Remember that ol’ adage? I sure do and I mean to tell ya, whenever I’d hear that little ditty from my mom it was usually in response to me buggin’ her about an early withdrawal from my Christmas club or something. When it came from my dad, it was usually about him not sharing a beer with me "till I was older." Either way, it meant just one thing to me: I had to wait, every damn time, and waitin’ ain’t fun when you’re ten.
It’s not at all clear yet just how long BP, Exxon-Mobil and Shell will have to wait for their "good things." Whenever the violence ebbs in Iraq, I suppose. Well, that might not be how it goes though. Could be that the "surge" actually works to a certain extent, quickly, and U.S. troops that are housed in those four brand-spankin’ new military bases will be able to perform their duties ridin’ shotgun for the tanker trucks heading off to the Gulf, in just a few years. Make no mistake about it though: our troops, or at least a great deal of them, won’t be comin’ home until the Mesopotamian oil spigot is flowin’ free and easy, and all the terrorists are gone... or dead.
More below:
So, it finally comes out, folks – the real rationale for the Iraqi invasion. Big oil has done what the mighty U.S. Military coudn't: establish a representative democracy in Iraq – amongst themselves, that is. They’ll all be sharing equally the whole 75% of Iraqi oil profits they’re entitled to due to a soon-to-be-law pending right now in the Iraqi Congress that will only decrease the exorbitant profit rate to a measly 20% after the oil companies recoup all their startup costs – expected to take years. (and, btw, 20% is double the usual industry profit rate for the region)
Hey, that’s only fair, right? I mean, all the blood and treasure they invested in this grand venture... oops, damn, that wasn’t Exxon-Mobil. That would be the American people investing all that blood and treasure – not to mention the Iraqi people’s very generous contribution to the cause. Oh well, I’m sure the price of oil will go down to ‘bout $20 per barrel and stay there for the 30-year extent of their contracts. (yeah right)
Sunday’s The Independent Online Edition has more:
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.
Hmmm, I wonder how that escaped the news in the U.S. Eh, must not have been fit to print.
Here’s more from the article:
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.
Not surprisingly, oil accounts for 95% of the Iraqi economy, and according to critics, the new law forces the country to surrender an unacceptable degree of sovereignty along with the profits.
Back to the article:
Proposing the parliamentary motion for war in 2003, Tony Blair denied the "false claim" that "we want to seize" Iraq's oil revenues. He said the money should be put into a trust fund, run by the UN, for the Iraqis, but the idea came to nothing. The same year Colin Powell, then Secretary of State, said: "It cost a great deal of money to prosecute this war. But the oil of the Iraqi people belongs to the Iraqi people; it is their wealth, it will be used for their benefit. So we did not do it for oil."
Greg Muttitt, a researcher for Platform, a human rights and environmental group which monitors the oil industry, said Iraq was being asked to pay an enormous price over the next 30 years for its present instability. "They would lose out massively," he said, "because they don't have the capacity at the moment to strike a good deal."
Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister, Barham Salih, who chairs the country's oil committee, is expected to unveil the legislation as early as today. "It is a redrawing of the whole Iraqi oil industry [to] a modern standard," said Khaled Salih, spokesman for the Kurdish Regional Government, a party to the negotiations. The Iraqi government hopes to have the law on the books by March.
Of course, several major oil companies sent teams into the country in recent months to lobby for deals ahead of the law, however, the big companies are unlikely to start the project until the violence in Iraq abates. Hence, the "surge."
More from The Independent:
James Paul, executive director at the Global Policy Forum, the international government watchdog, said: "It is not an exaggeration to say that the overwhelming majority of the population would be opposed to this. To do it anyway, with minimal discussion within the [Iraqi] parliament is really just pouring more oil on the fire."
Wow, you mean the people don’t matter? Wait a minute here; that sounds vaguely familiar. Or was that just a bad dream or something?