Iraq Oil Report

Former Fed. Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan, prophet of U.S. economic stability, sure started a firestorm with the 20 words in his book that said the Iraq war is about oil.

Walid Khadduri reports in Dar Al-Hayat on the ensuing discussion that needs to happen now that the flames have been fanned.

A person with the weight of Greenspan should have been aware of the impact of these comments on US policy toward Iraq and the Middle East in general. It’s important now to search for the necessary evidence to document his comments, examine the background for them and avoid making such mistakes in the future.

Anthony Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies also has a take.

The US cannot steal Iraq’s oil in any meaningful way. Iraq almost certainly has far more than the 112 billion barrels of proven reserves it is credited with in most sources. …

The real issue is not taking oil for the US; it is securing oil for the global economy. The US depends on that economy for its growth and at least indirectly for part of every job in the US. It not only needs direct imports, it needs oil to flow from Gulf to all of its major trading partners: Europe, China, Japan, South Korea, and all of the other powers that trade and invest with the US. If they cannot buy oil reliably at market prices, the world economy will weaken and the US economy with it.

I reported on it last week for UPI: Iraq, Oil and Greenspan’s Gospel.

Jasim Dakhil writes for the UK-based Arabic paper Asharq Al-Awsat the debate over ‘war for oil’ is currently clouding a more pressing matter: Squandered Wealth: Oil Smuggling in Basra

The Hunt for Hunt Oil

Richard Wolffe and Gretel C. Kovach write for Newsweek on the relationship between Hunt Oil CEO Ray Hunt and his connections to the Bush administration.

Michael Fletcher writes in the Washington Post on the Hunt Oil stirrup.

SourceWatch has more background on Hunt Oil.

More Iraq Oil

The Irish firm Petrel Resources is one of the firms doing some testing and analysis for the Iraq Ministry of Oil.

It’s leadership is big on Iraq oil chances but if it gets the production sharing agreements on the discovered fields it wants, then there’s another problem it must face: outcry from the oil unions, campaigners and more who will raise the assurances made by the Iraqi government that only fields with real risk – those found in current exploration blocks – will qualify for risk contracts.

Society, Security and Politics

AFP is reporting the Senate may vote Tuesday on a plan to split Iraq into regions. (I wonder how well this plan will be received by Iraqis who are largely none too happy about the current U.S.-administered plan?)

Dahr Jamail writes for the Institute for Policy Studies’ Foreign Policy In Focus project The Royal Treatment: Saudi Involvement in Iraq Overlooked. Dahr is an independent reporting who has covered Iraq largely for Inter Press Service. His new book, Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq is out this month.

Hiba Dawood’s daily write-up for UPI: the Iraq Press Roundup

Two great forecasters for Iraq politics, which will determine the political and security climate for any oil law and oil sector development, are detailed by University of Michigan Middle East expert Juan Cole website Informed Comment.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that former prime minister Ibrahim Jaafari visited Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Najaf on Saturday. Jaafari was expected to meet with representatives of the Sadr Movement later that day. Al-Hayat says that two main interpretations of the visit have been put forward. One is that Jaafari is attempting to repair the rifts in the United Iraqi Alliance, the ruling Shiite fundamentalist bloc created by Sistani in the fall of 2004. In that case he was getting Sistani’s blessing for the effort and seeking his intercession with Muqtada al-Sadr, who has withdrawn his bloc from the coalition.

The second interpretation is that Jaafari is attempting to make a new bloc in parliament that would include the Sadrists, and which would undermine Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. In that case he was seeking Sistani’s blessing for the effort or at least ensuring that the grand ayatollah was not dead set against it.

Al-Hayat also reports on the worsening security situation in the south. It reports one member of the federal parliament as complaining about a wave of assassinations in Basra. Some 100 persons were cut down just in the past week, he alleged, including two aides to Sistani. He demanded the resignation of the Basra police chief and threatened a vote of no confidence against the minister of the interior if nothing was done to stem the killings.

Sawt al-Iraq in Arabic says that not just one but several parliamentarians are called for the resignation of Minister of the Interior Jawad al-Bulani because of the downward security spiral in the south.

The head of the parliamentary committee on security, Hadi al-Amiri, agreed about the worsening situation but said that the security forces were doing the best they could. Al-Amiri is head of the Badr Organization paramilitary, attached to the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), and many police and other security men in Basra were drawn from Badr. So, ironically, the head of the parliamentary security committee is also the leader of one of Iraq’s best-trained Shiite militias.

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