Kurdish Officials to Back Iraq Oil Law

[cal04]

Kurdish authorities have agreed to back a draft law to manage and share Iraq's vast oil wealth, removing the last major obstacle to approving the measure and meeting a key U.S. benchmark in Iraq, a top Kurdish official said Saturday.

Approval of a new oil law could help open the way for international oil companies to invest billions to upgrade Iraq's decrepit wells and pipelines and exploit the country's reserves, among the world's largest.

The bill also provides a formula for distributing revenues among all major ethnic and religious groups, easing Sunni fears of being cut out of a future bonanza because their central and western homelands lack extensive reserves.

Massoud Barzani, president of the self-governing Kurdish administration in the north, announced the agreement at a joint press conference with U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and President Jalal Talabani. Barzani said he and Talabani had discussed the latest draft law by telephone with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070224/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_oil_law_1

[rodeodance]

1. it ain't a deal yet folks:

To win Kurdish approval, the current draft gives a major role to the regional administrations in awarding contracts but allows a committee under the prime minister to review them.

To satisfy the Sunnis, oil revenues would be distributed to the 18 provinces based on their populations — not on whether they have oil. It's unclear whether Sunni Arabs would accept a population-based formula since they have consistently challenged figures showing them as a minority.

While the Kurds want more control of revenue generated from their fields, others think the new proposals give the regions too much control.

If implemented, "The balance of power in the management of Iraq's oil and gas resources would have shifted alarmingly from the center to the regions," Tariq Shafiq, a former oil official who helped draft the first version, said in Amman, Jordan, this month.