Re: Fishy Smell?

If the Iraqi People Get Revenue Sharing, They Lose Their Oil to Exxon
by Richard Behan

George Bush has a land mine planted in the supplemental appropriation
legislation working its way through Congress.

The Iraq Accountability Act passed by the House and the companion bill
passed in the Senate contain deadlines for withdrawing our troops from
Iraq, in open defiance of the President's repeated objections.

He threatens a veto, but he might well be bluffing. Buried deep in the
legislation and intentionally obscured is a near-guarantee of success
for the Bush Administration's true objective of the war-capturing
Iraq's oil-and George Bush will not casually forego that.

This bizarre circumstance is the end-game of the brilliant, ever-
deceitful maneuvering by the Bush Administration in conducting the
entire scenario of the "global war on terror."

The supplemental appropriation package requires the Iraqi government
to meet a series of "benchmarks" President Bush established in his
speech to the nation on January 10 (in which he made his case for the
"surge"). Most of Mr. Bush's benchmarks are designed to blame the
victim, forcing the Iraqis to solve the problems George Bush himself
created.

One of the President's benchmarks, however, stands apart. This is how
the President described it: "To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in
the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil
revenues among all Iraqis." A seemingly decent, even noble concession.
That's all Mr. Bush said about that benchmark, but his brevity was
gravely misleading, and it had to be intentional.

The Iraqi Parliament has before it today, in fact, a bill called the
hydrocarbon law, and it does call for revenue sharing among Sunnis,
Shiites, and Kurds. For President Bush, this is a must-have law, and
it is the only "benchmark" that truly matters to his Administration.

Yes, revenue sharing is there-essentially in fine print, essentially
trivial. The bill is long and complex, it has been years in the
making, and its primary purpose is transformational in scope: a
radical and wholesale reconstruction-virtual privatization-of the
currently nationalized Iraqi oil industry.

If passed, the law will make available to Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco,
BP/Amoco, and Royal Dutch/Shell about 4/5's of the stupendous
petroleum reserves in Iraq. That is the wretched goal of the Bush
Administration, and in his speech setting the revenue-sharing
"benchmark" Mr. Bush consciously avoided any hint of it.

The legislation pending now in Washington requires the President to
certify to Congress by next October that the benchmarks have been met-
specifically that the Iraqi hydrocarbon law has been passed. That's
the land mine: he will certify the American and British oil companies
have access to Iraqi oil. This is not likely what Congress intended,
but it is precisely what Mr. Bush has sought for the better part of
six years.

It is why we went to war.

For years President Bush has cloaked his intentions behind the
fabricated "Global War on Terrorism." It has long been suspected that
oil drove the wars, but dozens of skilled and determined writers have
documented it. It is no longer a matter of suspicion, nor is it
speculation now: it is sordid fact. (See a brief summary of the story
at http://www.alternet.org/... . )

Planning for the two wars was underway almost immediately upon the
Bush Administration taking office-at least six months before September
11, 2001. The wars had nothing to do with terrorism. Terrorism was
initially rejected by the new Administration as unworthy of national
concern and public policy, but 9/11 gave them a conveniently timed and
spectacular alibi to undertake the wars. Quickly inventing a catchy
"global war on terror" theme, the Administration disguised the true
nature of the wars very cleverly, and with enduring success.

The "global war on terror" is bogus. The prime terrorist in
Afghanistan and the architect of 9/11, Osama bin Laden, was never
apprehended, and the President's subsequent indifference is a matter
of record. And Iraq harbored no terrorists at all. But both countries
were invaded, both countries suffer military occupation today, both
are dotted with permanent U.S. military bases protecting the
hydrocarbon assets, and both have been provided with puppet
governments.

And a billion dollar embassy in Baghdad is under construction now. It
will be the largest U.S. embassy in the world by a factor of ten. (To
see it, go to http://www.globalresearch.ca/... .) It consists of 21
buildings on 104 acres, six times larger than the United Nations
compound in New York city, larger than Vatican City. It will house a
delegation of more than five thousand people. It will have its own
water, electric, and sewage systems, and it is surrounded by a
fortress wall of concrete fifteen feet thick. For an Administration
committed to fighting terrorism with armies and bombs, that's far more
anti-terror diplomacy than a tiny country needs. There must be another
purpose for it.

In the first two months of the Bush Administration two significant
events took place that preordained the Iraqi war. Vice President
Cheney's Energy Task Force was created, composed of federal officials
and oil industry people. By March of 2001, half a year before 9/11,
the Task Force was poring secretly over maps of the Iraqi oil fields,
pipe lines, and tanker terminals. It studied a listing of foreign oil
company "suitors" for exploration and development contracts, to be
executed with Saddam Hussein's oil ministry. There was not a single
American or British oil company included, and to Mr. Cheney and his
cohorts that was intolerable. The final report of the Task Force was
candid: "... Middle East oil producers will remain central to world
security. The Gulf will be a primary focus of U.S. international
energy policy." The detailed meaning of "focus" was left blank.

The other event was the first meeting of President Bush's National
Security Council, and it filled in the blank. The Council abandoned
abruptly the decades-long attempt to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, and set a new priority for Middle East foreign policy
instead: the invasion of Iraq. This, too, was six months before 9/11.
"Focus" would mean war.

By the fall of 2002, the White House Iraq Group-a collection not of
foreign policy experts but of media and public relations people-was
cranking up the marketing campaign for the war. A contract was signed
with the Halliburton Corporation-even before military force in Iraq
had been authorized by Congress-to organize the suppression of oil
well fires, should Saddam torch the fields as he had done in the first
Gulf War. Little was left to chance.

The oil industry is the primary client and top-ranked beneficiary of
the Bush Administration. There can be no question the Administration
intended to secure for American oil corporations the rich petroleum
resources of Iraq: 115 billion barrels of proven reserves, twice that
in probable and possible resources, potentially far more than Saudi
Arabia. The Energy Task Force spoke to this and the National Security
Council answered.

A secret NSC memorandum in 2001 spoke candidly of "actions regarding
the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields" in Iraq. In 2002
Paul Wolfowitz suggested simply seizing the oil fields. These words
and suggestions were draconian, overt, and reprehensible-morally,
historically, politically and diplomatically. The seizure of the oil
would have to be oblique and far more sophisticated.

A year before the war the State Department undertook the "Future of
Iraq" project, expressly to design the institutional contours of the
postwar country. The ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ 3;­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­&#
173;­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ 3;­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­&#
173;­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ ­"Oil and Energy Working Group" looked with
dismay at the National Iraqi Oil Company, the government agency that
owned and operated the Iraqi oil fields and marketed the products.
100% of the revenues went directly to the central government, and
constituted about 90% of its income. Saddam Hussein benefited,
certainly-his lavish palaces-but the Iraqi people did so to a far
greater extent, in terms of the nation's public services and physical
infrastructure. For this reason nationalized oil industries are the
norm throughout the world.

The Oil and Energy Working Group designed a scheme that was oblique
and sophisticated, indeed. The oil seizure would be less than total.
It would be obscured in complexity. The apparent responsibility for it
would be shifted, and it would be disguised as benefiting, even
necessary to Iraq's well being. Their work was supremely ingenious,
undeniably brilliant.

The plan would keep the National Iraqi Oil Company in place, to
continue overseeing the currently producing fields. But those fields
represent only 19% of Iraq's petroleum reserves. The other 81% would
be flung open to "investment" by foreign oil interests, and the
companies in favored positions today-because of the war and their
political connections-are Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, BP/Amoco, and
Royal Dutch/Shell.

The nationalized industry would be 80% privatized.

The investment vehicle would be the "production sharing agreement," a
long-term contract-up to 40 years-that grants to the company a share
of the oil produced; in exchange, the company underwrites the
development costs and oilfield infrastructure. Such "investment" is
touted by the Bush Administration and its puppets in Iraq as necessary
to the country's recovery, and a huge benefit, accordingly. But it is
not unusual for these contracts to grant the companies more than half
the profits for the first 15-30 years, and to deny the host country
any revenue at all until the investment costs have been recovered.

The Iraqi oil industry does very much need a great deal of investment
capital, to repair, replace, and upgrade its infrastructure. But it
does not need Exxon/Mobil or any other foreign company to provide it.
At a reduced level, Iraq is still producing oil and hence revenue, and
no country in the world, perhaps, has better collateral against which
to float bond issues for public investment. Privatization of any sort
and in any degree is utterly unnecessary in Iraq today.

The features of the State Department plan were inserted by Paul
Bremer's Provisional Coalition Authority into the developing
structures of Iraqi governance. American oil companies were
omnipresent in Baghdad then and have been since, shaping and
shepherding the plan through the several iterations of puppet
governments-the "democracy" said to be taking hold in Iraq.

The package today is in the form of draft legislation, the hydrocarbon
law. Only a handful of Iraqi officials know its details. Virtually
none of them had a hand in its construction. (It was first written in
English.) And its exclusive beneficiaries are the American and British
oil companies, whose profits will come directly from the pockets of
the Iraqi people.

The Iraqi people do, however, benefit to some degree. The seizure is
not total. The hydrocarbon law specifies the oil revenues-the residue
accruing to Iraq-will be shared equally among the Sunni, Shiite, and
Kurdish regions, on a basis of population. This is the feature
President Bush relies upon exclusively to justify, to insist on the
passage of the hydrocarbon law. His real reasons are Exxon/Mobil,
Chevron/Texaco, BP/Amoco, and Royal Dutch/Shell.

No one can say at the moment how much the hydrocarbon law will cost
the Iraqi people, but it will be in the hundreds of billions. The
circumstances of its passage are mired in the country's chaos, and its
final details are not yet settled. If and when it passes, however,
Iraq will orchestrate the foreign capture of its own oil. The
ingenious, brilliant seizure of Iraqi oil will be assured.

That outcome has been on the Bush Administration's agenda since early
in 2001, long before terrorism struck in New York and Washington. The
Iraqi war has never been about terrorism.

It is blood for oil.

The blood has been spilled already, hugely, criminally. More than
3,200 American military men and women have died in Iraq. 26,500 more
have been wounded. But the oil remains in play.

The game will end if the revenue-sharing "benchmark" is fully
enforced. The land mine will detonate.

Mission almost accomplished, Mr. President.

Author's endnote:

This article was written assuming the members of Congress were
ignorant, when they passed the supplemental appropriation bills, of
the clever origin, the details, and the true beneficiaries of the
Iraqi hydrocarbon law. It was written assuming they did not know
President Bush's stated "benchmark" of revenue-sharing was
fraudulently incomplete, intentionally obscuring the fully intended
seizure, by military force, of Iraqi oil assets.

The Bush Administration made every effort to mislead deliberately both
the Congress and the American people. Ignorance of the circumstances
was imposed.

If any members of Congress acted with full and complete knowledge,
however, then they have become complicit in a criminal war.

Richard W. Behan lives and writes on Lopez Island, off the northwest
coast of Washington state. He is working on his next book, To Provide
Against Invasions: Corporate Dominion and America's Derelict
Democracy. He can be reached at rwbehan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (This essay
is deliberately not copyrighted: it may be reproduced without
restriction.)

.

Quantcast