Iraq's oil auction hits the jackpot

[Dover]

THE ROVING EYE
Iraq's oil auction hits the jackpot
By Pepe Escobar

BEIJING - Former United States vice president Dick Cheney, ex-defense minister Donald Rumsfeld and assorted US neo-cons will have plenty of time to nurse their apoplexy. One of their key reasons to unleash the war on Iraq in 2003 was to seize control of its precious oilfields and thus shape a great deal of the new great game in Eurasia - the energy front - by restricting the access of Europe and Asia to Iraq's staggering 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves.

After at least US$2 trillion spent by Washington and arguably more than a million dead Iraqis, it has come to this: a pipe dream definitely buried this past weekend in Baghdad with round two of bids to exploit a number of vast and immensely profitable oil fields.

The bids, supervised by the Oil Ministry, were presented on a live TV game show. Instead of American Idol, Iraqis got "Oil Idol". In a raucous carpet bazaar atmosphere, the ministry played "my way or the highway" and forced 44 foreign Big Oil corporations to cut to the max the fee they collect on every barrel extracted in Iraq and submit to 20-year contracts. These multinationals were not given a share in Iraqi oil production; they will be paid a $2 fee per barrel for raising output above a mutually agreed level.

Still, for Big Oil, the possibility of having a crack at all those mega-giant fields in Shi'ite-controlled southeast Iraq - the largest concentration of its kind in the world - led all players to yell , "It's raining oil!" Once you've paid the ticket, you're inside the theater. And what a theatre ... The Iraqi government may end up paying foreign Big Oil as much as $50 billion for its know-how. All these "service" deals will dodge Iraq's parliament - which might throw a wrench in the works. And Big Oil will still get $2 for each barrel of extra crude above a minimum production target...cont'd


http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KL16Ak02.html




A deeply traumatized and ruined nation. And so Iraq will just get on with it? And our returning traumatized soldiers will just 'move on'? Hey, it's just business.

[grassfed]

1. no oil for war

what a farce