Re: Kurdish Oil Goes to One of Bush's Cronies

NoName wrote:
On Fri, 14 Sep 2007 03:54:48 -0600, "mg" <mgkelson@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Kurdish Oil Goes to George Bush's Friend

"Hi Ray, I got some Kurdish oil for ya! Remember, like I said, 50/50. But don't yer go tellin anyone now will ya! Just put my bit in that account I set up, okay?"

George Bush's friend and fellow Texan oilman Ray L. Hunt has got the first big oil concession in Kurdistan!"

http://hevallo.blogspot.com/2007/09/kurdish-oil-goes-to-george-bushs-friend.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/08/AR2007090801195.html?hpid=sec-nation
http://seesdifferent.wordpress.com/2007/09/10/bushs-pals-begin-the-looting-of-iraq/

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Who is Ray L. Hunt?
Ray L. Hunt
From SourceWatch
Ray Lee Hunt is a "Dallas businessman whose association with Hunt Oil Company began in 1958 as a summer employee in the oil fields. He was educated at Southern Methodist University (SMU) and received a degree in economics in June 1965. While at SMU, he was designated a University Scholar, served on the student senate, received the Outstanding Business Student Award and was president of his fraternity, Phi Delta Theta.[1]

Hunt now serves as Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO of Hunt Consolidated, Inc.; Chairman of the Board and CEO of Hunt Oil Company; and Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer and President, RRH Corporation. He has been Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Hunt Private Equity Group since its inception in 1990. [2]

Hunt was appointed in October 2001 by President George Walker Bush to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.[3]

Hunt joined the Halliburton Company Board in 1998. He is Chairman of the Compensation Committee and member of the Audit and the Management Oversight Committees. He also serves as a member of the boards of directors of PepsiCo, Inc., King Ranch, Inc., Electronic Data Systems Corporation, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and Security Capital Group Incorporated.[4][5] [6]

Hunt currently serves as a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.; the Board of Trustess for the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation; the Board of Advisors for theMaguire Energy Institute at SMU Cox School of Business; the Board of Directors of the Texas Research League; the executive committee of the Southwestern Medical Foundation in Dallas; and the Board of Trustees of Southern Methodist University.[7]

Hunt has served as chairman of the National Petroleum Council in Washington, D.C. (an industry advisory organization for the Secretary of Energy) and served as its chairman from June 1991 to July 1994. In 1980-81 he served as president of the Domestic Petroleum Council [8] He is currently a member of the board of directors of the American Petroleum Institute. He also has served as president of the Dallas Petroleum Club.[9]

In 1987, Hunt was given The Order of Marib by the government of the Republic of Yemen. He is the only non-Yemeni ever to be so designated.[10]
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ray_L._Hunt

I wondered who would bring this story up, and was thinking of
doing it myself.

Hunt has undercut Bush's goal of an equitable division of Iraq
oil revenues. Seems unbridled capitalism trumps peace in Iraq.
I hope this story does not quickly die, because it is a very
important take on how serious Bush is. Will he disown his
supporter. Or even comment on this development?

I think that this is Bush's Plan B or perhaps his golden parachute. As I have argued previously, this war was and is about the oil. Plan A, as crafted by the Bush administration, was to allow American and British oil companies to dominate production of the Iraqi oil fields through production sharing agreements. The reason that we rushed to war was to prevent the lifting of sanctions that would then have allowed Saddam to open his oil reserves to the French, Germans, Russians, and Chinese. The American and British companies would not only have been excluded, but they would have lost their ability to control production and thereby prices as they have done for nearly a century. Saddam would have become a power in OPEC and would have moved to replace the dollar with the euro as the exchange currency.

But, Plan A didn't work. The Iraqis did not bend over to be screwed with the petro law that the Bush administration attempted to push through the parliament. They had been screwed before and they resisted. The Bush administration has put up this smoke screen that the proposed law is about revenue sharing between the sects, but there is only one paragraph in the law that deals with that topic. It is primarily about how the oil companies will dominate how and when oil is produced and how much of the revenue will be left to the Iraqis. It is a source of continuing frustration to me that no one in the mainstream media has taken the time to actually read the legislation!

Meanwhile, the sectarian violence has escalated because the US occupation was so badly screwed up. Big Oil had to settle for short term profits based on a defacto reduction in Iraqi oil production. Kind of a win-even-if-you-lose situation for oil companies. I doubt that this was intended from the start, but may have been a fall back position. A 4X increase in prices with no appreciable increase in costs is not a bad situation for companies that still have reserves!

But, that won't last forever, so I suspect that Hunt Oil, with it's access to the highest levels of US intelligence (Hunt is on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board), is latching onto what it can in Kurdistan. The Kurds have written their own petro law and since Hunt is a privately held company, knowledge of what they find under this contract will be kept out of the public domain. It is a fairly low risk venture for Hunt with the potential for very high returns. Not the whole tamale, but still a pretty good deal. Unfortunately, we will never know how much Bush and Cheney make from this deal because once they leave office their sources of income become private.

The whole thing stinks to high heaven.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Kurdish Oil Goes to One of Bushs Cronies
    ... Kurdish Oil Goes to George Bush's Friend ... "Hi Ray, I got some Kurdish oil for ya! ... Who is Ray L. Hunt? ...
    (soc.retirement)
  • Re: Kurdish Oil Goes to One of Bushs Cronies
    ... Kurdish Oil Goes to George Bush's Friend ... "Hi Ray, I got some Kurdish oil for ya! ... Who is Ray L. Hunt? ...
    (soc.retirement)
  • Re: Kurdish Oil Goes to One of Bushs Cronies
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  • Kurdish Oil Goes to One of Bushs Cronies
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    (soc.retirement)
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