[Texgreen] Fwd: LA Times Op Ed on ISG Report & Oil

[Craig MIller]

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A friend of mine is hard at work on this.  We knew all along the
administration's intentions ... it's just much more blatant now.   They must be
going all in.  With public opinion down they have to push the opportunity to
secure oil now, and before Iraq gov't solidifies.  They've got 2 years to secure
it before the administration could lose the white house.   The Iraq Study Report
is very telling.  Spread widely.

Craig Miller

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Dear Friends,
You can use this Op Ed as an opportunity to tell the LA Times and its readers
your own opinions on this war for oil.  Write to letters@latimes.org.  The best
letters (most likely to get published) are 150 words or less.

best,
Antonia
http://www.TheBushAgenda.net


http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-juhasz8dec08,0,4717508.story?coll=la-opinion-center

It's still about oil in Iraq

A centerpiece of the Iraq Study Group's report is its advocacy for
securing foreign companies' long-term access to Iraqi oil fields.

By Antonia Juhasz
ANTONIA JUHASZ is a visiting scholar at the Institute for Policy
Studies and author of "The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One
Economy at a Time."

December 8, 2006

WHILE THE Bush administration, the media and nearly all the Democrats
still refuse to explain the war in Iraq in terms of oil, the
ever-pragmatic members of the Iraq Study Group share no such
reticence.

Page 1, Chapter 1 of the Iraq Study Group report lays out Iraq's
importance to its region, the U.S. and the world with this reminder:
"It has the world's second-largest known oil reserves." The group then
proceeds to give very specific and radical recommendations as to what
the United States should do to secure those reserves. If the proposals
are followed, Iraq's national oil industry will be commercialized and
opened to foreign firms.

The report makes visible to everyone the elephant in the room: that we
are fighting, killing and dying in a war for oil. It states in plain
language that the U.S. government should use every tool at its
disposal to ensure that American oil interests and those of its
corporations are met.

It's spelled out in Recommendation No. 63, which calls on the U.S. to
"assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a
commercial enterprise" and to "encourage investment in Iraq's oil
sector by the international community and by international energy
companies." This recommendation would turn Iraq's nationalized oil
industry into a commercial entity that could be partly or fully
privatized by foreign firms.

This is an echo of calls made before and immediately after the
invasion of Iraq.

The U.S. State Department's Oil and Energy Working Group, meeting
between December 2002 and April 2003, also said that Iraq "should be
opened to international oil companies as quickly as possible after the
war." Its preferred method of privatization was a form of oil contract
called a production-sharing agreement. These agreements are preferred
by the oil industry but rejected by all the top oil producers in the
Middle East because they grant greater control and more profits to the
companies than the governments. The Heritage Foundation also released
a report in March 2003 calling for the full privatization of Iraq's
oil sector. One representative of the foundation, Edwin Meese III, is
a member of the Iraq Study Group. Another, James J. Carafano, assisted
in the study group's work.

For any degree of oil privatization to take place, and for it to apply
to all the country's oil fields, Iraq has to amend its constitution
and pass a new national oil law. The constitution is ambiguous as to
whether control over future revenues from as-yet-undeveloped oil
fields should be shared among its provinces or held and distributed by
the central government.

This is a crucial issue, with trillions of dollars at stake, because
only 17 of Iraq's 80 known oil fields have been developed.
Recommendation No. 26 of the Iraq Study Group calls for a review of
the constitution to be "pursued on an urgent basis." Recommendation
No. 28 calls for putting control of Iraq's oil revenues in the hands
of the central government. Recommendation No. 63 also calls on the
U.S. government to "provide technical assistance to the Iraqi
government to prepare a draft oil law."

This last step is already underway. The Bush administration hired the
consultancy firm BearingPoint more than a year ago to advise the Iraqi
Oil Ministry on drafting and passing a new national oil law.

Plans for this new law were first made public at a news conference in
late 2004 in Washington. Flanked by State Department officials, Iraqi
Finance Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi (who is now vice president)
explained how this law would open Iraq's oil industry to private
foreign investment. This, in turn, would be "very promising to the
American investors and to American enterprise, certainly to oil
companies." The law would implement production-sharing agreements.

Much to the deep frustration of the U.S. government and American oil
companies, that law has still not been passed.

In July, U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman announced in Baghdad that
oil executives told him that their companies would not enter Iraq
without passage of the new oil law. Petroleum Economist magazine later
reported that U.S. oil companies considered passage of the new oil law
more important than increased security when deciding whether to go
into business in Iraq.

The Iraq Study Group report states that continuing military, political
and economic support is contingent upon Iraq's government meeting
certain undefined "milestones." It's apparent that these milestones
are embedded in the report itself.

Further, the Iraq Study Group would commit U.S. troops to Iraq for
several more years to, among other duties, provide security for Iraq's
oil infrastructure. Finally, the report unequivocally declares that
the 79 total recommendations "are comprehensive and need to be
implemented in a coordinated fashion. They should not be separated or
carried out in isolation."

All told, the Iraq Study Group has simply made the case for extending
the war until foreign oil companies — presumably American ones — have
guaranteed legal access to all of Iraq's oil fields and until they are
assured the best legal and financial terms possible.

We can thank the Iraq Study Group for making its case publicly. It is
now our turn to decide if we wish to spill more blood for oil.







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