Authority Scraps Plans for Iraq Oil Advisory Board

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-iraqoil18aug18,1,4269355.story?coll=la-home-headlines

The U.S.-led occupation authority in Iraq has abandoned plans to create an international advisory board to oversee the country's battered oil industry, opting instead to give Iraqi technocrats a freer hand to chart their own course.

While U.S. and allied officials remain in charge of reconstruction, the decision to scale back foreign supervision signals their increasing confidence in the competence of Iraqi oil professionals and heightened concern about Iraqi political sensitivities, officials said. Instead of answering to a global board of directors, oil technocrats will report to a minister named by the new Iraqi Governing Council.

The move could disappoint those who viewed the ouster of Saddam Hussein as an opportunity to set Iraqi oil policy on a pro-American course, open the nation's oil sector to Western companies and reduce the influence of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries on world oil production and prices.

The decision was prompted in part by the reluctance of foreign oil company experts and prominent Iraqi expatriates to join the board, officials said. The expatriates expressed concern they would be perceived by their former countrymen as agents of a U.S.-orchestrated takeover of the Iraqi industry. Some oil companies reportedly were reluctant to assign key personnel to the effort, fearing that their participation might sour future business deals in Iraq.

The Iraqis keep blowing up all the pipelines, the whole country is a mess, no civilian contractors want to get their asses shot off.....so the neo-cons think maybe putting an "iraqi" face on the oil plunder might calm the natives down and get the oil flowing.

Add several tons of bullshit, to what i just said and you have that article.

Yea putting Chalabi's creepy face on the oil exploitation, that ought to fix everything, yea thats the ticket.