The US-formulated oil-law proposal, which the US is secretly trying to shove down the throats of Iraq's parliament, demands that Iraq grant 87.5% of its to-be-extracted oil to the American oil companies that will be drilling and extracting it. Iraq is supposed to grant this huge give-away in return for a measly 12.5% royalty payment by the oil companies. Not surprisingly, Iraq's oil workers are marching in protest and their parliamentarians are balking, at this proposed rip-off.
In fact, one of the main 'benchmarks' by which the Bush regime is measuring "progress" in Iraq, is the passage of this US-formulated oil- revenue sharing law. Make no mistake, this is a law that was written not by Iraqi legislators, but by an American consulting firm and big oil execs, and its acceptance by Iraq's parliament would result in America's big oil companies paying only 12.5 cents for every dollar's worth of oil that they take out of the ground.
Americans wonder why Iraqi insurgents are fighting so hard! If America was an oil-rich country, wouldn't you be willing to fight (or support those who did) if some foreign power had invaded our country and was secretly trying to force our Congress to sign off on such an agreement, so that the invaders could freely take our oil and pay only 12 cents on the dollar for every barrel they took?
http://www.commondreams.org/news2007/0919-02.htm
Truthout.org chimes in:
One of the Bush administration's 'benchmarks' for the Iraqi government is the passage of a law to distribute oil revenues. The draft law that the US has written for the Iraqi congress would cede nearly all the oil to Western companies. The Iraq National Oil Company would retain control of 17 of Iraq's 80 existing oilfields, leaving the rest -- including all yet to be discovered oil -- under foreign corporate control for 30 years. 'The foreign companies would not have to invest their earnings in the Iraqi economy,' the analyst Antonia Juhasz wrote in the New York Times in March, after the draft law was leaked. 'They could even ride out Iraq's current "instability" by signing contracts now, while the Iraqi government is at its weakest, and then wait at least two years before even setting foot in the country.' As negotiations over the oil law stalled in September, the provincial government in Kurdistan simply signed a separate deal with the Dallas-based Hunt Oil Company, headed by a close political ally of President Bush.
How will the US maintain hegemony over Iraqi oil? By establishing permanent military bases in Iraq. Five self-sufficient 'super-bases' are in various stages of completion. All are well away from the urban areas where most casualties have occurred. There has been precious little reporting on these bases in the American press, whose dwindling corps of correspondents in Iraq cannot move around freely because of the dangerous conditions. (It takes a brave reporter to leave the Green Zone without a military escort.)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101207H.shtml
More from Commondreams:
Bush and Cheney have consistently misled Congress and the American public on this matter, attempting to sneak in a stealth privatization scheme . . under cover of a struggle for 'equitable revenue sharing' between Sunnis and Shia as a means toward 'reconciliation.'
"While the media are paying close attention to the process of negotiations between the Administration and Congress, very few of us are aware of the most substantive issue in all the benchmarks, i.e. the attempt to force Iraq to 'privatize' its oil, through a provision open for all to see in the text of the bill before the Iraqi Parliament.
Congress has refused to carefully examine the consequences of meeting this particular benchmark, which calls for Iraq to pass a hydrocarbon law that gives away the vast majority of Iraq's oil. Congress isn't asking key questions and the President isn't telling.
Behind the scenes, Bush and Cheney have cleverly linked concepts of reconciliation-by-way-of-equitable-oil-revenue-sharing . . to . . passage of a Hydrocarbon Act (Oil Law) that guarantees the privatization (give-away) of Iraq's oil wealth.
Democrats have denied they are for anything that privatizes Iraq's oil, which means they may be largely unaware of all that is in the bill, because of BushCo's grand deception and perhaps their own unwillingness to face the truth.
Congress continues to fund the war while behind their backs the White House crafts a bipartisan consensus to force Iraq to show "progress" (by giving away the lion's share of its oil).
Problem is, this war will never end as long as Iraqis believe the US is trying to steal their oil. And, given the key stipulations in the currently proposed Hydrocarbon Act, how could they believe anything else?
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