Just What Does America Want to Do With Iraq's Oil?
CommonDreams
Published on Sunday, June 8, 2003 by the New York Times
by Timothy O'Brien
Attention shoppers: Iraqi oil is for sale.
On Thursday, exactly two weeks after the United Nations Security Council lifted 13 years of economic sanctions against Iraq and gave the United States a firm grip on one of the world's most bounteous oil spigots, Baghdad put 10 million barrels of crude up for bid.
Although Baghdad is still mired in crime and no weapons of mass destruction have surfaced in Iraq, Washington is helping market Iraqi oil with all due haste. A former Shell Oil executive heads a panel supervising Iraq's oil fields and crude will now be sold directly to refiners, thus eliminating a middleman role once dominated by Russian oil traders. French refiners also once enjoyed a healthy foothold in Iraq before their government wound up on the wrong side of the United Nations war debate, giving a leg up to enthusiastic American and British refiners, which couldn't deal directly with Iraq during the sanctions era.
Call it a coup de petrole.
And since Iraq has the world's second-largest pool of known oil reserves, the Bush administration's handling of the money that flows from those fields is certain to ripple far beyond Iraq's borders - particularly because some two-thirds of Iraq's estimated oil bounty remains untapped.
Although Iraq's oil industry is being overhauled in a way that creates welcome opportunities for Fortune 500 oil giants, American authorities promise that oil riches will be spent on Iraqi reconstruction and humanitarian aid. Even so, Iraqis and others Middle Eastern countries remain wary about possible American shenanigans with Iraqi oil and are watching sales to see whether the United States waged a war of liberation or a war of occupation.
"People in the region and beyond have a great suspicion of U.S. intentions; and with the U.S. and the U.K. in control of the second-biggest pot of oil in the Gulf region those suspicions will be reinforced," said Judith Kipper, co-director of the Middle East Studies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "I think they're unfounded suspicions because the U.S. won't play games with Iraqi oil."
"But since the U.S. and Britain have been busy trying to get U.N. sanctions against Iraq lifted, and haven't been perceived as being as busy restoring public services in Iraq, the perception that this is about oil is reinforced," Ms. Kipper added. "And in the Middle East, perception is everything."
Iraq's oil numbers are humbling.
The country has 112.5 billion barrels of known reserves, second to Saudi Arabia's 262 billion-barrel mother lode. The United States, Mexico, and Canada combined have only 64 billion barrels, and that supply is aging. Venezuela (78 billion barrels), Africa in its entirety (77 billion barrels), Russia (65 billion barrels, including the Caspian), and the entire Asia-Pacific region (44 billion barrels) also are comparative half-pints.
Other Middle Eastern oil titans like Iran, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates have oil reserves in the 90-billion- to 98-billion-barrel range. But those fields pump at a much fuller tilt than Iraq's outmoded, jury-rigged operations.
Once Iraqi oil pumps are back to speed, and the country's untapped fields are probed, it could become an even greater force within OPEC and the world oil markets. As Vice President Dick Cheney once observed in warning of Saddam Hussein's oil aspirations, whoever sits atop the Middle Eastern oil market has a ``stranglehold'' on the global economy.
It will take time for these dynamics to play out. Oil analysts say it will be at least five years, or perhaps a decade, before Iraq's oil output ramps up fully; it will cost at least $5 billion, they say, to rehabilitate its oil fields. So no tidal waves of oil from Iraq just yet.
The United Nations resolution lifting sanctions requires that Iraq's oil profits be deposited in a fund to benefit the Iraqi people.
The United States and Britain will oversee the fund, with outside monitors, including the United Nations, checking their work. Some analysts say that Iraqis, not the United States, will prove to be the dominant force in this new oil equation.
`"The fundamental decisions about the future of Iraq's oil industry will inevitably be made by the Iraqi people because those decisions will shape Iraq for the next 30, 40 or 50 years," said Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. "Those are decisions that a sovereign nation makes, not the United States government."
But that leaves the question of how much leverage over Iraq's future the United States has acquired simply by having ousted its government and now by determining the circumstances and timetable for the transition to a provisional Iraqi government. So other analysts think America will exercise much greater influence than Mr. Yergin predicts.
"I expect the United States to continue to play a strong role in the Iraqi oil market five years from now," said Michael Klare, a political science professor at Hampshire College. "It may not be directly, but the U.S. will have substantial power over who taps Iraq's oil market."
As time goes on, Iraq's oil riches may be seen as the limus test of Washington's intentions in Iraq. "I don't think we went there for the oil, and I don't think we went there for the things the White House said we went there for either," said Vahan Zanoyan, chairman of PFC Energy, a business consultancy. "The main reason was to consolidate our position as a superpower."
To dispel the notion that fossil fuel is what took the United States to Iraq, Mr. Zanoyan recommends a well-known remedy: daylight.
Is The US Control Of Baghdad A New Assault On OPEC?
<a href=www.jihadunspun.com>JIHAD UNSPUN
Jun 08, 2003
The US conquest and occupation of Iraq has given the Americans control of one of the world’s major oil producers, one that many believe has untapped reserves that could rival Saudi Arabia’s and Russia’s. US control could also weaken the grip of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on world markets and, in particular, Saudi Arabia, the cartel’s dominant member.
So as the Americans help restore Iraq’s oil industry, badly run down by two wars and 13 years of United Nations sanctions, the key question is whether the country will remain in OPEC now that it has resumed oil exports, albeit at a modest level, after the UN Security Council unshackled it from sanctions imposed in 1990.
The Americans have long sought to weaken OPEC, which has been feeling growing pressure from non-cartel producers, particularly Russia, which is vying with Saudi Arabia for dominance of the world oil market. It has also been grappling with what many of its members see as an alarming excess in global oil supplies. This struggle for influence over the oil market should also be seen as part of a wider battle for political leadership in the Gulf. Former Iraqi Oil Minister Fadhil Chalabi, a cousin of Ahmed Chalabi, the Pentagon-backed leader of the main exile group, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), believes his country could double its proven reserves of 113 billion barrels through widespread exploration and become a “super-giant producer” like Saudi Arabia, putting 10 million barrels on the market every day. That is clearly a scenario in which Iraq is outside OPEC.
Iraq has a geographic advantage that cuts the cost of reaching Western markets ú pipelines that link it to Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. (There are other pipelines to the Red Sea, which the Saudis helped build during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, but Riyadh is unlikely to allow Baghdad to use them if it breaks with OPEC.) With that kind of output, with low production costs attracting consumer states away from higher-cost regions like the North Sea, an Iraqi oil industry managed by US-based companies would have the capacity “to bring OPEC to its knees,” according to Chalabi.
There are divisions within OPEC itself, particularly over the cartel’s quota system, designed to keep prices at or above $25 a barrel. Algeria, Nigeria and some of the other members are demanding larger shares of OPEC’s production total, which would have to be at Saudi Arabia’s expense.
Iraq’s de facto oil minister, Thamir Ghadhban, said on May 26 that “we really don’t have any problem with OPEC” and that the question of withdrawing from the cartel was not currently on the agenda of the US-appointed administration running Iraq. US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said whether Iraq stays in OPEC is entirely up to the Iraqis. “We will support their decision, not impose a decision,” he declared on April 28.
But Philip J. Carroll, the US executive chosen by the Pentagon to advise Iraq’s post-war Oil Ministry, has suggested that Iraq might be best served by disregarding OPEC quotas, the strongest indication so far that the Americans might push whatever government emerges in Iraq into breaking ranks with the cartel. It also underlines the repeated allegation that one of the imperatives that drove the Americans into invading Iraq in the first place was to control its oil resources, the better to lessen its reliance on Saudi Arabia.
As it is, the return of Iraq ú which has operated outside OPEC since the 1990 invasion of Kuwait ú as a major exporter under a new government would cause considerable uncertainty. Iraq has the second-largest proven oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia, and its return to the market unconstrained by the cartel could further erode OPEC’s already limited ability to set prices. It might even trigger a price war that would weaken the Saudis and other cartel members. That would, of course, delight the Americans (and other consumers), who have been hoping to break OPEC’s grip on pricing for many years.
Carroll, formerly Royal Dutch/Shell’s chief in the US, insists that he is not the instrument of an Iraqi oil policy that would sabotage OPEC. But as he told The Washington Post in mid-May: “In the final analysis, Iraq’s role in OPEC or in any other international organization is something that has to be left to the Iraqi government.”
Already, officials in the Oil Ministry ú now supervised by US forces ú are actively considering pulling Iraq out of OPEC and exporting as much oil as possible, as soon as possible, to maximize revenue once the oil fields have returned to full capacity.
Earlier this year, US-backed Iraqi exiles, including Ahmed Chalabi, whom the Pentagon wants to see in key government posts drew up a policy document which recommended that Baghdad renounce OPEC’s production restrictions, and noted that it may have to withdraw from the cartel if it sought to impose unacceptable ceilings.
Before the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Iraq was producing more than 3 million barrels per day (bpd). With the imposition of UN sanctions in 1990, it was excluded from OPEC’s production quotas. Under the UN’s “oil-for-food” agreement it was allowed to produce all that its increasingly dilapidated oil industry could manage and before the US invasion was producing around 2 million bpd. Output ground to a standstill because of the conflict but is expected to resume on a limited scale in the next few weeks.
Iraqi oil officials estimate the country will be able to export around 750,000 bpd by late June, with expectations that this can be boosted quite rapidly to 1.5 million bpd, half of which would be for domestic consumption. Production is expected to hit the pre-1990 OPEC quota level of 3 million bpd within 18 months and 3.5 million bpd six months after that. Then, by opening up fields that have gone untapped because of the sanctions, it is anticipated that production could reach as high as 6 million bpd in five or six years ú almost as much as Saudi Arabia’s output level.
That would amount to nearly one-quarter of OPEC’s current targeted production of 24.5 million bpd and would mean that other OPEC members would have to give up a lot of output ú and revenue ú to accommodate Iraq. With increased output pushing prices down, OPEC would be in trouble. The Saudis, as the cartel’s largest producer with nearly one-third of its output, would be under intense pressure to lower their output.
As it is, OPEC’s share of the world oil market has dropped from a peak of around 90 percent in the 1970s to around 39 percent now. This is because since the OPEC-induced oil shocks of the 1970s and the recession they caused, the US and other industrialized states have sought to obtain more oil from non-OPEC producers. Current US and European efforts to open up giant new fields in West Africa, the Caspian Basin, Siberia and elsewhere will further undermine OPEC’s clout.
OPEC is scheduled to meet in Qatar on June 11 to consider a new cut in production ú currently running at 25.4 million bpd ú to accommodate Iraq’s return to the market and avoid a possible price collapse.
Before the US invasion, former Venezuelan Oil Minister Humberto Calderon opined: “After the war there will be a substantial increase in Iraqi oil production and I wouldn’t be surprised is schemes emerged to weaken, if not destroy, OPEC.”
The US-British declaration that they are the occupying powers and will continue to run Iraq underlines their control of the country’s oil industry. The coalition’s failure to produce even a transitional government by now means that it will remain in charge for a lot longer than expected ú up to a year, according to US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Even proposals for an Iraqi government have been downgraded to the level of an “Iraqi authority” with lesser, though still undefined powers.
The Bush administration ú which Victor Poleo, professor of graduate studies in oil economics at Central University in Caracas, Venezuela, calls “an oil directorate” because of its strong links to the oil industry ú has already made clear that the lion’s share of the fat contracts worth an estimated $30 billion-$100 billion will go to US firms. That includes refurbishing and exploiting the oil fields.
Russia, France and China, which had supported Baghdad in the UN Security Council in 1991-2003, are unlikely to be allowed to implement the major oil contracts they signed with Saddam Hussein’s regime, which means urgently needed investment from that quarter will not be forthcoming. The Americans are expected to urge the Iraqis to privatize what had been a state-owned industry that enriched Saddam and his henchmen on a vast scale.
Privatization is anathema to most of OPEC, particularly the Saudis, but if Iraq goes that route, opening up to large amounts of outside investment, it would put the other producers under pressure to do the same since they are increasingly in need of investment to upgrade and expand their oil industries, in most cases their primary revenue-earner. Such a move would also weaken OPEC’s influence.
Carroll has said that Iraq might best be served by exporting as much oil as it can and ignoring the quotas set by OPEC, giving the strongest indication so far that a future Iraqi government might quit the cartel that Baghdad helped found in 1960.
He told The Los Angeles Times on May 16: “Historically, Iraq has had, let’s say, an irregular participation in OPEC quota systems. They have from time to time, because of compelling national interest, elected to opt out of the quota system and pursue their own path. They may elect to do that same thing. To me, it’s a very important national question.”
Leading figures in OPEC, and elsewhere in the oil industry, do not believe the Iraqis themselves will quit the cartel, but could do so with US prodding. Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi declared in late May that he saw no reason why OPEC could not cope with Iraq’s resumption of exports and said it would be “folly’ to leave the market to determine oil prices.
Maintaining oil prices, and revenues, would be a key priority for any Iraqi government, he noted. “Iraq, like other producing states, be they in or out of OPEC, is keen to realize a fair and stable income from its petroleum resources,” he said, “and more particularly for the reconstruction and rebuilding of its production capacity.”
Fadhil Chalabi says he prefers staying within OPEC, but he also stressed that “Iraq is going to need a lot of money in the next five years ú up to $300 billion … Iraq must maximize revenue from its oil ú with or without OPEC.”
Don't Look to the UN for Resistance--Re-Colonizing Iraq
CounterPunch
May 30, 2003
By TARIQ ALI
Unsurprisingly, the Security Council has capitulated completely, recognised the occupation of Iraq and approved its re-colonisation by the United States and its bloodshot British adjutant. The timing of the mea culpa by the 'international community' was perfect. Yesterday, senior executives from over a 1000 companies gathered in London to bask in the sunshine of the re-established consensus under the giant umbrella of Bechtel, the American Empire's most favoured construction company. A tiny proportion of the loot will be shared.
So what happened to the over-heated rhetoric of Europe versus America? Berlusconi in Italy and Aznar in Spain--the two most right-wing governments in Europe--were fitting partners for Blair while the East European states, giving a new meaning to the term 'satellite', which they had previously so long enjoyed, fell as one into line behind Bush.
France and Germany, on the other hand, protested for months that they were utterly opposed to a US attack on Iraq. Schroeder had owed his narrow re-election to a pledge not to support a war on Baghdad, even were it authorized by the UN. Chirac, armed with a veto in the Security Council, was even more voluble with declarations that any unauthorized assault on Iraq would never be accepted by France.
Together, Paris and Berlin coaxed Moscow into expressing its disagreement too with American plans. Even Beijing emitted a few cautious sounds of demurral. The Franco-German initiatives aroused tremendous excitement and consternation among diplomatic commentators. Here, surely, was an unprecedented rift in the Atlantic Alliance. What was to become of European unity, of NATO, of the 'international community' itself if such a disastrous split persisted? Could the very concept of the West survive? Such apprehensions were quickly to be allayed. No sooner were Tomahawk missiles lighting up the nocturnal skyline in Baghdad, and the first Iraqi civilians cut down by the Marines, than Chirac rushed to explain that France would assure smooth passage of US bombers across its airspace (as it had not done, under his own Premiership, when Reagan attacked Libya), and wished 'swift success' to American arms in Iraq. Germany's cadaver-green Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer announced that his government too sincerely hoped for the 'rapid collapse' of resistance to the Anglo-American attack. Putin, not to be outdone, explained to his compatriots that 'for economic and political reasons', Russia could only desire a decisive victory of the United States in Iraq.
Washington is still not satisfied. It wants to punish France further. Why not a ritual public flogging broadcast live by Murdoch TV? A humbled petty chieftain (Chirac) bending over while an imperial princess (Condeleeza Rice) adminsters the whip. Then the leaders of a re-united North could all relax and get on with the business they know best: plundering the South.
The expedition to Baghdad was planned as the first flexing of a new imperial stance. What better demonstration of the shift to a more offensive strategy than to make an example of Iraq. If no single reason explains the targeting of Iraq, there is little mystery about the range of calculations that lay behind it. Economically, Iraq possesses the second largest reserves of cheap oil in the world; Baghdad's decision in 2000 to invoice its exports in euros rather than dollars risked imitation by Chávez in Venezuela and the Iranian mullahs. Privatization of the Iraqi wells under US control would help to weaken OPEC.
Strategically, the existence of an independent Arab regime in Baghdad had always been an irritation to the Israeli military-even when Saddam was an ally of the West, the IDF supplied spare parts to Tehran during the IranúIraq war. With the installation of Republican zealots close to Likud in key positions in Washington, the elimination of a traditional adversary became an attractive immediate goal for Jerusalem. Lastly, just as the use of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had once been a pointed demonstration of American might to the Soviet Union, so today a blitzkrieg rolling swiftly across Iraq would serve to show the world at large that if the chips are down, the United States has, in the last resort, the means to enforce its will. The UN has now provided retrospective sanction to a pre-emptive strike. Its ill-fated predecessor, the League of Nations, at least had the decency to collapse after its Charter was serially raped.
Analogies with Hitler's blitzkrieg of 1940 are drawn without compunction by cheerleaders for the war. Thus Max Boot in the Financial Times (2 April, 2003): 'The French fought hard in 1940-at first. But eventually the speed and ferocity of the German advance led to a total collapse. The same thing will happen in Iraq.' What took place in France after 1940 might give pause to these enthusiasts.
The lack of any spontaneous welcome from Shi'ites and the fierce early resistance of armed irregulars prompted the theory that the Iraqis are a 'sick people' who will need protracted treatment before they can be entrusted with their own fate (if ever). Such was the line taken by David Aaronovitch in the Observer. Likewise, George Mellon in the Wall Street Journal warns: 'Iraq Won't Easily Recover From Saddam's Terror': 'after three decades of rule of the Arab equivalent of Murder Inc, Iraq is a very sick society'. To develop an 'orderly society' and re-energize (privatize) the economy will take time, he insists. On the front page of the Sunday Times(30 March, 2003), its reporter Mark Franchetti quoted an American NCO: '"The Iraqis are a sick people and we are the chemotherapy", said Corporal Ryan Dupre. "I am starting to hate this country. Wait till I get hold of a friggin' Iraqi. No I won't get hold of one. I'll just kill him."' No doubt the 'sick society' theory will acquire greater sophistication, but it is clear the pretexts are to hand for a mixture of Guantanamo and Gaza in these newly Occupied Territories.
If it is futile to look to the United Nations or Euroland, let alone Russia or China, for any serious obstacle to American designs in the Middle East, where should resistance start? First of all, naturally, in the region itself. There, it is to be hoped that the invaders of Iraq will eventually be harried out of the country by a growing national reaction to the occupation regime they install, and that their collaborators may meet the fate of Nuri Said before them. Sooner or later, the ring of corrupt and brutal tyrannies around Iraq will be broken. If there is one area where the cliché that classical revolutions are a thing of the past is likely to be proved wrong, it is the Arab world. The day the Mubarak, Hashemite, Saudi and other dynasties are swept away by popular wrath, American-and Israeli-arrogance in the region will be over.
Tariq Ali is an editor of New Left Review and a frequent contributor to CounterPunch. He is the author of The Clash Of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads And Modernity, published by Verso. His new book, 'Bush in Babylon: Re-colonising Iraq' will be published by Verso in the autumn.
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Sam Hamod and Elaine Cassel
Resisting the Bush Administration's War on Liberty
Uzi Benziman
Sharon and Sons, Inc.
Jason Leopold
The Decline and Fall of Thomas White
Rich Procter
George Jumps the Shark
Federico Moscogiuri
Going to Israel? Sign or Else
Steve Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/12
Book of the Day
Fooling Marty Peretz
Website of the Day
T-Shirts to Protest In
Hot Stories
Cindy Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter I Can't Hear From
Elaine Cassel
Civil Liberties Watch
Michel Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War: What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach Bush: A Draft Resolution