It’s not about the oil. Oh.
Remember this, from January 2003…?
Tony Blair today derided as “conspiracy theories” accusations that a war on Iraq would be in pursuit of oil, as he faced down growing discontent in parliament at a meeting of Labour backbenchers and at PMQs.
Well, four years later, we have this:
Now, unnoticed by most amid the furore over civil war in Iraq and the hanging of Saddam Hussein, the new oil law has quietly been going through several drafts, and is now on the point of being presented to the cabinet and then the parliament in Baghdad. Its provisions are a radical departure from the norm for developing countries: under a system known as “production-sharing agreements”, or PSAs, oil majors such as BP and Shell in Britain, and Exxon and Chevron in the US, would be able to sign deals of up to 30 years to extract Iraq’s oil.
Hence this:
In the light of Tony Blair’s statement to parliament on 18/3/03 that ‘the oil revenues, which people falsely claim that we want to seize, should be put in a trust fund for the Iraqi people administered through the UN’, the statement from the Iraqi trade unions that ‘We strongly reject the privatization of our oil wealth, [] and there is no room for discussing this matter. This is the demand of the Iraqi street, and the privatization of oil is a red line that may not be crossed.’, and reports in the Independent (Future of Iraq: The spoils of war 7/1/07) that Iraq’s oil is ‘about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days,’ we petition Tony Blair to keep his word, support the Iraqi people and ensure that Western corporations are not allowed to pressure the fragile Iraqi government to sign contracts to privatise Iraq’s oil.
Posted on January 22nd, 2007 at 12:13pm under Iraq, T.W.A.T., UK politics
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• 4 Comments |
The oil was available without expending blood and gold on war. Saddam was more than willing to sell it (e.g. to Russian and French traders, in breach of UN sanctions) and all the USA had to do was end the sanctions or join the illegal trading fun. Much cheaper than war and the Leftist outcry about giving up on sanctions would have bothered the US government no more than the Leftist outcry about the invasion.
A government like that doesn’t have a “no outcry” option, as witness the feminists and gay rights now supporting misogynist, homophobic islamists.
Say what you like about the war and its conduct but the “all about oil” theory is way beyond any ordinary definition of stupid. Capitalists don’t pay more than they have to for a simple commodity, ergo the war is about politics, not economics.
[...] (Many thanks to Justin @ Chicken Yoghurt for the inspiration) [...]
[...] For, ‘of course’, nothing, according to Bush and Cheney’s sycophants, like Tony Blair, could be further away from the minds of oil dynasty scion George W and Dick of Halliburton than oil. [...]
Commenter No. 1, there’s something you need to understand about the way the war is paid for. The oil companies do not pay for it; or at least, they do not pay any extra for it. The funds for the war come out of general taxation in both the US (the vast majority of it) but also in the UK. Access to Iraq’s oil on preferential terms, on the other hand, is a special benefit only the oil companies receive.
Let’s say the war did not happen and sanctions were lifted. If the likes of Exxon and Chevron were required to bid against Total (because even Saddam Hussein was not stupid enough not to know that you should hold an auction for these kinds of things) then they would not have come away with such a good deal.
I can’t imagine that US oil companies would have been grotesquely coarse about the way they presented their case to the US administration. They wouldn’t have gone in there cackling and rubbing their hands. They would have framed it in win-win language. They would have said something like: “you realise, that if things should happen to change in Iraq, there’ll be a need for natural resource development. Iraq needs to be free. America needs oil. We can help.” And the president gets the best night’s sleep he’s had in ages.