"The Iraqi people refuse to allow the future of their oil to be decided behind closed doors."

[seafan]

....according to a statement issued by Iraqi trade union leaders.

As reported by the The Independent, this pending law granting a massive share of Iraq's oil wealth to Western oil companies would allow these foreign oil giants, while their costs are being recovered, to recoup 60 to 70 percent of revenue, when 40 percent is more usual. It would also allow for these foreign companies to keep 20 percent of revenue even after they previously recouped their costs, when keeping 10 percent is the accepted norm.

In addition, these Production Sharing Agreements of more than 30 years are unusual, usually reserved for areas such as the Amazon, where a decade may be needed before production can begin. Iraq poses no such hardship, as most of its oil is already mapped and easily accessible.


And, this 40-page document would strip the Iraqis of the ability to arbitrate any disagreements with the foreign oil companies, by stating that any arbitration must be handled by international entities, not Iraqi.

To add insult to injury, these foreign companies would be allowed to take all of their profits out of Iraq, and be subject to no taxes while doing so.


Bush and Blair were and are very busy, "catapulting the propaganda."

Mr Muttitt (of Platform, a human rights and environmental group that monitors the oil industry) echoed warnings that unfavourable deals done now could unravel a few years down the line, just when Iraq might become peaceful enough for development of its oil resources to become attractive. The seeds could be sown for a future struggle over natural resources which has led to decades of suspicion of Western motives in countries such as Iran.
Iraqi trade union leaders who met recently in Jordan suggested that the legislation would cause uproar once its terms became known among ordinary Iraqis.
"The Iraqi people refuse to allow the future of their oil to be decided behind closed doors," their statement said. "The occupier seeks and wishes to secure... energy resources at a time when the Iraqi people are seeking to determine their own future, while still under conditions of occupation."
The resentment implied in their words is ominous, and not only for oil company executives in London or Houston. The perception that Iraq's wealth is being carved up among foreigners can only add further fuel to the flames of the insurgency, defeating the purpose of sending more American troops to a country already described in a US intelligence report as a cause célèbre for terrorism.

"Three outside groups have had far more opportunity to scrutinise this legislation than most Iraqis," said Mr Muttitt. "The draft went to the US government and major oil companies in July, and to the International Monetary Fund in September. Last month I met a group of 20 Iraqi MPs in Jordan, and I asked them how many had seen the legislation. Only one had."

James Paul of Global Policy Forum, another advocacy group, said: "The US and the UK have been pressing hard on this. It's pretty clear that this is one of their main goals in Iraq." The Iraqi authorities, he said, were "a government under occupation, and it is highly influenced by that. The US has a lot of leverage... Iraq is in no condition right now to go ahead and do this."
Mr Paul added: "It is relatively easy to get the oil in Iraq. It is nowhere near as complicated as the North Sea. There are super giant fields that are completely mapped, there is absolutely no exploration cost and no risk. So the argument that these agreements are needed to hedge risk is specious."

Now, unnoticed by most amid the furore over civil war in Iraq and the hanging of Saddam Hussein, the new oil law has quietly been going through several drafts, and is now on the point of being presented to the cabinet and then the parliament in Baghdad. Its provisions are a radical departure from the norm for developing countries: under a system known as "production-sharing agreements", or PSAs, oil majors such as BP and Shell in Britain, and Exxon and Chevron in the US, would be able to sign deals of up to 30 years to extract Iraq's oil.

.....

Critics fear that given Iraq's weak bargaining position, it could get locked in now to deals on bad terms for decades to come. "Iraq would end up with the worst possible outcome," said Greg Muttitt of Platform, a human rights and environmental group that monitors the oil industry. He said the new legislation was drafted with the assistance of BearingPoint, an American consultancy firm hired by the US government, which had a representative working in the American embassy in Baghdad for several months.

.....

Britain and the US have always hotly denied that the war was fought for oil. On 18 March 2003, with the invasion imminent, Tony Blair proposed the House of Commons motion to back the war. "The oil revenues, which people falsely claim that we want to seize, should be put in a trust fund for the Iraqi people administered through the UN," he said.

"The United Kingdom should seek a new Security Council Resolution that would affirm... the use of all oil revenues for the benefit of the Iraqi people."
That suggestion came to nothing. In May 2003, just after President Bush declared major combat operations at an end, under a banner boasting "Mission Accomplished", Britain co-sponsored a resolution in the Security Council which gave the US and UK control over Iraq's oil revenues. Far from "all oil revenues" being used for the Iraqi people, Resolution 1483 continued to make deductions from Iraq's oil earnings to pay compensation for the invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

And, at the end of the article, is this:

WHAT THEY SAID

"Oil revenues, which people falsely claim that we want to seize, should be put in a trust fund for the Iraqi people"
---Tony Blair; Moving motion for war with Iraq, 18 March 2003


"Oil belongs to the Iraqi people; the government has... to be good stewards of that valuable asset "
---George Bush; Press conference, 14 June 2006


"The oil of the Iraqi people... is their wealth. We did not for oil "
---Colin Powell; Press briefing, 10 July 2003


"Oil revenues of Iraq could bring between $50bn and $100bn in two or three years... can finance its reconstruction"
---Paul Wolfowitz; Deputy Defense Secretary, March 2003


"By 2010 we will need 50 million barrels a day. The Middle East, with two-thirds of the oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize lies"
---Dick Cheney; US Vice-President, 1999

Bush, Cheney and Blair worked overtime to deceive all of us.

I hope there is a way that this finely crafted oil *deal* benefiting these three jackals and their cronies can be blocked. We must not stand by while a severely weakened Iraq, brutally destroyed by George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney, is forced to submit to this thievery of their natural resources because of the threats of the occupiers.

If it is forced into *law*, it will sow the seeds of a brutal and unrelenting wave of violence against those who would steal from Iraq.

[Fridays Child]

1. k/r

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

2. THIS is why the Iraqi's risked their lives to vote. They want control of their

destiny.

And, I believe whole heartedly that they voted against American occupation of Iraq, just like we did.

Only we're all told to shop till we drop while the Iraqi's have Dante's Inferno visited upon them daily. :cry: MKJ

[Imagevision]

5. K&R!!!

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. Ha! They don't like the capitalist process any better than we do.

[Imagevision]

4. Bush's Victory in Iraq: Securing the Oil acquisitions for US. Oil Companies

Bush & Cheney first and foremost are Oilmen, securing the flow of oil from Iraq is no different then if it was in texas, except bush actually is using the US. military to achieve his goals! 3011 killed --22,000+ maimed & wounded? it goes with the job.

[irislake]

6. Go Iraqi People Go!

People around the world should be marching in the streets on their behalf to help them keep their oil. What an outrage!

[welshTerrier2]

7. Democrats need to call for the voiding of these contracts!!!

this is exactly why we went to war ...

there is no excuse for not calling for the voiding of all oil contracts entered into while the US is in occupation ...

[ShortnFiery]

8. Why is it we get the most IMPORTANT news scoops from the UK?

I think that our corporate M$M has absolutely no shame ... and they SUCK! :P

[AtomicKitten]

9. I believe this was decided during Cheney's Energy Task Force

in 2001, records of which have been fought over in court until Cheney successfully judge-shopped and found a compliant activist judge.

[AzDar]

10. Kick n/t

[JunkYardAngel]

11. This just makes me so angry.....

I remember, before the war started, hearing Blair call those who believed the war was about oil "conspiracy theorists". Well it seems those so-called conspiracy theorists were right while the justifications of those who pursued war have all been shown to be lies.

The chaos in Iraq today is not the result of incompetence but of indifference. The architects of this war could care less about the casualties on any side as long as they can carve up the country's natural resources for their own profit. It is disgraceful that they are getting away with this while people are being killed every day!

I agree with the poster up thread that people all over the world should be on the streets over this. After all, any of us might endure the same fate as the Iraqis if we have the misfortune to find ourselves living on top of a valuable natural resource. :grr:

[Peace Patriot]

12. "if we have the misfortune to find ourselves living on top of a valuable

natural resource..."

We do live on top of enormous natural resources--and who has benefited? We get oil gouging, millions of jobs outsourced, our schools and infrastructure crumbling, skyrocketing medical costs, looting of savings & loans banks, government pensions and Social Security, usurious credit card costs, bankruptcy, loss of our homes, thousands of homeless families, our veterans neglected, our logging industry and fishing industry going belly up in many places--mills closing, jobs lost--massive deforestation causing loss of fish, wildlife, water quality--and contributing to global warming--strip-mining, pollution of air, water and soil--while multinational corporations swim in ungodly profits and take over the White House and rip up the Constitution.

They couldn't get away with just outright killing massive numbers of Americans, but the slow boil of corruption, while less dramatic than the slaughter in Iraq, has been no less effective. I've worked on deforestation issues, so I have some idea of just how bad the corruption of our government is. And now it includes direct corporate predator control over our election results, with "trade secret," proprietary programming code in all the new electronic voting systems--with virtually no audit/recount controls. (I mean, come on...it's just mind-boggling.)

And then there are other resources--besides the vast natural resources of the U.S.A.--such as the U.S. military itself, the biggest military machine in human history, appropriated for a corporate resource war, and Davis' budget surplus in California, stolen by Enron, and Clinton's federal budget surplus, stolen by Bush to accommodate his oil buds and the super-rich.

In South America these days people are catching on--in a big way--to the matter of national sovereignty vis a vis global corporate predators--and have strengthened their democratic institutions--such as transparent elections--and are taking their countries back. We can learn from them. We are the "banana republic" now. And our fascist "banana republic" junta in the White House is doing to the Iraqis what it would like to do here, and what it will do here, if we don't stop it. It is the last stage of a slow-moving fascist coup that began under Reagan--and the harbingers of what they intend, and what they are capable of, can be found in Katrina, murderous neglect of our citizenry, and torturing of prisoners, criminal defiance of the law and of any sense of common decency.

So, although the Iraqis have taken a genocidal hit of Corporate Rule--because their country has so much oil--we, too, are already in the category of the exploited, because we had vast treasure to be stolen, and a big military to be appropriated, and have permitted these corporate criminals to steal all of our resources while giving nothing back. And now they are after blood. They want our last dimes. They want to squeeze us dry. They want, not just our soldiers' lives, but our children's future. They want democracy to end, and slave labor to begin, here, in the land of the free, home of the brave. They want to be able to round up and exterminate those who resist. They have put laws in place, and have prompted Bush to assert vast illegal powers, toward that end. They are well aware that WE are the people whom they must ultimately crush, in order to exercise unfettered power over all the remaining resources of earth and all other peoples. We are no longer of value to them even as "the golden goose." They have vast new markets in China and India and elsewhere. Our lives are of no consequence to these bloody-minded sharks. WE are Iraqis, to them. Our laws, our will, our Constitution, our health, our well-being, our communities, our safety--all being brushed aside in the pursuit of unconscionable profit for the few. And unless we take them on, and defeat them, peacefully and democratically, we will end up just like the Iraqis--our country destroyed and in civil chaos, with millions starving and displaced, and hundreds of thousands dead.


--------------------------

Throw Diebold, ES&S and all election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' now!

[JunkYardDogg]

13. Kick

N/T