This may be 'old news' to you; it was new news to me, so I thought I'd share ...
UK held talks with oil firms before Iraq invasion -paper
by Karolina Tagaris, Reuters.com, LONDON -- Apr 18, 2011
(Reuters) - [...]
Citing documents it said were obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request by campaigner and author Greg Muttitt, the [Independent] newspaper said at least five meetings were held between government officials and oil majors BP (BP.L) and Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) in October and November 2002.
"Shell and BP could not afford not to have a stake in (Iraq) for the sake of their long-term future," Edward Chaplin, the Foreign Office's former Middle East director was quoted as saying after a meeting with oil groups in October 2002.
"We were determined to get a fair slice of the action for UK companies in a post-Saddam Iraq," he said, according to minutes of the meeting which could not be independently verified.
[...]
Then trade minister Elizabeth Symons assured the oil group that the government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq's oil and gas reserves, given Blair's commitment to U.S. plans.
[...]
"To the victor, goes 'the spoils' of war," ... or so history says.
Bullies, and Ministers of Trade too.
Here is the more detailed source article that Reuters was citing:
Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq
by Paul Bignell, independent.co.uk --19 April 2011
[...]
Five months before the March 2003 invasion, Baroness Symons, then the Trade Minister, told BP that the Government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq's enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Tony Blair's military commitment to US plans for regime change.
The papers show that Lady Symons agreed to lobby the Bush administration on BP's behalf because the oil giant feared it was being "locked out" of deals that Washington was quietly striking with US, French and Russian governments and their energy firms.
[...]
Whereas BP was insisting in public that it had "no strategic interest" in Iraq, in private it told the Foreign Office that Iraq was "more important than anything we've seen for a long time".
BP was concerned that if Washington allowed TotalFinaElf's existing contact with Saddam Hussein to stand after the invasion it would make the French conglomerate the world's leading oil company. BP told the Government it was willing to take "big risks" to get a share of the Iraqi reserves, the second largest in the world.
[...]
"Second largest oil reserves in the world" -- I bet some interests
would 'kill' -- to get the hands on
that "
prize" --
Giddy up!
That investigative reporter Greg Muttitt, explained to Amy Goodman, the sources for his Big Oil pie-slicing information, which included among others things:
"I also got hold of around a thousand government documents from the British and American governments under the Freedom of Information Act."
Mr Muttitt then goes on to explain how that pie-slicing worked out in real life, circa 2006, with a little sleight of hand called "
A New Oil Plan for Iraq" ...
"Fuel on the Fire": Author Greg Muttitt on Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq, Arab Spring
democracynow.org -- July 16, 2012
[...]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Greg Muttitt, author of Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq. His book took about a decade of research. Naomi Klein called it "nothing short of a secret history of the war." Greg Muttitt, talk about the oil law.
GREG MUTTITT: OK, well, this was really the center of the story of the struggles over oil. The oil corporations wanted to wait until there was a permanent government in Iraq, so that they could have secure -- secure contracts. The first permanent post-Saddam government was formed in May 2006 under Nouri al-Maliki. And in the months -- even the months before that, the U.S., Britain, the International Monetary Fund were saying, "Your first priority has to be to pass an oil law to give multinationals the leading role in Iraq’s oil industry again," for the first time since the nationalization of the 1970s. And then, this oil law was drafted very quickly after the government was formed. It was drafted in a couple of months, by August 2006.
As well as putting multinationals in the driving seat, its other role was to deprive their contracts of parliamentary scrutiny. According to existing Iraqi law, if the government signs a contract with a company like BP or Exxon to develop an oil field, it has to show it to parliament to get the yes or no or amendments. And one of the major functions of the oil law was to repeal that existing legislation and so allow the executive branch, which was of course populated by U.S. allies, to sign contracts without parliament getting in the way.
[...]
And that's how 'the spoils' are gathered ...
Of course, we really didn't need Freedom of Information documents to hazard a wild guess that Iraq War was all about their Oil -- all we had to do was listen to these guys, in a few rare moments of candor:
[...]
Perhaps Vice President Cheney answered that question best when 1999 speech at the Institute of Petroleum:
“The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies; even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow.”
Finally, consider Republican Senator Charles Hagel’s rather blunt statement given in a 2007 speech at the Catholic University of America regarding the true purposes behind the Iraq War:
“People say we’re not fighting for oil. Of course we are. They talk about America’s national interest. What the hell do you think they’re talking about? We’re not there for figs.”
[...]
-- Source: Preparing for the Collapse of the Petrodollar System, Part 3
The Petrodollar Wars: The Iraq-Petrodollar Connection -- by Jerry Robinson
(Parts One and Two? Start here.)
Maybe it was "Fig-Pies" that those FOI Docs were talking about cutting up -- yeah, THAT would be worth 'fighting for', eh?
Give us our Figs! Now. And nobody gets hurt.