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Thank God, now we can rest easy. Oil, Oil, Oil everywhere.
Back to good old days of 18 cents a gallon.
Iraq Oil Deals Near Completion
By Ben Lando, UPI
Posted on February 4, 2008, Printed on February 4, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/75902/
Iraq's Oil Ministry, in talks with oil majors to boost production in crucial fields, may give long-term deals to firms that offer technical support.
This comes as Baghdad is preparing a first round, though somewhat cloudy in details, of bidding and negotiated contracts to improve its struggling oil sector.
Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani told Argus Media on the sidelines of the OPEC meeting in Vienna that all deals would be fully transparent. Work would be carried out by Iraqi workers, he said. There are no legal controls, though, and without it and the re-establishment of the Iraqi National Oil Co. the country's oil sector is moving away from being nationally controlled.
( Jeez, I wonder whose idea privatizing the oil sector was? )
Officials from the world's largest oil companies have been meeting with Iraqi Oil Ministry officials in Amman, Jordan, to fix the terms of technical support contracts. Such contracts, which are shorter-term deals, will "help Iraq fast track the purchase of necessary equipment and train the Iraqi people to install them," Shahristani said.
( the Surgin General has made Bagdhad so safe for ... meetings in Amman)
He said those companies will be favored in a bidding round for longer-term contracts on the fields -- some of Iraq's largest producers -- set for later this year, Argus reports. Another bidding round is expected to take place next year.
Iraq produced about 2.3 million barrels per day in December and intends to hit 2.8 million bpd in two years, a projection based on enhancing currently producing fields. Iraq's oil sector, the third-largest in the world, manages despite years of misuse by Saddam Hussein, U.N. sanctions and the ongoing war. It needs tens of billions of dollars of investment and Iraq's government chronically been unable to invest its own capital budget, lacking ins utional capacity.
It has no official oil law, relying on a Saddam-era law and controversial laws of the Kurdistan region. A national oil law has been stuck in negotiations for a year, largely over disputes between the national and Kurdish governments over who controls and directs the country's oil strategy.
( benchmarks, wenchmarks, just get out of the way and let the US oilcos steal the oil for a song)
The Kurdistan Regional Government passed its own oil law and has signed dozens of contracts to jump start its own promising oil sector. Shahristani calls the deals illegal and said any company who signs with the KRG will be kept out of the rest of Iraq. Oil sales to Korea's SK Energy and Austria's OMV have been halted.
( but oil sales to dubya's Texas buddies are still going strong? )
There is also no agreement as to how much access international oil firms should have to Iraq's oil, nationalized since the 1970s.
Along with the oil law, a law governing revenue, reorganizing the Oil Ministry and recons uting the Iraqi National Oil Company were to be approved, as a package. All are far from approval.
Now Baghdad is moving forward on signing the deals, which are needed to some extent to bring new technology to the sector and training to Iraq's oil workers. But the workers have warned against controversial production sharing contracts or any that takes control of the oil, and too much the profits, from Iraqis.
( it, throw a few $B at these oilworkers to shut them up. Bribing Maliki and everybody else has worked so far. It's all about the $$$)
"National expertise and resources are capable of enhancing production in the oil industry," Hassan Jumaa Awad, president of the umbrella Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, told United Press International during a visit to London in November, "if they are prepared to allocate more funding and spend the resources that already exist."
A U.S. Government Accountability Office report last month said it was unable to discern how much of the 2007 capital budget Iraq's government spent. It assessed the level of success after a dismal 2006.
The U.S. State Department said Iraq's central government spent 24 percent of its capital budget through July 15, 2007. The U.S. Treasury Department pegs it at 4.4 percent through August.
"The disparity between the different sets of data calls into question their reliability and whether they can be used to draw firm conclusions about the extent to which the Iraqi government has increased its spending on capital projects in 2007, compared with 2006," the report concluded.
Iraq's Oil Ministry, like the rest of Iraq, has seen a brain drain of qualified and trained technocrats. Many have fled the country, were purged during an ethnic cleanse or have been killed.
( but the surge works!!That's all that matters! )
© 2008 Independent Media Ins ute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/75902/
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/75902/
Thank God, now we can rest easy. Oil, Oil, Oil everywhere.
Back to good old days of 18 cents a gallon.
Damn that "Surgin" General.
Better hurry up and buy some Iraqi Dinars now and then cash them in for some greenbacks laterz.
Since Boutons stories are copyrighted with the "all rights reserved" stuff on them, could I copy what he's posted in here, send them back to the original writer showing him the changes and additions boutons has posted on here and get him into trouble for plagarizing?
boutons, you are voting for . . . ?
boutons would clearly rather have us folks here in the U.S. paying $8.00 a gallon...
yep, $8/gal would get this country on its feet and moving again.
You didn't really think the bills for Iraq were never going to be paid?
Nope, I fully expected all the oil in Iraq to go to Chad, Rwanda, and Ethiopia.
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