Is Bush close to winning what seem with great clarity to have been his prime objective in the invasion of Iraq. I was listening this morning to KPFK radio program Uprising and once again Antonia Juhasz is shouting out about the state of Iraq oil and no one in the mainstream media seems to be paying mind to this.
The transcript can also be found on the uprising website www.uprisingradio.org
here is the basic info:
GUEST: Antonia Juhasz, visiting scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, author of The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time.
President Bush is expected to announce an increase in troops in Iraq tomorrow evening. Meanwhile, a proposed hydrocarbon law is quietly being introduced by the Iraqi government that would radically alter the nation’s oil industry. Iraq’s oil reserves are the third largest in the world and account for one-tenth of the world’s reserves - at an estimated 115 billion barrels. A draft of the controversial hydrocarbon law was obtained on Sunday by The Independent. The plan will allow foreign companies to profit from Iraq’s oil reserves in generous agreements binding for at least thirty years. Largely structured through so-called production-sharing agreements, or PSA’s, the law would enable foreign oil companies to gain a share of Iraq’s oil profits in return for investment in the industry’s infrastructure and operations. The leaked draft also shows plans for companies to take their profitable returns out of Iraq, tax and restriction free. If implemented, the hydrocarbon law would allow for the first large scale operations of foreign oil companies since Iraq nationalized its natural resource in 1972. Iraqi oil, long suspected of being an objective of the Bush and Blair administrations by anti-war critics, accounts for seventy percent of the nation’s economy.
Read Antonia Juhasz’s article, "Spoils of War: Oil, the U.S.-Middle East Free Trade Area and the Bush Agenda," in the latest issue of In These Times magazine (Vol 31, Issue 01).
And on Truthout I found this article.
Truth Out Oil Article
The Race for Iraq's Resources
By Joshua Gallu
Der Spiegel
Friday 22 December 2006
Will Iraq's oil blessing become a curse?
The Iraqi government is considering a new oil law that could give private oil companies greater control over its vast reserves. In light of rampant violence and shaky democratic institutions, many fear the law is being pushed through hastily by special interests behind closed doors.
Oil. The world economy's thick elixir yields politics as murky and combustible as the crude itself. And no wonder. It brings together some awkward bedfellows: It's where multinationals meet villagers, where executives meet environmentalists, where vast wealth meets deep poverty, where East meets West.
Oil, of course, can be politically explosive at the best of times, let alone the worst. So, when the country with the third largest oil reserves in the world debates the future of its endowment during a time of civil war, people sit up and take notice.
The Iraqi government is working on a new hydrocarbons law that will set the course for the country's oil sector and determine where its vast revenues will flow. The consequences for such a law in such a state are huge. Not only could it determine the future shape of the Iraqi federation - as regional governments battle with Baghdad's central authority over rights to the riches - but it could put much of Iraqi oil into the hands of foreign oil companies.
he goes on to state:
That's why some fear Iraq is setting its course too hastily and in too much secrecy. Greg Muttitt of social and environmental NGO Platform London told SPIEGEL ONLINE: "I was recently at a meeting of Iraqi MPs (members of parliament) and asked them how many of them had seen the law. Out of twenty, only one MP had seen it."
Last week, the Iraqi Labor Union Leadership suggested the same. "The Iraqi people refuse to allow the future of their oil to be decided behind closed doors," their statement reads. "(T)he occupier seeks and wishes to secure themselves energy resources at a time when the Iraqi people are seeking to determine their own future while still under conditions of occupation."
Many worry instability would only get worse if the public feels cheated by the government and multinationals - the Iraqi constitution says the oil belongs to the Iraqi people. The Labor Union Leadership warned: "We strongly reject the privatization of our oil wealth, as well as production sharing agreements, and there is no room for discussing the matter. This is the demand of the Iraqi street, and the privatization of oil is a red line that may not be crossed."
Doing more research now - will add more as I find more..
thus far the only references I can find seem to be from the financial and oil sector perspective and none seem to discuss the effect on the war or the Iraqi people.