Oil for Sale: Iraq Study Group Recommends Privatization (surprised?)

Oil for Sale: Iraq Study Group Recommends Privatization
By Antonia Juhasz, AlterNet
Posted on December 7, 2006, Printed on December 7, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/45190/


In its heavily anticipated report released on Wednesday, the Iraq Study Group made at least four truly radical proposals.

The report calls for the United States to assist in privatizing Iraq's national oil industry, opening Iraq to private foreign oil and energy companies, providing direct technical assistance for the "drafting" of a new national oil law for Iraq, and assuring that all of Iraq's oil revenues accrue to the central government. President Bush hired an employee from the U.S. consultancy firm Bearing Point Inc. over a year ago to advise the Iraq Oil Ministry on the drafting and passage of a new national oil law. As previously drafted, the law opens Iraq's nationalized oil sector to private foreign corporate investment, but stops short of full privatization. The ISG report, however, goes further, stating that "the United States should assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise." In addition, the current Constitution of Iraq is ambiguous as to whether control over Iraq's oil should be shared among its regional provinces or held under the central government. The report specifically recommends the latter: "Oil revenues should accrue to the central government and be shared on the basis of population." If these proposals are followed, Iraq's national oil industry will be privatized and opened to foreign firms, and in control of all of Iraq's oil wealth.

The proposals should come as little surprise given that two authors of the report, James A. Baker III and Lawrence Eagleburger, have each spent much of their political and corporate careers in pursuit of greater access to Iraq's oil and wealth.

"The report calls for the United States to assist in privatizing Iraq's national oil industry, opening Iraq to private foreign oil and energy companies..."

There is so much to say about this.

it ALSO recommends that BUSH tell america it was NEVER about the OIL.

All these fuckers need to go to jail, they are CROOKS, and they need to know that WE ARE NOT CORRUPT, NOR ARE WE STUPID.

And that WE THE PEOPLE ARE IN CHARGE.

with this mis-administration it's definitely "FOLLOW THE OIL SLICK"

the #1 priority. It was always about how to keep that oil money.

I feel ill.

Operation
Iraq
Liberation

Because this recommendation is obviously #1.

"Oil revenues should accrue to the central government", Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise" - sounds like a nationalised company to me. Such as, for instance, that in Venezuela.

and Azerbaijan. Through IOCs, International Oil Companies (Note they are not Local Oil Companies) countries turn over their oil fields to oil conglomerates who have complete control over the nation's resource.

The International companies decide if those fields get pumped or not pumped. If for example you are BP and the less oil you pump the more your current oil is worth, they are likely to make the decision to not pump the giant oil fields of Iraq. True the nation gets some royalties from their oil that is allowed to be pumped but as we saw with Venezuela before Chavez took back his country's oil fields, those royalties are barely enough to keep the citizens from starvation.

No the privatization of Iraq oil fields means the neocons have given up their dream to control the price fixing of the Saudis and the big oil companies' profits will zoom, again.

was that the ISG does not call for the privatization of the Iraqi oil industry. And, for that matter, the privatization of that oil supply has always been the neoconservative goal.

party. The fact that the report says Bush's strategy is failing is red meat for the public. Ultimately, they are buying Jr time to leave this mess under the next president as well as trying to get their own hands on Iraq's oil.

Not surprising but very disappointing none the less.

You can catch it again at 9:50 am eastern at http://www.democracynow.org or later there will be a transcript.