BAGHDAD, Sept. 29, 2007
Iraqi Official Doubts Kurds' Oil Deals
Baghdad's Oil Minister Says Independent Kurdish Negotiations Threaten Iraq's Sovereignty
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Dr. Hussein al Shahristani, Iraq’s Oil Minister, says Iraq's neighbors will not allow shipments of Kurdish oil across their borders. (MARMUR/AFP/Getty)
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Energy companies that make deals with the Kurdish government may strike oil, but they’ll have trouble selling it, warns Iraq’s Oil Minister.
“Iraq’s neighbors - Syria, Iran and even Turkey - have said they will only allow oil over the border to market that is being exported by the federal government,” Dr. Hussein al Shahristani told CBS News.
This is the latest salvo in an escalating fight between Iraq’s national government and Kurdish regional authorities. At issue is how Iraq’s vast oil wealth will be shared out, and who will control the commercial terms under which foreign companies operate.
A comprehensive Oil and Gas law should spell out the rules - but it has never been passed by Iraq’s Parliament. For months, it has been stalled by political wrangling and foot-dragging.
Meanwhile, some companies have lost patience and negotiated deals directly with the Kurdish Regional Government. It controls a huge semi-autonomous area in northern Iraq, and passed its own oil and gas law unilaterally in August.
Texas-based Hunt Oil Company announced earlier this month it had signed such an agreement. It joins companies from Canada, Turkey, the Persian Gulf and Norway which have already begun exploring for oil and gas in Kurdistan.
Iraqi politicians accuse the Kurdish Regional Government of obstructing the national law so it is free to negotiate at the regional level. Many suspect that these deals - signed before the national law is passed - will funnel a larger proportion of oil profits back to the Kurds.
“That poses a threat to the sovereignty of Iraq,” said al Shahristani. “If people don’t believe the Kurds are sharing their oil wealth fairly, then other oil producing regions will not want to share theirs either.”
“But," he adds, “the deals the Kurds have done so far have no legal standing. They could be annulled and the companies involved will suffer the consequences.”
“Of course that is not true,” said Kurdish Regional Government spokesman, Khalid Saleh. "How can any serious government official think they are in a position to punish any company working in Iraq legally to contribute to the country's revenue for the benefit of the whole country?"
The Kurds deny they are impeding the national oil law’s passage in Iraq’s Parliament.
“In fact we are the engine moving it along,” said Saleh, who estimated that a national law may eventually be passed in October.
In the meantime, the Kurdish Regional Government is courting oil business on its own terms, and has even published its Oil and Gas Law along with a sample Production-Sharing Agreement, in English, on its Web site.
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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- ***** Stop The War & Corporate Corruption *****
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The corporate media will not give Ron Paul any Exposure. Because, NBC is owned by GE. GE is one of the world''s largest war-makers. They make things that go boom. They make $Billions on war. A Ron Paul administration would be bad for business. CNN is owned by AOL. Majority share holder is Saudi Royal Talal who is also partners with GHWBush in The Carlyle Group. Another major warmaker. And on and on. You get the picture. This is why they are doing a Media Blackout on him. Because they don''t WANT YOU TO KNOW THE TRUTH!!!!!
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- Bush''s extreme right wing base continues to claim,the Iraq War had nothing to do with OIL.
(ROLLING MY EYES) - Reply to this comment
- All turks, Syrians or others need is enough share of oil revenue to let it be exported by KRG. Since when international are laws applied. Iraqi Oil is being smuggled under watch of the oil minister and participation of regional states, so much for international laws.
- Reply to this comment
- Hug your tar baby, War Pigs! It looks like you''ll have to fly your oil out of your rump quisling-run statelet.
Turks! If the US and Israel attack and occupy Syria, the northeast of Syria will be open for the shipment of oil to the Med. The Syrians have had a long history of abusing its Kurdish minority, even denying them citizenship. All those soldiers, just a sitting there on the Iraqi border dreaming of the pretty girls of Ankara and Istanbul with no where to go... One day I hope to sit on a wooden bench with a view of the Bosporus watching the steamers traversing it, playing chess, drinking oozo, smoking a pipe and listening to the conversation of pretty Turkish girls...If I were a Turk, I would watch out for Mamaray and treacherous allies. - Reply to this comment
- And here is the draft oil revenue sharing law:
http://krg.org/pdf/English_Draft_Revenue_Sharing_law.pdf - Reply to this comment
- Some of you left-wing guys don''t know what you are talking about.
Around 93% of the Iraqi oil fields will be under the control of the Iraqi national oil company.
Here is a copy of the real draft law, not some bloggers version:
http://www.iraqdevelopmentprogram.org/images/tools/iraqoillaw.pdf - Reply to this comment
- Whoops... I feel like such a heel...
Make that:
"France didn''t send over a huge army to do most of the fighting, while the Founding Fathers dragged their HEELS for 4+ years." - Reply to this comment
- "jowand asked, "How ''''''''bout France fighting for the US Colonies independence? Or the US fighting to free Europe from Naziism?"
---
False analogies."
- Posted by alphaa10 at 10:41 PM : Sep 29, 2007
Yes, false analogies.
France didn''t send over a huge army to do most of the fighting, while the Founding Fathers dragged their heals for 4+ years.
It wouldn''t be called "the AMERICAN Revolution" if they had. Nor would there be a United States of America as we know it today.
France supplied some naval support, that''s all. The Founding Fathers and their Army did the heavy lifting.
As for WW2, there are about a million reasons why that analogy falls on its face. To begin with, WW2 was not a civil war between the good French and the bad French, or the good Dutch against the bad Dutch, or the good Germans against the bad Germans.
World War Two is called "the good war" for a reason. It was worth fighting. You could count on the fingers of one hand, those Americans who felt otherwise.
Not even jowand has ever called the Iraq war "the good war."
That leaves 999,998 other reasons...
And why on earth would jowand invoke an analogy that makes Dubya, his hero, look like such an incompetent.
Roosevelt and Truman emerged victorious over two world powers in a war that stretched across the Atlantic and the Pacific and involved almost every continent on earth, in less time than Dubya has been bogged down in a country smaller than Peru in area and population. - Reply to this comment
- Texas - based Hunt oil, go figure.
- Reply to this comment
- %u201CBut," he adds, %u201Cthe deals the Kurds have done so far have no legal standing. They could be annulled and the companies involved will suffer the consequences.%u201D
This is called "force majure", and is internationally recognized as a legitimate reason to cancel the terms of a contract, including the liabilities of the signatories. Any refusal by the Kurds, or their business partners to honor this government right is also refusal to recognize national sovereignty. al Shahristani is correct, by international law. - Reply to this comment
- "Will we ultimately be forced to destroy these, simply to avoid turning everything over to Iran when we leave?"
Posted by alphaa10
Yes, and it will cost more than it did to build them. Bechtel and Halliburton will definitely mark up the price of this service, count on it. - Reply to this comment
- CBS_Oliver,
Nice work; I wonder is in the "six or seven totally new pages." - Reply to this comment
- From the interview of Raed Jarrar about the oil plan he translated from Arabic:
"AMY GOODMAN: This document that you%u2019ve translated into English was originally written in Arabic?
RAED JARRAR: No, the document was originally written in English. It was sent to the Iraqi oil ministry, and some parts of it were changed, and some parts were edited, some parts were added. So when I translated it, I made my translation based on a previously leaked English copy, which is the original version of this law. The English copy leaked in mid-2006. So this -- the Arabic version now is totally based on that one. There are, I think out of the twenty-nine or thirty pages, there are around six or seven totally new pages, and there are new sections here and there." - Reply to this comment
- ***** Stop The War & Restore America *****
Why Don''t You Know Ron Paul??????
The corporate media will not give Ron Paul any Exposure. Because, NBC is owned by GE. GE is one of the world''s largest war-makers. They make things that go boom. They make $Billions on war. A Ron Paul administration would be bad for business. CNN is owned by AOL. Majority share holder is Saudi Royal Talal who is also partners with GHWBush in The Carlyle Group. Another major warmaker. And on and on. You get the picture. This is why they are doing a Media Blackout on him.
Because they don''t WANT YOU TO KNOW THE TRUTH!
Who is Ron Paul?
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/about
Join A ReVoLuTiOn Group In Your City:
http://ronpaul.meetup.com/cities/
Ron Paul Has WON 10 Straw-Polls!
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/straw-poll-results/
RESTORE YOU LIBERTY & FREEDOM
SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT RON PAUL 2008!
** Stop Iraq War Immediately
** Eliminate IRS
** Eliminate Federal Reserve
** Eliminate Government Wasteful Spending
** Restore America''s Work Force & Values
** Restore America''s Freedom!
HE HAS RAISED ALMOST 1 MILLION DOLLARS IN 5 DAYS!
Check out www.ronpaul2008.com
GET UP AND GET ACTIVE TODAY!!!
VOTE RON PAUL 2008! - Reply to this comment
- CBSOliver said, "This gas law was written in English and only translated into arabic so that it could be confirmed by the Iraqi puppet government.
Posted by alphaa10,
I found this.
Raed Jarrar, He is the Iraq Project Director for Global Exchange, and he has obtained a copy of the proposed oil law, which he translated from Arabic and posted on his website, raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com.
Posted by AJMarine1 at 10:32 PM : Sep 29, 2007
Ain''t that a laugh! Translated back into English, huh. I wonder if it translated back to the same thing.
Those propaganda guys are so very smoooooth the way they misdirect.
It was written in English originally. - Reply to this comment
- Thanks, AJMarine1-- this document exposes the end play of the entire Bush/Cheney Iraq debacle. Clearly, the neocons behind the Iraq invasion wanted to control the huge reserve of Iraqi oil as an asset for American strategic operations, regional and global.
Absurdly enough, ten American military superbases remain under construction in Iraq to secure oil access, along with a $1 billion embassy compound in Baghdad. Will we ultimately be forced to destroy these, simply to avoid turning everything over to Iran when we leave? - Reply to this comment
- jowand asked, "How ''''bout France fighting for the US Colonies independence? Or the US fighting to free Europe from Naziism?"
---
False analogies. France offered to help the American colonies only after Franklin and LaFayette asked for it. After much diplomatic effort, the two managed to interest the French court sufficiently to contribute.
In WW2, every nation resisting the Axis welcomed American intervention, Britain most of all. Critically important is the fact American territory was attacked, first.
In contrast, Iraqis never asked for American "liberation", nor was America attacked by Iraq. The American invasion never was preceded by so much as a declaration of war. Iraq was a so-called "preemptive" attack justified by Bush on his specious claims about WMDs and national defense. - Reply to this comment
- CBSOliver said, "This gas law was written in English and only translated into arabic so that it could be confirmed by the Iraqi puppet government.
Posted by alphaa10,
I found this.
Raed Jarrar, He is the Iraq Project Director for Global Exchange, and he has obtained a copy of the proposed oil law, which he translated from Arabic and posted on his website, raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com. - Reply to this comment
- I don%u2019t think we can summarize it this short, because it%u2019s a very long document, around thirty pages. But majorly, there are three major points that I think we should talk about. Financially, it legalizes very unfair types of contracts that will put Iraq in very long-term contracts that can go up to thirty-five years and cause the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars from Iraqis for no cause.
And the second point is concerning Iraq''s sovereignty. Iraq will not be capable of controlling the levels -- the limits of production, which means that Iraq cannot be a part of OPEC anymore. And Iraq will have this very complicated institution called the Federal Oil and Gas Council, that will have representatives from the foreign oil companies on the board of it, so representatives from, let%u2019s say, ExxonMobil and Shell and British Petroleum will be on the federal board of Iraq approving their own contracts.
And the third point is the point about keeping Iraq%u2019s unity. The law is seen by many Iraqi analysts as a separation for Iraq fund. The law will authorize all of the regional and small provinces%u2019 authorities. It will give them the final say to deal with the oil, instead of giving this final say to central federal government, so it will open the doors for splitting Iraq into three regions or even maybe three states in the very near future. - Reply to this comment
- CBSOliver said, "This gas law was written in English and only translated into arabic so that it could be confirmed by the Iraqi puppet government. So far as I can tell it is patterned after the original law which attempted to give control of Iranian (Yes Iranian) oil to the English a long long time ago when Iran was occupied by the Brits..."
---
A giveaway to foreign oil firms is exactly what two of three Iraqis believe is behind the Bush-imposed Oil and Gas law. The mass of Iraqis has demanded the Parliament keep Iraqi oil under Iraqi control.
Bush, however, insists on approval of jsome 33 pages of American text-- essentially privatizing Iraq''s oil assets-- as a precondition for aid to al Maliki''s government. Not surprisingly, Iraqi legislators remain very cool to the idea.
So, Iraq was never about oil? Here''s the smoking gun for those who suspected Bush and Cheney were after Iraqi oil, all along. - Reply to this comment
