Iraq's oil auction hits the jackpot

[FarCenter]

BEIJING - Former United States vice president Dick Cheney, ex-defense minister Donald Rumsfeld and assorted US neo-cons will have plenty of time to nurse their apoplexy. One of their key reasons to unleash the war on Iraq in 2003 was to seize control of its precious oilfields and thus shape a great deal of the new great game in Eurasia - the energy front - by restricting the access of Europe and Asia to Iraq's staggering 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves.

After at least US$2 trillion spent by Washington and arguably more than a million dead Iraqis, it has come to this: a pipe dream definitely buried this past weekend in Baghdad with round two of bids to exploit a number of vast and immensely profitable oil fields.

The bids, supervised by the Oil Ministry, were presented on a live TV game show. Instead of American Idol, Iraqis got "Oil Idol". In a raucous carpet bazaar atmosphere, the ministry played "my way or the highway" and forced 44 foreign Big Oil corporations to cut to the max the fee they collect on every barrel extracted in Iraq and submit to 20-year contracts. These multinationals were not given a share in Iraqi oil production; they will be paid a $2 fee per barrel for raising output above a mutually agreed level.

<SNIP>
Cheney's and Rumsfeld's script was never supposed to develop like this. Instead of US Big Oil getting the lion's share, strategic competitors Russia and China turned out to be big winners. Dick Cheney's "consolation prize" was an Exxon-Mobil-Shell alliance getting the phase 1 of West Qurna in early November. Exxon-Mobil had been the favorite to also win Rumaila (17.8 billion barrels of reserves). But a BP-CNPC (China National Petroleum Corporation) alliance got it in the end because unlike Exxon-Mobil they agreed to cut their fee per barrel down to the Oil Ministry-enforced $2.

<SNIP>
What the early 2010s will definitely see is the rise of a relatively wealthy, Shi'ite-controlled Iraq friendly with Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah. Essentially, Shi'ite Islam on the rise. The US-friendly autocracies and dictatorships in the Gulf will cry again, "It's the return of the Shi'ite crescent!" United States think-tanks may be tempted to define Maliki as the new Saddam. The only difference is that by then, Cheney and company will be safely ensconced in the dustbin of history.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KL16Ak02.html

[louis-t]

1. Wow.

Just wow.

[SchoolBoy]

2. Good for them

After the last 3 decades, the Iraqi people deserve a break.

[SchoolBoy]

3. But Iraq is one of the most corrupt nations in the world...

[walldude]

4. Really, I thought we brought Democracy to it...

Are you saying we spent trillions of dollars and thousands of lives and got less than nothing in return? Say it isn't so!

[FarCenter]

7. Just wait for the House Un-American Activities Committee

To start searching for "who lost Iraq?" and "who is soft on Islam?"

[zbdent]

6. that explains why Dick Cheney wanted Halliburton there ...

that, and the $9 billion in cold hard US cash that just plain "disappeared" ... likely into Cheney's numbered Swiss bank account ...

[FarCenter]

8. One of -- the other would be Afghanistan!

[Goldstein1984]

5. Karma has its way

Somethings things fall together so neatly.