by Tom Engelhardt
"More than five years after the invasion of Iraq – just in case you were still waiting – the oil giants finally hit the front page…
Last Thursday, the New York Times led with this headline: "Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back." (Subhead: "Rare No-Bid Contracts, a Foothold for Western Companies Seeking Future Rewards.") And who were these four giants? ExxonMobil, Shell, the French company Total, and BP (formerly British Petroleum). What these firms got were mere "service contracts" – as in servicing Iraq's oil fields – not the sort of "production sharing agreements" that President Bush's representatives in Baghdad once dreamed of, and that would have left them in charge of those fields. Still, it was clearly a start. The Times reporter, Andrew E. Kramer, added this little detail: "[The contracts] include a provision that could allow the companies to reap large profits at today's prices: the [Iraqi oil] ministry and companies are negotiating payment in oil rather than cash." And here's the curious thing, exactly these four giants "lost their concessions in Iraq" back in 1972 when that country's oil was nationalized. Hmmm.
"More than five years after the invasion of Iraq – just in case you were still waiting – the oil giants finally hit the front page…
Last Thursday, the New York Times led with this headline: "Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back." (Subhead: "Rare No-Bid Contracts, a Foothold for Western Companies Seeking Future Rewards.") And who were these four giants? ExxonMobil, Shell, the French company Total, and BP (formerly British Petroleum). What these firms got were mere "service contracts" – as in servicing Iraq's oil fields – not the sort of "production sharing agreements" that President Bush's representatives in Baghdad once dreamed of, and that would have left them in charge of those fields. Still, it was clearly a start. The Times reporter, Andrew E. Kramer, added this little detail: "[The contracts] include a provision that could allow the companies to reap large profits at today's prices: the [Iraqi oil] ministry and companies are negotiating payment in oil rather than cash." And here's the curious thing, exactly these four giants "lost their concessions in Iraq" back in 1972 when that country's oil was nationalized. Hmmm.
You'd think the Times might have slapped some kind of "we wuz wrong" label on the piece. I mean, remember when the mainstream media, the Times included, seconded the idea that Bush's invasion, whatever it was about – weapons of mass destruction or terrorism or liberation or democracy or bad dictators or… well, no matter – you could be sure of one thing: it wasn't about oil. "Oil" wasn't a word worth including in serious reporting on the invasion and its aftermath, not even after it turned out that American troops entering Baghdad guarded only the Oil and Interior Ministries, while the rest of the city was looted. Even then – and ever after – the idea that the Bush administration might have the slightest urge to control Iraqi oil (or the flow of Middle Eastern oil via a well-garrisoned Iraq) wasn't worth spending a few paragraphs of valuable newsprint on.......
And now, here we are. Sure, it's kinda thoughtless, kinda embarrassing, and yet so typical of ExxonMobil and Co. not to care about making all those pundits and knowledgeable observers look really, really bad. What an unfortunate coincidence, this story breaking just now, don't you think? I mean, after all that blood, American and Iraqi, has been spilled, here comes the oil.
It's the sort of thing that could make suspicious Arabs even more so and give a new life to some really dumb slogans in the U.S. But you know, sometimes, if you're an oil giant, you just have to bite the bullet. After all, there's still one heck of a lot of that patrimonial oil in Iraq's ground. At more than $130 a barrel, someone has to get it out – and why not, as Kramer puts it, "Western companies with experience managing large projects"? I mean, after all these years, why not? "
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