US oil company helping to write the Iraqi Oil law.. Sound familiar

[rodeodance]

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=19599

Article posted Jan 19 2007, 12:50 AM Category: Commentary Source: Gulf News

Nothing but the oil truth
By Munir Daair, Special to Gulf News

The coin finally dropped. Stealthily, but we heard it loud and clear. It dropped while we were busy scratching our heads trying to figure out what plan America's current great leader, the eminent George W. Bush, has for Iraq, what truths were buried with Iraq's former great leader, the late eminent Saddam Hussain, how bloody Iraq's civil war will become.

This, after busily listening to tales of WMD's , the lies "we are not there for Iraq's oil", the sham of Iraq's election process and the billions gone missing under the watchful eyes of the occupying powers.

The oil truth is now unfolding. Everything else was a charade for America as it quietly drafted Iraq's new oil law to enrich further Bush's and Cheney's oil buddies for the next 30 years.

In fact, a representative of the American company Bearing Point has been quietly working in the US embassy in Baghdad to "assist" with the law to be approved by Iraq's parliament.

[mediaman007]

1. The oil still has to get out of the country...

I suspect that the pipelines are a major target.

[orleans]

2. looks like bearingpoint is going to make a killing

"As of December 18, 2003
After receiving new information and additional documents since original publication, the Center has updated the contract value and also posted the contract BearingPoint has with USAID. BearingPoint was awarded a $9 million initial award from USAID to facilitate Iraq's economic recovery. The first year of the contract is worth up to $79,583,885. According to the contract, the estimated value, including the two option years, is $240,162,668."



http://www.publicintegrity.org/wow/bio.aspx?act=pro&ddlC=5

[rodeodance]

3. Claiming the Prize: Bush Surge Aimed at Securing Iraqi Oil (jan 20)

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=19344

Analysis posted Jan 09 2007, 2:17 AM Category: Commentary Source: Chris Floyd

Claiming the Prize: Bush Surge Aimed at Securing Iraqi Oil
by Chris Floyd

I. The Twin Engines of Bush's War
The reason that George W. Bush insists that "victory" is achievable in Iraq is not because he is deluded or isolated or ignorant or detached from reality or ill-advised. No, it's that his definition of "victory" is different from those bruited about in his own rhetoric and in the ever-earnest disquisitions of the chattering classes in print and on-line. For Bush, victory is indeed at hand. It could come at any moment now, could already have been achieved by the time you read this. And the driving force behind his planned "surge" of American troops is the need to preserve those fruits of victory that are now ripening in his hand.

At any time within the next few days, the Iraqi Council of Ministers is expected to approve a new "hydrocarbon law" essentially drawn up by the Bush Administration and its UK lackey, the Independent on Sunday reports. The new bill will "radically redraw the Iraqi oil industry and throw open the doors to the third-largest oil reserves in the world," say the paper, whose reporters have seen a draft of the new law. "It would allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil companies in the country since the industry was nationalized in 1972." If the government's parliamentary majority prevails, the law should take effect in March.

As the paper notes, the law will give Exxon, BP, Shell and other carbon cronies of the White House unprecedented sweetheart deals, allowing them to pump gargantuan profits from Iraq's nominally state-owned oilfields for decades to come. This law has been in the works since the very beginning of the invasion – indeed, since months before the invasion, when the Bush Administration brought in Phillip Carroll, former CEO of both Shell and Fluor, the politically-wired oil servicing firm, to devise "contingency plans" for divvying up Iraq's oil after the attack. Once the deed was done, Carroll was made head of the American "advisory committee" overseeing the oil industry of the conquered land, as Joshua Holland of Alternet.com has chronicled in two remarkable reports on the backroom maneuvering over Iraq's oil: Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil and The U.S. Takeover of Iraqi Oil.

.........

crossposted from Editoral forum

[orleans]

4. but *we* knew that all along kinda, didn't we? n/t