Apparently the Bush administration were well aware knew that Hunt Oil, A Texas oil company whose CEO Ray L. Hunt, the chairman and chief executive, is tight with the Bushites had planned to sign an oil deal with the regional Kurdistan government which was outside of USA policy and bypassed Iraq's central government, according to a Congressional committee.
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CORRUPTION AT THE TOP? ARE YOU KIDDING?
On Wednesday, the committee released e-mail messages and other documents, which confirm such suspicions as cited above.
U S policy is set to warn companies that they will encounter grave risks in signing contracts before Iraq passes a new oil law. Strengthening Iraq's central government is the key. The deal with Kurdistan cedes responsibility for writing contracts directly to a regional government, enraging Iraqi officials. Apparently the State Department officials not only did not discourage such a deal the appeared to encourage it, according to the newly released email messages.
Hunt Oil of Dallas signed the contract with Kurdistan's semiautonomous government in September 2007. Ray L. Hunt briefed an advisory board to Mr. Bush on his contacts with Kurdish officials before the deal was signed.
The Congressional committee released an e-mail message of aba State Department official in Washington, briefed by a colleague about the then upcoming deal with the Kurdistan Regional Government, in part as follows: "Many thanks for the heads up; getting an American company to sign a deal with the K.R.G. will make big news back here. Please keep us posted."
Currently administration is defending help that United States officials provided in putting together a separate set of no-bid contracts to provide services at other Iraqi oil fields, between Iraq's Oil Ministry in Baghdad and five major Western oil companies
In the creation of the no-bid contracts, the Bushites that they had provided what it called "purely technical help." They claimed that the United States Government had no part in choosing the companies.
Release of the contracts seems to confirm the true reason for the Iraq "war," Blood-oil. Critics who told us so, including yours truly, both in the United States and abroad, the enormous Iraqi oil reserves were the prime factor for the American-led invasion, which the Bushites have strenuously denied. Oil Rape approved by many Republican voters to this very day.
Iraq Oil Minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, condemned the Kurdistan deal as illegal as it was not approved by Iraq's central government and was done without the blessing of legalization. Their oil law, not been passed, so the profiteers simply ignored any law or lack thereof as the Bushites have been doing for nearly eight years.
Last year, a State Department official in Baghdad criticized it, thusly; "We believe these contracts have needlessly elevated tensions between the K.R.G. and the national government of Iraq."
The State Department on Wednesday claimed that it had discouraged the deal and Hunt officials declined to comment, while the Kurdish government officials said there was no impropriety.
In a letter to the Henry A. Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, a State Department official wrote that the department had strongly discouraged Hunt from signing the deal until the oil law had been passed.
The State Department claimed that they told Hunt "we continue to advise all companies that they incur significant political and legal risk by signing contracts."
However, Chair Waxman, in a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said that the documents his committee had apprehended "tell a different story about the role of administration officials." In letters in the custody of the committee, Mr. Hunt tells the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, of which he was a member, last July and August, that he was pursuing serious business interests in Kurdistan. A member of any board with the power to do a deal, in which it is advisory, is quite clearly a conflict of interests.
Mr. Hunt wrote to the board last July 12th, "We were approached a month ago by representatives of a private group in Kurdistan as to the possibility of our becoming interested in that region. We had one team of geoscientists travel to Kurdistan several weeks ago and we were encouraged by what we saw."
Mr. Hunt informed State Department officials directly of his intentions in Kurdistan In August 2007, and on September 5, three days before the deal was signed, a bevy of e-mail messages between Hunt and State Department officials made it crystal clear that the department was aware of the impending deal.
In a note to a colleague with the subject line "Hunt Oil to Sign Contract With K.R.G.," a State Department official gives a detailed outline of the agreement. The official wrote that Mr. Hunt, "is expecting to sign an exploration contract with the K.R.G. for a field located in the Shakkan district, an area under K.R.G. control (inside the Green Line) but technically in Nineveh Governorate.... Hunt would be the first U.S. Company to sign such a deal," and the official suggested that the news should be hustled into the State Department's internal distribution network with all possible speed.
Ignoring those messages, as always in this administration, contempt for any law or sense of ethics, a State Department official said Wednesday that the company had been discouraged from completing any deal.
John Fleming, an Iraq press officer in the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, wrote Wednesday in an e-mailed response to questions, "All companies, including Hunt Oil, which have spoken with the United States government about investing in Iraq's oil sector, have and will continue to be given the same advice...We advise companies that they incur significant political and legal risk by signing any contracts with any party before a national law is passed by the Iraqi Parliament."
However, another State Department official, asking to remain anonymous, expressed frustration, that a local State Department official in Erbil, the Kurdish provincial capital, the head of a seemingly ad-hoc, Regional Reconstruction Team, tried to talk Hunt officials out of making the deal.
Unfortunately, no notes were taken at that meeting, according to the anonymous official. However, Hunt representatives later gave a conflicting account of what had been said. The State Department official said. "I have talked to the R.R.T. team leader personally, and he sticks by his story and they stick by theirs,"
, A senior vice president for corporate affairs and international relations at Hunt Oil Jeanne L. Phillips, whose correspondence appears at certain points in the documents released Wednesday, remarked that since Mr. Waxman's letter was not addressed directly to the company, she would not comment on it. "As a matter of company policy, Hunt Oil Company does not comment on correspondence between third parties," she e-mailed.
A Kurdistan Regional Government official reached Wednesday, also asking for anonymity, said that the government had written more than 20 contracts in the last year. "Anyone can have a contract with the K.R.G., but it must be accepted and suitable according to assessment by our experts. Hunt is a good company and never had its contracts with us illegally or improperly."
The documents released by Mr. Waxman display a contentious argument between the Hunt Oil and the State Department over what was said between them before the deal last fall.
In one case a Hunt official claimed that he was told by the State Department during a meeting on June 15, 2007, that the U S Government did not object to deals with the Kurdish regional government.
"I specifically asked if the U.S.G. had a policy toward companies entering contracts with the K.R.G.,", David McDonald the Hunt official, wrote in an email to a colleague on Sept. 28, 2007. The State Department officials, replied that there was no policy, neither for nor against, Mr. McDonald said in the email, concluding with, "There was no communication to me or in my presence made by the nine State Department officials with whom I met prior to 8 September that Hunt should not pursue our course of action leading to a contract. In fact, there was ample opportunity to do so, but it did not happen."
The encouragement by State Department officials were apparently not restricted to the signing of the contract on Sept. 8, the documents suggest. Less than a week later, another State Department official in Basra wrote to Ms. Phillips, "I read and heard about with interest your deal with the regional Kurdish government...I don't know if you are aware of another opportunity. This seems like it would be a good opportunity for Hunt." the official also, mentioned an enormous port project as well as a natural gas project in the south. TAKE THE POLL ON NO-BID CONTRACTS!
Professor Bagnolo has majored in: Cultural Anthropology, Architectural design, painting, creative writing. As a child prodigy, abed with polio for almost two years, he was offered an opportunity to skip three grades at age 8. Later He was a (more...)
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