US Secretary of State: Kurds have no authority over oil in their region

[maddezmom]

London (KurdishMedia.com) 12 January 2007: U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated that Kurds do not have the right over oil in their areas, Reuters reported on Thursday.

On the issue of the ownership of oil Reuters stated, “Ethnic Kurds whose region includes the country's northern oil fields including the giant Kirkuk field have signed some contracts with foreign oil companies, spurring confusion over who has the authority to ink contracts.”

Rice said the oil law would not give the Kurds such authority.

"Even though the Kurds might have been expected ... to insist that they will simply control all the resources themselves, that's not what the oil law does," Rice said.

Rice predicted what would be in the Iraqi oil law. She was not asked how she knew what is in the law that is not yet written.
more:http://www.kurdmedia.com/news.asp?id=13878


Senators bemoan lack of Iraq oil law progress
~snip~
The contract issue is vital to Iraq's future as a solution favoring the regions would devolve power over its most valuable resource to the majority Shi'ites and the Kurds whose regions are home to the country's most coveted oil fields.

Minority Sunni Arabs, dominant under Saddam Hussein before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, fear regional devolution will leave them with nothing.

Ethnic Kurds whose region includes the country's northern oil fields including the giant Kirkuk field have signed some contracts with foreign oil companies, spurring confusion over who has the authority to ink contracts.

Rice said the oil law would not give the Kurds such authority.

"Even though the Kurds might have been expected ... to insist that they will simply control all the resources themselves, that's not what the oil law does," Rice said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070111/pl_nm/iraq_oil_usa_...

[xchrom]

1. do the kurds know that?

hey condi -- how come nobody is playing along with the bushco script?

the kurds want the iranians released -- and now they want to control their own resources?

[saigon68]

2. "Kindasleezy" the state Dept princess has authority over kurdish Oil

[leveymg]

3. Try to enforce that one. Condi.

The Iraq "hydrocarbon law" is DOA. Neither the Kurds nor the biggest Shi'a faction have any incentive to sign it. Al-Maliki's puppet gov't can do what it wants, but it's authority doesn't extend outside the Green Zone.

[liberal N proud]

4. Who does this bitch think she is to decide who gets what in Iraq?

What a load of crap!

[IndianaGreen]

22. Condi is Bush's house slave!

and she will do her master's bidding at every turn.

[WCGreen]

5. Oh No,,,,, The Kurds are in the way again...

Poor Condi, poor poor condi...

Why don't the little people just do as we tel them...

Oh the frustrations of being a megalomaniacal lackey for a meglomaniac...

[w4rma]

6. Laws don't mean Jack if they can't be enforced. (nt)

[krispos42]

7. I bet that's a big surprise to the Kurds there

Seeing as how they've been a basically autonomous nation for a decade or so.

[tanyev]

8. That's OUR oil! Them Kurds got no right to it!

[underpants]

12. This is the 21 century just because it is under your land doesn't mean..

that it is yours. Do you have any papers stating that it is yours? Did you pay for it? Are you planning on not making every dime off it that you could?

[Kagemusha]

9. Uh, did Rice just forget what's in the Iraqi constitution on this?

I haven't. If Rice seriously means what she said this is going to become a far more explosive issue than that of the Iranian consulate-in-the-making being raided in Arbil. I've no doubt she's pleased that the Turks will be happy the Kurds don't 'get the oil' but, ... and this isn't even counting the similar issue that was going to arise in the Shiite south. Rice's law undoing the Iraqi constitution on this issue will not go over quietly.

[LiberalFighter]

10. Oil in Iraq

Oil in Iraq

Iraq Oil Lobbying – Comments on the Confidential Document (July 14, 2006)
James Paul sifts carefully through the document to discover details of a secret lobbying meeting in London in May 2003, just two months after the Coalition ousted Saddam Hussein. Top managers of BHP Billiton meet with Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and former UK Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind to plan their strategy to gain control of Iraq’s huge Halfayah oil field. Participants see Washington handing out the contracts – not the Iraqis – and they worry that an Australian bid, even with Anglo-Dutch Shell as a partner, may not win sufficient favor with the Pentagon.

[Spazito]

11. Sovereign, democratic Iraq eh

"She was not asked how she knew what is in the law that is not yet written."

They don't even make any effort of pretense any more.

[loveandlight]

13. of course she wasn't asked

That line jumped out at me too, but of course they didn't ask. What is the point? She would just lie and we all know, any way, that it's because the US is writing the law how they want it to appear. Whether they actually get that vote I think is still up in the air, because for sure there will be rebellion against the kind of provisions the US is expecting in the oil law, allowing "foreign" investors so much leeway. They are so truly arrogant at this point, that they aren't even hiding that it's about the oil. I wouldn't bet this law will hold up, however, once we don't have our troops there to enforce it. Oh, yeah, our troops are never leaving!! Just for these reasons....

[Spazito]

16. I agree, the law won't be worth the paper it is written on

once the US isn't there to enforce it but, then again, the plan was always for the US to stay there hence the "Taj Mahal" style embassy and permanent bases so, if the US isn't turfed out on it's ass, the theft of Iraq's oil WILL be the law.

[donkeyotay]

14. The WRONG oil companies, in the wrong countries?

“Ethnic Kurds whose region includes the country's northern oil fields including the giant Kirkuk field have signed some contracts with foreign oil companies, spurring confusion over who has the authority to ink contracts.”

[VegasWolf]

15. Hey, that's Dick Cheney's oil!!! nt

[NashVegas]

17. Obfuscation and Lies

"You referred to the oil law as a remarkable law," Sen. John Sununu (news, bio, voting record), New Hampshire Republican, told Rice. "Well, it's the most remarkable law that no one has ever really seen."

I guess this explains why the Independent story from one week ago has not yet hit US media outlets.

[maddezmom]

18. not sure what one you are referring to, but this one is interesting re: BearingPoint

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article215...

~snip~
Last week The Independent on Sunday revealed that a BearingPoint employee, based in the US embassy in Baghdad, had been tasked with advising the Iraqi Ministry of Oil on drawing up a new hydrocarbon law. The legislation, which is due to be presented to Iraq's parliament within days, will give Western oil companies a large slice of profits from the country's oil fields in exchange for investing in new oil infrastructure.

BearingPoint's first task in Iraq in 2003 was to help to plan the introduction of a new currency, and it was hoped that it would eventually organise small loans to Iraqi entrepreneurs to stimulate a significant market economy. The contract award was immediately criticised by public integrity watchdogs and by the company's rivals, because BearingPoint advisers to USAid had a hand in drafting the requirements set out in the tender. It spent five months helping USAid to write the job specifications and even sent some employees to Iraq to begin work before the contract was awarded, while its competitors had only a week to read the specifications and submit their own bids after final revisions were made.

USAid's independent inspector ruled that "BearingPoint's extensive involvement in the development of the Iraq economic reform program creates the appearance of unfair competitive advantage in the contract award process". The company said it was selected through a transparent and competitive bidding process.

Across the world, BearingPoint has become, thanks to USAid funding, a part of the US government's strategy of spreading free-market reforms to developing countries and America's allies. Elsewhere in the Middle East it is advising the government of Jordan on how to minimise the regulation of business and reform its tax policies in order to attract foreign investment; in Egypt it is advising on customs reform and respect for international companies' patents.

~snip~

[ForPeace]

25. ... and more on BearingPoint and the GOP

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article215...

Shock and oil: Iraq's billions & the White House connection
14 January 2007

The American company appointed to advise the US government on the economic reconstruction of Iraq has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars into Republican Party coffers and has admitted that its own finances are in chaos because of accounting errors and bad management.

BearingPoint is fighting to restore its reputation in the US after falling more than a year behind in reporting its own financial results, prompting legal actions from its creditors and shareholders.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, BearingPoint employees gave $117,000 (£60,000) to the 2000 and 2004 Bush election campaigns, more than any other Iraq contractor. Other recipients include three prominent Congressmen on the House of Representatives' defence sub-committee, which oversees defence department contracts.

One of the biggest single contributors to BearingPoint's in-house political fund was James Horner, who heads the company's emerging markets business which is working in Iraq and Afghanistan. He donated $5,000 in August 2005.

The company's shares have collapsed to a third of their value when the firm listed in 2001, and it faces being thrown out of the New York Stock Exchange altogether. Despite annual revenues of $3.4bn, the company made a loss of $722m in 2005. Those figures were released only last month, nine months late, and the company has not yet been able to report any fully audited figures at all for 2006.

[maddezmom]

19. this one: Blood and oil: How the West will profit from Iraq's most precious commodity

The 'IoS' today reveals a draft for a new law that would give Western oil companies a massive share in the third largest reserves in the world. To the victors, the oil? That is how some experts view this unprecedented arrangement with a major Middle East oil producer that guarantees investors huge profits for the next 30 years
Published: 07 January 2007
So was this what the Iraq war was fought for, after all? As the number of US soldiers killed since the invasion rises past the 3,000 mark, and President George Bush gambles on sending in up to 30,000 more troops, The Independent on Sunday has learnt that the Iraqi government is about to push through a law giving Western oil companies the right to exploit the country's massive oil reserves.

And Iraq's oil reserves, the third largest in the world, with an estimated 115 billion barrels waiting to be extracted, are a prize worth having. As Vice-President Dick Cheney noted in 1999, when he was still running Halliburton, an oil services company, the Middle East is the key to preventing the world running out of oil.

Now, unnoticed by most amid the furore over civil war in Iraq and the hanging of Saddam Hussein, the new oil law has quietly been going through several drafts, and is now on the point of being presented to the cabinet and then the parliament in Baghdad. Its provisions are a radical departure from the norm for developing countries: under a system known as "production-sharing agreements", or PSAs, oil majors such as BP and Shell in Britain, and Exxon and Chevron in the US, would be able to sign deals of up to 30 years to extract Iraq's oil.

PSAs allow a country to retain legal ownership of its oil, but gives a share of profits to the international companies that invest in infrastructure and operation of the wells, pipelines and refineries. Their introduction would be a first for a major Middle Eastern oil producer. Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world's number one and two oil exporters, both tightly control their industries through state-owned companies with no appreciable foreign collaboration, as do most members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Opec.

more:http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article...

[NashVegas]

20. Yes, That's the One

Amazingly quiet on the US front, that.

Interesting, too, that the story's publishers express outrage, while Sununu rips Condi for the fact the law hasn't yet passed.

[IndianaGreen]

21. That "oil law" is being written in Washington, DC.

While any Iraqi can make the legitimate argument that the oil in the Kurdish region belongs to all Iraqis, having Bush's house slave Condi Rice tell the Kurds or any other Iraqi what they should do with their natural resources is the height of hubris and colonialism.

Are Bush and Condi about to do to the Kurds what they did to the Sunnis and are about to do to the Shias?

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

24. Or in Houston

at the other ends of the puppet's strings

[Amonester]

23. R bu$hitLiar and CONdiLIESuh about to do to the Kurds what

Saddam did to the Kurds? Seems like it.