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26 March 2003: "Oil, money and a lot of blood"

After receiving an e-mail from a reader (named Steven) on this issue, I realised I hadn't yet addressed corporate interests in Iraq in this weblog. Hang on to your hats, folks; arms sales ain't the half of it.

Have a shufti at this page, off the website of Center for Cooperative Research (an anti-war outfit if ever I saw one); this data collated here are mainly from October and November 2002.

Note especially item 3 titled "Table of Foreign Interests in Iraqi Oil Industry"
As you can see, the Iraqi government has signed provisional development contracts with French oil giant TotalFinaElf and various Russian companies to develop the two richest fields in Iraq, Majnoon and West Qurna-2, while the Chinese National Petroleum Company has a contract to develop part of the Rumaila field (let's hope it's not the part that on fire right now, eh?).

As you can see in the table, the LukOil contract was cancelled; but in January of this year it was reinstated (so sayeth Pravda). Then, after Vlad Putin said Russia might change its stance if Iraq didn't stop screwing around with UNMOVIC, the Iraqi government cancelled it again.
LukOil is owned for 14% by the Russian government, by the way, which explains why this contract is being used as a bargaining chip between Iraq and Russia.

So here's the kicker:
These contracts could not actually enter into force until the sanctions against Iraq are lifted; thus, if there a régime change, the new government would be under no obligation to honour these contracts, and—seeing as how Russia, France and China have sold Saddam the overwhelming bulk of the hardware he's used to repress his people—there is every likelihood that the new government would, to put it bluntly, tell the French and the Russians to stick their contracts where the sun don't shine (no, not Olympia, WA).

Sorry, here's the real kicker:
The Majnoon field is located where part of the al-Hammar Marsh used to be, and West Qurna and Rumaila are located where part of the al-Hawizeh Marsh used to be. These marshes were drained by the Iraqi government starting in the late 1980s, but mostly during the 1990s (you know, when Saddam was supposedly "contained"). Their inhabitants, the Marsh Arabs, were forcibly displaced, or worse.

According to TotalFinaElf's page on corporate ethics, one of its "core values" is "a commitment to contribute to the development of host communities." By this, of course, they don't mean the host community which is currently languishing in refugee camps in Iran. Fortunately, it is explained that "non intervention in the political process" is part of its "framework of fundamental principles"; in other words, if the local government commits genocide to get rid of those malcontents who have lived for five thousand years where the oilfield happens to be, that's not TotalFinaElf's problem.
I know ethics in the petroleum business always walk the tightrope between profits and principles, but there's no ambiguity here. This is "Blood for Oil."

Replies: 2 Comments

So do you think the statements being made by the Chinese (well and Russian and France too, but somehow I'm more alarmed by the Chinese) could add up to military threat or involvement to to stop the US military action in Iraq &/or force a multilateral restoration/occupation process in Iraq following the overthrow of Saddam's control?

http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=20063#compstory

I mean if it's about oil - and certainly one would expect that France, Germany and China's objections were not merely "moral" concerns over the sanctity of the UN Charter - how will these countries react to a US/UK group controlling this oil?

Teala said @ 03/26/2003 04:00 AM Z-8

And this article discusses Russia's perception that Russian and French oil firms will be locked out of Iraq

http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/Swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=1721261

Teala said @ 03/26/2003 11:53 AM Z-8

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