Thread: Iraq/Dinar News until April 26, 2007 Midnight cst.

Originally Posted by ordinaryseawoman

Interesting...the Governor of the CBI will be part of the Federal Council of Oil and Gas...

two words we have heard .....petro dinars

yeah they're gonna have to be petro "something" cause they're not petro "dollars" anymore, haha, its crazy our (USAs) money is backed by oil yet we can't drill our main reserves, i guess the rest of the world finally caught on to that one.

Originally Posted by Lunar
Crucial Iraq Oil Law Set For Parliament
Legislation To Determine Who Gets What Share Of Massive Oil Revenue
BAGHDAD, April 19, 2007

"We are expecting to take no more than two months to discuss it inside the parliament... between one and two months it depends on the parliament," Jihad added.

So what do we think about this 2 months? Dose anyone know if this oil law can be passed in sections? Or is it all one big law package?

Now the Saudis tool up for war

The White House line that Iraq’s extremists are all backed by Iran is a myth, writes robert fox
T his weekend, buyers from across the Gulf states and the Middle East will descend on a huge arms fair in Dubai. Sheikhs, emirs, princes and kings will be buying anything from spe******ed sniper ammunition by the ton, to the highest-tech surveillance gear and even the odd British Aerospace gunboat or Eurofighter.

The Arab world will use the International Defence Exhibition (IDEX), to tool up for a coming confrontation with Iran, and to arm Sunni insurgents to fight Iran's allies in Iraq, the Shia militias.

Even the Bush administration will now admit, under its collective breath of course, that Iraq is in the throes of a full-blown civil war between armed groups of its Sunni and Shia Arab communities, triggered a year ago by the destruction of the al-Laskar mosque in Samara, a revered Shia shrine.



‘The growth of Saudi and Jordanian support for the militants is one of the most worrying developments’
What the American authorities are reluctant to admit, however, is that there are signs that the Sunnis of Saudi Arabia and their allies - including Jordan - have been equipping and training Sunni extremists in Iraq for some time now. Critically, not all the weaponry and munitions have been used against the militants' Shia and Kurdish Iraqi enemies. Some of them - including lethal roadside bombs - have been aimed at US forces.

"The growth of the official and unofficial Saudi and Jordanian support for the militants is one of the most worrying developments," a senior British officer has told me privately after a visit to Iraq.

The Bush administration has kept mum about this while it tries to concentrate the minds of America and the world on their new public enemy number one, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the region's chief sponsor of terrorism and nuclear proliferation.

British strategic advisers to the Pentagon and the National Security Council report that, undeterred by their unfinished business in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Bush and

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Oil, gas law national achievement for Iraqis - minister

19 April 2007 (Voices of Iraq)
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Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahrestani said on Wednesday the enactment of an oil and gas law is a national achievement for Iraq’s people, underlining that it would have a positive affect on Iraq’s unity.

"The law tops Iraqis' interests and its clauses are based on realizing national interests," the state-run al-Iraqia satellite channel quoted the minister as saying during a forum held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on Wednesday.

"The oil and gas law consists of 43 clauses and four articles," the minister said in the forum, which was attended by deputy parliamentary speaker, Khaled al-Attiya, and a number of Iraqi lawmakers.

"The law stipulates that the cabinet will be responsible for approving federal oil policy and supervising drilling, extracting, producing and marketing oil," al-Shahrestani also said.

"To fulfill these responsibilities, the federal council for oil and gas will be established," the minister stated.

"The council consists of the oil, finance and planning ministers, the federal government, the governor of the Central Bank, a representative of each province where production capacity exceeds 100,000 barrels per day, and a number of Iraqi experts," he added.

"The council will be assigned to make federal oil policies and production plans, grant licenses for drilling, and to sign contracts," al-Sharestani noted.

"An office of Iraqi independent experts will also help the council to fulfill its work," he highlighted.

"Licenses for drilling will be granted for four years," the minister said, noting that in the case where oil and gas are found in the field, the council will grant a license for two years for estimating production, and sign a contract for 20 years to produce oil and develop oil fields," the oil minister concluded.

Energy - Oil & Gas

Is big Oil going to control Iraq’s reserves?
By Christian Parenti

07 March 2007 (The Nation)
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Iraq's postwar oil bonanza remains a mirage. The country has the second- or third-largest reserves in the world, making petroleum the heart and vast bulk of its economy. Thus in March 2003 did Paul Wolfowitz assure Congress that Iraq would "finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon." American planners predicted that Iraq's oil production would triple to a feverish 6 million barrels per day by 2010.

Instead war, corruption, sectarian slaughter and a massive crime wave have reduced the country's once mighty petroleum sector to an industrial zombie: still ambulatory, functional but essentially dead.

Despite this, oil majors and the International Monetary Fund have been pressuring Iraq to pass a thoroughly free-market hydrocarbons law that would allow foreign companies to make huge profits from Iraq's petroleum. A draft of the law has just been released; the Iraqi Cabinet has approved it and sent it on to Iraq's Parliament for debate and approval in March.

But is Big Oil really poised for total victory in Iraq? Such an outcome is hard to imagine, at least in the near term, given the likelihood of opposition from Iraqis and, more important, the spiraling chaos: Iraq is a society in meltdown with no real state to speak of. Many politicians have fled Iraq, rarely risking trips back to Baghdad, so even achieving a basic parliamentary quorum can be difficult. Controlling and profiting from Iraq's oil has been the goal of the oil majors, but they do not write history unmolested by the momentum of events and competing agendas.

Nor does the proposed oil law simply serve Iraq up on a plate to the oil giants. One London-based oil analyst who expected a more decentralized and free-market law called it "bloody confused." On key questions of foreign investment and regional decentralization versus centralized control, the law is vague but not all bad. In general terms it reaffirms state control over oil and binds Iraq's Sunni center and Shiite south to the Kurdish north by re-creating a single Iraqi National Oil Company, which will in turn dole out oil income to the regions on a per-capita basis. This might help de-escalate sectarian conflict.

But the law leaves plenty of problematic wiggle room: All its important details are left for later resolution by a new Federal Oil and Gas Council to be controlled by the prime minister, which will effectively bypass Parliament. And while the law asserts a set of generally nationalist economic goals, it sets no minimum level for state participation, nor does it cap the amount of profits allowed to foreign firms.

Among the Iraqi political class there is pervasive confusion about the new law, but there is also a deep resource nationalism that opposes selling off the country's patrimony. My interviews with Iraqi oil experts, politicians and regular people revealed a quite reasonable and balanced view of the situation: Most felt that foreign participation in the oil sector could be helpful in reviving an industry battered by a fifteen-year nightmare of war, sanctions, more war and now anarchy. But no one felt Iraq should have to enslave itself to the will of Shell, BP or ExxonMobil.

If an aggressively liberalizing and decentralizing interpretation of the oil law is eventually pursued, it is not at all clear that it will, in fact, shape the future (if there is one) of Iraq's petroleum sector. "If an unfair oil law is passed, it will be a bone of contention for years to come," says Kamil Mahdi, an Iraqi academic now at the University of Exeter in Britain. "It will be remembered as something forced through during the worst period of violence. It will sow the seeds of instability throughout the whole region."

So what will the new oil law actually stipulate? Will it be passed into law and accepted by the people? And what are the real conditions and potential of the Iraq oil industry?

"The situation is pretty dire and going to get worse before it gets better," says oil analyst George Orwel, of Energy Intelligence. Orwel follows the Iraq oil industry from New York, working the phones to reach contacts that range from ministers in Baghdad to oil terminal engineers in Basra. He and other analysts paint a horrifically bleak picture.

Before the 1991 Gulf War the country's oil sector produced as much as 3.5 million barrels per day. But after four years of occupation, Iraq has only recently and momentarily managed to reach an output of 2.1 million barrels per day. And it can rarely manage to export more than 1.5 million barrels per day. Iraq's current oil production is concentrated in the north and the south. But since the US-led invasion, production in the northern fields has been almost totally off-line because of constant sabotage: 400 major attacks have been recorded on the pipelines that connect the Kirkuk fields to the Baiji refinery and both of those to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. Last year attacks on oil installations and employees killed 289 people and wounded 179.

The Oil Ministry--controlled by the Shiite government--is mired in corruption. Shoddy record keeping, limited accountability, little investment and endemic brain drain set the tone. Many of Iraq's petroleum engineers and geologists have escaped. "Most of those guys are either hiding in Sunni cities, driving cabs or they have fled abroad because they were listed on death-squad death sheets," said chief engineer Abdullah of Saladin Province.

Last year the Oil Ministry allotted $3.5 billion for projects like repairing pipelines, but because of abysmal security and a lack of skilled technicians and managers, the ministry had spent only $40 million as of August 2006. The work was assigned to the ministry's besieged State Company for Oil Projects, which has taken over responsibility for construction, exploration and repair now that Halliburton and Parsons, having been paid billions but done little, have fled.

Exports are now so low and the flow of oil is so intermittent that last year the Iraqi government paid more than $100 million in demurrage charges, or compensation fees to oil tankers that were delayed waiting to load at Basra.

Until the middle of 2006 most of Iraq's oil pipelines were not even equipped with working meters. Earlier in the occupation US viceroy L. Paul Bremer refused to install new ones--why, no one knows. Now the few meters installed at Basra are not working properly and maintenance was just delayed for another month. Analysts are left to estimate Iraq's production levels by adding up the amount of petroleum purchased by international shippers.

Smuggling is rampant, with methods ranging from the use of truck convoys and small tankers to legitimate tankers that top up their loads off the books and pay kickbacks to officials to under-record the size of the cargoes.

At the Kurdish-Turkish border oil tanker trucks wait in rows parked three and four abreast, stacked in lines as long as eight miles. The truckers sit by their rigs for days playing cards, drinking tea and tinkering with their engines, waiting for higher-ups to pay bribes and doctor paperwork so they might pass. The Iraqi Oil Ministry's inspector general recently estimated that a petroleum truck driver willing to brave the country's highways could expect to pay $500 in bribes and would make about $8,400 profit once he resold his load in a safer country.

The subsidized price of Iraqi gasoline, which is less than half the regional price, makes the resale of legally purchased Iraqi fuels in Jordan or Syria very profitable. But according to the US Government Accountability Office, about 10 percent of Iraq's refined fuels are stolen. Revenue Watch estimates that this cost the state $4.2 billion in lost income in 2005.

Sunni politicians accuse the dominant Shiite parties of controlling most of this sub rosa petroleum traffic. "Iraqi oil is regularly smuggled out of the country in many different ways," said an oil merchant in Amman. "Emir al-Hakim [head of SCIRI] is spending all his time in Basra selling oil as if it were his own. People there call him Uday al-Hakim, meaning he is behaving the same way Uday Saddam Hussein was acting. Other merchants like myself have to work through him with the big deals or smuggle small quantities on our own. The petroleum is now divided among political parties in power."

Given the level of violence in Iraq, it is amazing that any oil gets produced and exported. The industry runs in part on ordinary Iraqis' desperate attempts to cling to some semblance of normalcy. One engineer at the Oil Ministry who refuses to flee the country now lives in his office with his wife.

The rising mayhem means there is almost no foreign investment in Iraq's oil sector, other than five small deals between the Kurdistan Regional Government and a mix of independent drilling and exploration firms. Only one of these has panned out; Norway's DNO operates one well near the Turkish border.

Against this smoldering vista of general disintegration, a small group of Iraqi politicians spent a year secretly drafting the new hydrocarbons law. Weighing in from the outside was the US consulting firm BearingPoint, as well as the American and British embassies, and the US energy secretary, Samuel Bodman, who supposedly showed early versions of the draft law to several major petroleum firms. To add further pressure, the IMF has made passage of a liberalizing hydrocarbons law a condition for canceling about 6 percent of Iraq's outstanding debt.

It is estimated that Iraq would need $20 billion to $30 billion in new investment to get its petroleum sector back in order. After initial outside loans and technical support from oil service companies, Iraq could again be self-financing and could lure back its engineers. But large oil companies want to use Iraq's current weakness to gain as much access as possible to Iraqi petroleum. And the Iraqi politicians working on the hydrocarbons law--led by Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani, a prominent former exile--have taken a bullishly free-market position.

In an e-mail to me, Minister Shahristani explained the mood toward foreign companies as follows: "Opening the Iraqi oil upstream sector for investment to reputable International Oil Companies with state-of-art technologies and financial resources to fast-track oil and gas fields development through transparent bid rounds that offer the best return to the Iraqi people is not disputed by any party in the government, or outside the government. Even under the previous regime, such cooperation was encouraged."

But unlike other Iraqi politicians who in recent years attempted to restructure Iraq's oil industry, Shahristani's committee had to back away from some of the draft law's more controversial elements. Early on, US-appointed Prime Minister Iyad Allawi floated a radical privatization plan: giving foreign corporations ownership of the subsoil petroleum. That sort of arrangement is used only in the United States; in all other countries oil is state property, even if private firms drill and sell it. The Allawi plan lasted about as long as the failed plan to redesign Iraq's flag. (The "new" flag championed by Bremer was rendered in blue and white, like the Israeli flag. It flew for one day in the summer of 2004.) Similar plans to privatize the state-owned vegetable oil and soap industry were quietly dropped when unknown assailants gunned down the company's pro-privatization manager.

The draft law will leave ownership of the oil in state hands. But according to several reports, early versions of the law included contracts called Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs) that would allow an unusually high average profit rate of 25 percent. PSAs are widely disparaged because they are often predatory and long term. Private oil companies prefer PSAs because they allow the firms to count petroleum reserves on their books--boosting their stock on international markets.

Several weeks ago Minister Shahristani told me, "There is no reference to PSAs in the draft, and there has never been any reference to it in the draft that the ministry proposed to the Energy Committee. The Federal Council for Oil and Gas will decide what type of agreement for which field will maximize revenues for Iraq." Indeed, the new law does not mention PSAs and it stipulates that firms will have to negotiate on a field-by-field basis.

The law will restructure the oil industry in other important ways: It will appoint a Federal Oil and Gas Council led by the prime minister to oversee all future contracts as well as review existing deals. Those agreements include the five contracts signed by the Kurdish Regional Government and six outstanding PSAs signed between Saddam Hussein and a mix of companies--most notably Lukoil of Russia, Total of France, the China National Petroleum Corporation and Italy's Eni.

A single state-owned Iraqi National Oil Company will be reconstituted under central government control. This commitment to recentralizing the oil industry could placate Sunni fears that they will be left with no petroleum income, and as such it represents a serious compromise by the Kurds. More generally, centralization could pull the various leadership factions into some sort of corrupt cooperation, de-escalating the centrifugal forces of civil war.

So how will the law be received? Even the cleverest Green-Zone-hatched plans are counterbalanced by anarchy and the still-deep nationalism of the people. As one exiled Iraqi oilman, Dr. Muhammad-Ali Zainy, told me, "For us, oil is a very emotional issue."

"The whole culture of the ministry opposes liberalization," says Rafiq Latta, a London-based oil analyst with Argus Energy. "Those guys ran the industry very well all through the years of sanctions. It was an impressive job, and they take pride in 'their' oil." The political parties still wield considerable power over the oil issue and not all of them are so friendly to the Oil Majors. The main Sunni parties adamantly oppose liberalization and decentralization, both of which could allow the north and the south to keep revenues away from the more heavily Sunni center of the country.

"We think that any decision that would be passed in these exceptional circumstances ... would be a mistake," says Saleh Mutlaq, of the Iraqi Front for National Dialogue, a Sunni party that opposes any moves toward breaking Iraq into regional blocs. "It will further complicate the Iraqi scene as well, and it will face a wide public refusal from the Iraqi people."

A representative from the Islamic Party, a prominent Sunni formation, speculated that the Shiite bloc of Muqtada al-Sadr's followers would unite with them in opposing any oil law that was excessively permissive toward foreign oil companies.

"In fact, we are scared of the oil investment issue because we don't trust the political process that was formed during Bremer," concurs Sheikh Ghaith Al Temimi, a key Sadr spokesman. He accuses most Iraqi politicians of "stealing oil" and "collaborating" with the occupation, but he was not uniformly hostile to foreign participation in the oil sector. His sentiments seem to summarize the position of most Iraqis: "We would welcome any investment in our oil but under certain conditions. We want our oil to be developed, not stolen. If a bad law were to be passed, all people of Iraq would resist it."

Iraq's General Union of Oil Employees deeply opposes any moves toward selling off national resources. The GUOE has shut down Iraq's oil production on several occasions, and they have called on Iraqi parliamentarians to reject the law.

Many regular Iraqis now seem to view oil as a curse. "We are being punished because Saddam nationalized Iraqi oil. I heard from my teachers at school in the 1970s that Europe and America would not let that go unpunished," said Salim Alwan, a police officer in Falluja.

"I wish we did not have oil in this country," said Numan Hany, a teacher from Mosul. "That way the United States would not have invaded our country, and we would have lived on the two great rivers and the land on which our grandfathers lived in dignity."

Christian Parenti is the author

Originally Posted by PAn8tv

Gates wants Iraqi leaders to pick up their game
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Big News Network.com Thursday 19th April, 2007

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he would like to see faster progress by Iraqi leaders in addressing challenges in their country.

Gates says the Iraqis need to push through legislation on sharing oil revenues.

The defense secretary spoke in Iraq, where he made a surprise visit Thursday, one day after bombs killed more than 200 people in Baghdad's worst violence in months.

Gates has been on a Middle East tour calling on states in the area to help stabilize Iraq. He says chaos would hurt the entire region.

In violence Thursday, a suicide car bomber struck a Shi'ite district in Baghdad, killing 12 people.

British officials say two British soldiers were killed Thursday in Iraq. The U.S. military says three U.S. soldiers were killed Wednesday in separate attacks near Baghdad.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki condemned Wednesday's attacks on mostly Shi'ite areas of Baghdad, calling those responsible "soldiers of Satan." U.S. military officials say they suspect the bombings were the work of al-Qaida in Iraq terrorists and their Sunni insurgent allies trying to inflame sectarian passion.

Meanwhile, an Iraqi insurgent group linked to al-Qaida says it has killed 20 Iraqi police and soldiers abducted last week.

An Internet video posted by the Islamic State of Iraq group showed a masked militant shooting blindfolded men in the back of the head. The authenticity of the video could not be confirmed.

then he broke out the cattle prod...

Iraq oil reserves 'underestimated'
20 April 2007 (AME Info FZ LLC)


Iraq could be sitting on almost double the oil reserves as had been thought, according to a study cited by the Financial Times.
The study from consultancy IHS said there could be a further 100bn barrels in the western desert, and that Iraq's production could hit 4m bpd if international investment comes in.
If substantiated, Iraq would leap Iran to second place behind Saudi in terms of oil reserves.

Iraq oil reserves 'underestimated' | Iraq Updates

Finance ministry urges Egyptian counterpart to forgive Iraq's debts
By Adel Fakher
Baghdad, 20 April 2007 (Voices of Iraq)


Iraqi Finance Minister Baqer Jabur Solagh urged his Egyptian counterpart Boutros Ghali to wipe out the huge debts owed by the Iraqi government, as Egypt is the host country for the international conference on Iraq this May.
"The Egyptian minister presented the idea to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and vowed to forgive Iraq's debts by 100% as a sign of Egypt's support of the Iraqi government," the Iraqi Finance Ministry said in a statement received by the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).
"There are (also) good signs from Saudi Arabia on forgiving Iraq's debts. Iraqis are looking for such a step, especially from Arab neighboring countries," the statement added.
"There are also contacts and talks with Kuwait and Turkey for the same purpose," it noted.
"The Iraqi minister also met with his Slovenian counterpart to urge him to wipe out Iraq's debts, highlighting the importance of Slovenian participation in Iraq's conference," the statement said.
The conference will be held at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh from 3-4 May, 2007.

Finance ministry urges Egyptian counterpart to forgive Iraq's debts | Iraq Updates

Cabinet reshuffle, administrative corruption capture Iraqi newspapers headlines
By Hamid al-Hamrani
Baghdad, 20 April 2007 (Voices of Iraq)


The repercussions of the withdrawal of the Sadrist bloc from the government and the choice of substitutes for Sadrist ministers were the focus of Iraqi newspapers published on Thursday.
The semi-official newspaper al-Sabah quoted a leader in the Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) as asserting that substitutes for the Sadrist ministers will be nominated from the United Iraqi Coalition (UIC) and from those who had close links to the bloc. The newspaper also quoted MP Hassan al-Saneed as denying that Defense Minister Abdul Qadir al-Ubaydi will be included in the scheduled cabinet reshuffle.
Commenting on administrative corruption that al-Sabah said is rampant in the country, the newspaper quoted Judge Radhi Hamza al-Radhi, the head of the Integrity Authority, as saying that there have been cases of administrative corruption brought against three current ministers. According to al-Radhi, nearly 400 lawsuits filed last year will be decided this year and about 180 rulings have been made on corruption cases.
Concerning Iraqi refugees, the newspaper devoted half of its second page to an article that had two headlines reading, 'Zibari: The government seeks to improve the conditions of expatriates. Washington says it received 25,000 Iraqis,' and 'Geneva Conference on Iraqi Refugees concludes with humble decisions.'
"Despite the pledges made by some countries to support Iraqi refugees and immigrants, observers of the situation believe that the International Geneva Conference, which closed yesterday, did not achieve the goals for which 60 countries had assembled," the newspaper wrote.
Under a main headline reading, 'A long list of ministers to al-Maliki. The Sadrist bloc dedicates itself to monitoring the government,' al-Bayyina al-Jadida quoted MP Naser al-Saedi as saying, "We are facing a difficult task, which is monitoring the institutional performance of al-Maliki's government. Our task will contribute significantly to the political process and increase the chances of having a successful national unity government."
In an editorial entitled, 'Conditional participation,' Muhammed Abdul Jabbar al-Shabout wrote, "Some Iraqi political factions are conditionally participating in the government… The Sadrist bloc announced through MP Saleh al-Akili that its participation in the government was subject to two conditions. First: setting a timetable for the withdrawal of occupying forces from Iraq. Second: improving the services offered to the Iraqi people. Neither condition has been met."
Tareeq al-Shaab, the mouthpiece of the Iraqi Communist Party, which joined the Iraqi National List, set up by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, published a main headline on its front page reading, 'Ministers-to-be are independents and experts. Al-Maliki: Withdrawal of Sadrist ministers will not weaken the government.'
Discussing the problem of Iraqi refugees and the Geneva conference, the newspaper quoted the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, as saying, "The international community has focused on disturbances in Iraq, overlooking the humanitarian aspect of the refugees' issue."
Al-Ittihad newspaper, issued by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), published the following headlines: 'EU prefers financially assisting Iraqi refugees to taking them' and 'Robert Gates warns the Middle East: A gloomy scenario is a consequence of the collapse of Iraq.'

Cabinet reshuffle, administrative corruption capture Iraqi newspapers headlines | Iraq Updates