Comments on: Gen. Petraeus recruits world’s largest energy companies on behalf of Prime Minister Maliki …

By: Clive Smith

Clive Smith — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 07:43:13 +0000

Baghdad, (not in the Palace)20 March. Thank you Bryan. One must not forget the umbrella economic effects of foreign investment upon small business. Although the focus is on technical development, training, and management capacity building, one has only to visit or work in the north to see economic change, in the smaller econmic enterprises, from the man who delivers the ice for the workers, to the man who makes and delivers the bread for them

By: Bryan Hanes

Bryan Hanes — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 02:48:31 +0000

Gen Petraeus is to be commended for getting involved with the big oil companies. Someone has to give them a warm and fuzzy that trying to help in Iraq won’t be throwing away money, ala Hugo Chavez’ Venezuela and that there is a reasonable expectation of earning a sizable profit for risking their capital and people. The more risk the more required reward. I was offended by the uninformed mental midgets who made the first three responses about Gen betrayus, war criminals and daddy Chenney being proud. I was against the war from the start and was appalled at how it was mismanaged. I also have willingly done two tours in Iraq and unlike some, I have am aware of the reality that AMERICA went to war in Iraq, not just the President, Mr. Chenney and the incompetent former (THANK GOD) Secretary of Defense. AMERICA will reap the consequences of this war in the coming decades and our enemies could care less whether we as individuals support the war or the president. We better continue to play the strength cards there because we already tried the weak “in denial” course and got our nose bloodied. If we want to try 9-11 again, we need only to keep on playing the house divided on the world stage and we will get what we deserve.

By: bernard shakey

bernard shakey — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 23:25:42 +0000

Forbidden fields: Oil groups circle the prize of Iraq’s vast reserves

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5b24f674-f5e6-11dc-8d3d-000077b07658.html

Royal Dutch Shell has been quietly working with Iraq’s oil ministry over the past two years, advising it on how to increase the production of two oilfields. Under an agreement struck after the 2003 invasion, no one from the company, Europe’s largest oil group, has set foot in the troubled country; instead, monthly face-to-face meetings with the oil ministry have been held in Amman, the Jordanian capital, and weekly contact has been maintained by video-link.

The Shell-financed project – and the attention showered on Baghdad – appears to be paying off: Shell is now negotiating a technical support agreement in which it will be compensated for helping upgrade production of producing fields. The oil company will again set up a team outside Iraq, helping, among other things, to bring new equipment into the country and training Iraqis in its use.

Shell is one of several international oil companies – including British Petroleum and the USA groups ExxonMobil and Chevron – that have been tapping into Iraq’s oil industry by remote control.

But now, five years after the invasion, the oil groups are hoping to take their involvement in the country to a new level. Baghdad, desperate to increase oil production yet starved of investment, is starting to dangle what the companies have been after all along: a chance to develop and later explore what may be the world’s most promising untapped oil reserves. Indeed, as the companies gear up for technical support agreements, they are also registering to pre-qualify for the first bidding round of oil development contracts that are to be offered by Baghdad.

“The initial projects were done to work with the Iraqis, get a feeling for fields and build relationships and knowledge,” says one oil executive, speaking of the assistance projects provided so far.

With parts of the global oil industry threatened with nationalisation and much of the Middle East still closed to foreign ownership of reserves, access to Iraq, with the world’s third-largest oil reserves, has long been viewed as a huge prize. Although no decision has yet been made in Baghdad over the nature of the development or the eventual exploration contracts that will be on offer, Iraq could prove one of the rare countries in the region where companies will be allowed to claim reserves as their own.

By: wtf over

wtf over — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 22:47:04 +0000

so now general betrayus is pimpin’ for the Oil.

makin’ daddy cheney prouder than snot !!

damn good thang that the War Criminal, Illegal and Immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq was not about Oil.