oil and gas, intends to build the biggest oil company in the eastern hemisphere.

It has been confirmed that Mubadala’s oil and gas division is in talks with Occidental Petroleum, an American company, about sharing some of its stake in the Zubair deal, which is to be developed by a consortium headed by Eni, the Italian energy firm. The talks were confirmed to financial analysts in a public briefing by Ray Irani, Occidental’s chief executive.

Zubair is one of Iraq’s largest oilfields, with four billion barrels of reserves. The Baghdad administration offered contracts to develop Iraqi oilfields to foreign companies for the first time last year and the Eni-led consortium has the preliminary go-ahead for the Zubair field.

Read more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article6973974.ece

[polly7]

1. Boy, they really thought we were all simpletons. All those millions of us

screaming "NO Blood For Oil" while they made their unholy deals dividing up Iraq's oilfields in their hidey-hole backrooms, while they laughed their *'s off at us.

[Amonester]

2. Tada!!

How many young soldiers "sacrificed" their lives for that bu$h lapdog's MILLIONS?

And how many other MILLIONS of innocents.

Where is The Hague's tribunal?? (Busy walking to their secret bank accounts?)

[Wizard777]

3. Well Blair can't let Cheney make ALL the money.

What is the sense of sending Britons to their death if you can't fill your deep pockets? That would just be a waste. Just because you don't have Royal Blood flowing through your veins. That doesn't mean you can't capitalize on British Blood.

:banghead: Until that damned wall falls!

[GreenTea]

4. But the illegal invasion of Iraq was all about "weapons of mass destruction" & NOT about oil

and the American people screamed at people like me, screaming we were not patriotic and the corporate media fired anyone who was against the invasion, who were in the streets protesting the sending of American troops for the illegal invasion of Iraq....and of course it was indeed all about oil & money for the corporations and the lying leaders of the US & UK....How do people become so dumb & easily manipulated as to always believe this shit?

[LiberalLovinLug]

5. Rape and pillage is a good business

Another astounding silence from the MSM news networks.
At least in the US. The BBC is usually more reliable getting the story out. Publicly owned....of course.

There would NEVER be a story about how much money, directly or indirectly, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc... made for themselves, or through family holdings, from the decision to invade Iraq, through the position of power and influence they had as a result. The worship of greedy capitalism in the US shields them to some degree. "Can't blame a guy for making a buck"

But why shouldn't it be different if there is a gross conflict of interest in that the Oil, Weapons and Construction company men who ordered the men and women into harms way, into a conflict whose reasons for it were sold as lies, made a ton of money out of it while causing untold suffering and death?

You know that the executives at the MSM news networks hired to steer the talking heads clear of these kinds of stories must be as psychotic as their masters, but does anyone else wonder why some of those talking heads Cooper, Blitzer, etc..don't demand these stories be told. I guess they like their $$$ more than their country.