The Empire 127

Het Iraakse ministerie van Olie was het eerste gebouw in Bagdad dat in 2003 na de Amerikaanse inval bewaakt werd.

De Independent bericht:

'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.

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.
Critics fear that given Iraq's weak bargaining position, it could get locked in now to deals on bad terms for decades to come. "Iraq would end up with the worst possible outcome," said Greg Muttitt of Platform, a human rights and environmental group that monitors the oil industry. He said the new legislation was drafted with the assistance of BearingPoint, an American consultancy firm hired by the US government, which had a representative working in the American embassy in Baghdad for several months.
"Three outside groups have had far more opportunity to scrutinise this legislation than most Iraqis," said Mr Muttitt. "The draft went to the US government and major oil companies in July, and to the International Monetary Fund in September. Last month I met a group of 20 Iraqi MPs in Jordan, and I asked them how many had seen the legislation. Only one had."
Britain and the US have always hotly denied that the war was fought for oil. On 18 March 2003, with the invasion imminent, Tony Blair proposed the House of Commons motion to back the war. "The oil revenues, which people falsely claim that we want to seize, should be put in a trust fund for the Iraqi people administered through the UN," he said.'

Lees verder: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2132574.ece

Waarom analyseren de Nederlandse commerciele massamedia dit feit niet?

Zie ook: http://home.planet.nl/~houck006/oorlogomolie.html En: http://home.planet.nl/~houck006/oorlogomolie2.html
Het zijn twee uitgebreide artikelen die ik vier jaar geleden, in 2003, schreef over het belangrijkste motief van de VS om Irak binnen te vallen. Ook toen berichten de Nederlandse commerciele massamedia daar niet over. Destijds schreef men braaf de woorden van de Bush regering over dat Saddam ontwapend moest worden omdat zijn regime massavernietigingswapens bezat. Toen dat leugens bleken te zijn, wat iedereen al had kunnen weten, zwegen de Nederlandse massamedia over de ware motieven. Net als nu. Premier Balkenende die een geheime nota te zien kreeg van premier Blair waarin stond dat Saddam massavernietigingswapens bezat zwijgt nu hierover. En de Nederlandse parlementaire pers zwijgt eveneens in alle talen. Dat schrijft de westerse vrijheid van meningsuiting voor.