Oil giants to sign contracts with Iraq

For the first time in four decades Iraq is preparing to allow four of the west's biggest oil companies to renew exploitation of the country's vast reserves .

Iraq's oil ministry stepped up talks with BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell and Total after the US vice-president, Dick Cheney, visited Iraq in March, where he also pressed the government to revive efforts to pass the hydrocarbon law that nationalist MPs were blocking. The first contracts are expected to be signed this month. Some 90% of Iraq's budget comes from oil revenues.

Iraq's oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, told the Guardian this week that the deals did not amount to the privatisation of the country's oil. But the four companies are heirs to the consortium given the concession to control Iraq's oil by King Faisal, the foreign Sunni Arab whom the British imposed on Iraq's majority Shia population after occupying the country during the first world war. They lost their right to explore new fields in 1961 after the monarchy was overthrown, and nationalisation followed under the Ba'ath party.

So, not since the overthrow of the Hashemite monarchy, not since the British told the Iraqis who their leader should be, have these four companies been allowed access to Iraq's oil.

And yet, here they are again, fitting symbols of the "liberation" that Bush has brought to this country.

There was no competitive bidding for the concessions, which are to be awarded to the four giants plus Chevron and some smaller companies.

But the deals, known as service contracts, are unusual, said Greg Mutitt, co-director of Platform, an oil industry research group. "Normally such service contracts are carried out by specialist companies ... The majors are not normally interested in such deals, preferring to invest in projects that give them a stake in ownership of extracted oil and the potential for large profits. The explanation is that they see them as a stepping stone..."

So, the "liberation" has taken Iraq backwards to the heady days when western oil companies were involved Iraq's oil industry, but it would be a cynic who claimed that this was the plan all along.

After all, who could deny that the Iraqi people have been "liberated"? Who, other than the worst anti-American cynic, could deny that the people of this battered war torn country are better off than they were under Saddam?

Under Saddam they at least had order, however brutal. Now they live in anarchy, their country ethnically cleansed, with Sunni and Shia populations segregated and separated by concrete walls.

But now, finally, we get to see a reward for all the suffering we have inflicted upon this battered nation. Now, finally, four western oil companies have managed to get their toes in the door and their fingertips on Iraq's oil production.

I would honestly send the people who have done this to jail.

The carnage and the suffering that has been inflicted upon the people of Iraq so that western oil companies could once again get their mitts on Iraq's oil has been simply criminal.

And there are reports that 1.2 million people may have died to make this theft possible. It's beyond disgusting.

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Tags: BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total, Iraq, oil contracts, Iraq war, neo-cons, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld