Big Oil Ready for Big Gamble in Iraq

[funflower]

Source: WSJ

BAGHDAD -- Next week, Iraqi officials plan a welcome-back party for Big Oil.

The government intends to auction off oil contracts to foreign companies for the first time since Iraq nationalized its oil industry more than three decades ago. If all goes according to plan in the first round, foreign oil companies will move in to help Iraq revive production at six developed fields that have suffered from years of war and neglect.

Iraqi oil minister Hussain al-Shahristani, left, and government spokesmen Ali al-Dabbagh held a joint press conference in Baghdad on June 10. The Iraqi government has hailed the start of oil exports from the semi-autonomous Kurdish region as a move toward ending a dispute with the Kurds.
.But Iraq's fractious politics have complicated the process. Some lawmakers and oil officials have called for a delay of the auction. The man behind the plan, Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani, appeared before parliament on Tuesday, where some lawmakers questioned the legality of the proposed contracts and what they called favorable terms for the foreign companies. But the auction appears to have sufficient political support to go ahead on schedule, and Mr. Shahristani and other government officials vowed to plow ahead.

Mr. Shahristani's oil deals are crucial to this war-torn country's economy. Iraq is thought to have one of the world's largest supplies of crude oil, with 115 billion barrels in proven reserves. But foreign know-how is key to its plans to boost oil output to four million barrels a day within four to five years, from 2.4 million barrels currently.

Despite security risks, Western oil companies are clamoring to get in. Iraq is still relatively unexplored, offering big companies a potentially easy-to-tap source of growth. Some are touting Iraq as the most important opening of petroleum fields since the discovery in 2000 of the giant Kashagan field in the Caspian Sea.



Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124579553986643975.html#mod=whats_news_free?mod=igoogle_wsj_gadgv1

[Skink]

1. Obama reaps the the rewards.

Kind of like the Iranian Coup. This is why Cheney is so pissed.

[funflower]

2. Big oil reaps the rewards. I'm sure Cheney's portfolio is very oily. n/t

[elleng]

3. Damn right.

The pay back for lying us into war.

[Bread and Circus]

4. This means we "won" the Iraq War. Because the whole fuckin' thing was about these contracts.

And the desire for these contracts was a response to world peak oil production in the near future.

[libodem]

9. spot on

[timeforpeace]

5. Irony abounds.

[Triana]

6. That's the whooooole reasone bu$hit, Inc. occupied the place. n/t

[lib2DaBone]

7. So that's why we're not pulling out.....

OIL Operation Iraq Liberation....

[Amonester]

8. Big Gamble my a**

The Iraqi resistance will just blow up every single pipeline 'subsidized' big oil will manage to build over and over.

I see it as the Big Squander of U.S. taxpayers' blood and money. Always has been. We knew it long before 2003.

But hey, the Dems said they were going to stop that Big Squander when? Three years ago?

Liar$. All (except Kucinich, and a few others).

[cliffordu]

10. You might want to consider the history of the people who run the oil business.

They'll kill anyone that gets in their way. Blackwater will need work.

Governments are incidental annoyances or tools to be used and discarded.


More cheap gas for everyone!!!!!!

I believe the oil will flow just fine. Iraq could have a middle class!!! We won't, but they might.

[saigon68]

11. This is what it was all about in the First Place

Weapons of mass destruction was PURE BULLSHIT

now the corporations after expending 2 trillion taxpayer dollars, MUCH BLOOD and countless lives from the lower classes.

ARE ABOUT TO FEED AT THE TROUGH LIKE THE PIGS THEY ARE.