Iraqi regime set to hand over oil reserves to US energy giants

The language of the new law—which is expected to be approved by the Iraqi parliament any day and put into place by March—was written by a US consulting firm hired by the Bush administration and presented to the major oil companies and the International Monetary Fund during the summer. As of December, many if not most Iraqi parliamentary members had still not seen the legislation.

The Independent, which obtained a leaked version of the law, reported Sunday, “The Iraqi Council of Ministers is expected to approve, as early as today, a controversial new hydrocarbon law, heavily pushed by the US and UK governments, that will radically redraw the Iraqi oil industry and throw open the doors to the third-largest oil reserves in the world. It would allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil companies in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.” The newspaper added that the new law would be “radical departure from the norm for developing countries” and would be the first of its kind for any major oil producer in the Middle East, where Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world’s number one and two largest producers, “both tightly control their industries through state-owned companies with no appreciable foreign collaboration,” as do most members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

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