From the (O)PERATION (I)RAQI (L)IBERATION files

What it was always about…Only the usual credulous Bushbuttsucking bumpkins yokels & oafs ever thought otherwise…

Crapitalist imperialist piggism is alive & well & living in Baghdad.

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Future of Iraq: The spoils of war: How the West will make a killing on Iraqi oil riches

By Danny Fortson, Andrew Murray-Watson and Tim Webb
The Independent (UK)
07 January 2007

Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.

The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.

The huge potential prizes for Western firms will give ammunition to critics who say the Iraq war was fought for oil. They point to statements such as one from Vice-President Dick Cheney, who said in 1999, while he was still chief executive of the oil services company Halliburton, that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010. "So where is the oil going to come from?... The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies," he said.

Oil industry executives and analysts say the law, which would permit Western companies to pocket up to three-quarters of profits in the early years, is the only way to get Iraq's oil industry back on its feet after years of sanctions, war and loss of expertise. But it will operate through "production-sharing agreements" (or PSAs) which are highly unusual in the Middle East, where the oil industry in Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world's two largest producers, is state controlled.

Opponents say Iraq, where oil accounts for 95 per cent of the economy, is being forced to surrender an unacceptable degree of sovereignty.
[ MORE ]


COMMENT: This was always George W. Bush’s “Mission”, don’t you know… Oil company profits should be expropriated for the reconstruction of Iraq as well as the social welfare of the American People especially veterans, children, pensioners. This disastrous war was fought for the Big Oil special interests at their stinking lying rotten instigation! They should be made to pay through the nose before their heads roll.