Iraq Oil Report

The Iraqi government is planning to limit no-bid contracts being negotiated with several major oil companies to one year to avoid overlap with longer-term deals expected to be signed next June, the Associated Press reported.

The no-bid contracts have sparked controversy because several major Western firms have been involved in the discussions. There are concerns that granting such contracts to Western oil companies could feed perceptions that U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein to grab the country’s natural resources.

Some, the AP said later in a follow-up report, believe the no-bid deals in Iraq could give Western firms an advantage in the larger bidding process, which Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said last month would include 35 foreign companies. The firms he named included seven from the U.S., three from Britain and others from countries like Russia and China.

Colorado Senatorial candidate Bob Schaffer acknowledged that he knowingly arranged an oil deal in the Kurdish region of Iraq that was counterproductive to American interests in the region. He argued that the deal was allowed under Iraq’s federal system, and so he felt comfortable pursuing it, writes Sam Stein for The Huffington Post.

For years, “oil” and “Iraq” couldn’t make it into the same sentence in mainstream coverage of the invasion and occupation of that country. Recently, that’s begun to change, but “oil” and “the Pentagon” still seldom make the news together.

Last year, for instance, according to Department of Defense (DoD) documents, the Pentagon paid more than $70 million to Hunt Refining, an oil company whose corporate affiliate, Hunt Oil, undermined U.S. policy in Iraq. Not that anyone would know it. While the hunt for oil in Iraq is now being increasingly well covered in the mainstream, the Pentagon’s hunt for oil remains a subject missing in action, writes Nick Turse for MotherJones.

Four Democratic senators, including Sen. Carl Levin, called on the State Department’s inspector general to investigate whether agency employees encouraged lucrative oil deals between Iraq and several Western companies.

Any behind-the-scenes meddling would have violated administration policy, which was to discourage the business dealings until Baghdad passed a law that would fairly divide the nation’s oil resources among the various provinces, says Anne Flaherty with The Associated Press.

German oil and gas company Wintershall, part of chemicals group BASF has a “big chance” of winning oil exploration rights in Iraq, German Economy Minister Michael Glos Reuters reports.

“The German crude oil firm Wintershall has, for example, a big chance of getting exploration rights for crude oil in Iraq,” Glos told daily Die Welt. “I hope that it and other firms get more involved in extracting crude oil in Iraq.” “But the German construction and construction materials industry also have a big chance,” added Glos, who at the weekend became the first German cabinet minister to visit Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2003.

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