Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: La piu grande rapina della storia

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/04/oil.oilandgascompanies
Big Oil's Iraq deals are the greatest stick-up in history
The country's invaders should be paying billions in reparations not
using the war as a reason to pillage its richest resource
All comments (63)
    * Naomi Klein
    *
          o Naomi Klein
          o The Guardian,
          o Friday July 4, 2008
          o Article history
Once oil passed $140 a barrel, even the most rabidly rightwing media
hosts had to prove their populist credibility by devoting a portion of
every show to bashing Big Oil. Some have gone so far as to invite me
on for a friendly chat about an insidious new phenomenon: "disaster
capitalism." It usually goes well - until it doesn't.
For instance, "independent conservative" radio host Jerry Doyle and I
were having a perfectly amiable conversation about sleazy insurance
companies and inept politicians when this happened: "I think I have a
quick way to bring the prices down," Doyle announced. "We've invested
$650bn to liberate a nation of 25 million people, shouldn't we just
demand that they give us oil? There should be tankers after tankers
backed up like a traffic jam getting into the Lincoln Tunnel, the
stinkin' Lincoln, at rush-hour with thank-you notes from the Iraqi
government ... Why don't we just take the oil? We've invested it
liberating a country. I can have the problem solved of gas prices
coming down in 10 days, not 10 years."
There were a couple of problems with Doyle's plan, of course. The
first was that he was describing the biggest stick-up in world
history. The second that he was too late. "We" are already heisting
Iraq's oil, or at least are on the brink of doing so.
It started with no-bid service contracts announced for Exxon Mobil,
Chevron, Shell, BP and Total (they have yet to be signed but are still
on course). Paying multinationals for their technical expertise is not
unusual in itself. What is odd is that such contracts almost
invariably go to oil service companies - not to the oil majors, whose
work is exploring, producing and owning carbon wealth. The contracts
only make sense in the context of reports that the oil majors have
insisted on the right of first refusal on subsequent contracts handed
out to manage and produce Iraq's oilfields. In other words, other
companies will be free to bid on those future contracts, but these
companies will win.
One week after the no-bid service deals were announced, the world
caught its first glimpse of the real prize. After years of backroom
arm-twisting, Iraq is officially flinging open six of its major
oilfields, accounting for half of its known reserves, to foreign
investors. According to Iraq's oil minister, the long-term contracts
will be signed within a year. While ostensibly under the control of
the Iraq National Oil Company, foreign corporations will keep 75% of
the value of the contracts, leaving just 25% for their Iraqi partners.
That kind of ratio is unheard of in oil-rich Arab and Persian states,
where achieving majority national control over oil was the defining
victory of anti-colonial struggles. According to Greg Muttitt, a
London-based oil expert, the assumption up until now was that foreign
multinationals would be brought in to develop new fields in Iraq - not
to take over those which are already in production and therefore
require minimal technical support. "The policy was always to allocate
these fields to the Iraq National Oil Company," he told me. "This is a
total reversal of that policy, giving the Iraq National Oil Company a
mere 25% instead of the planned 100%."
So what makes such lousy deals possible in Iraq, which has already
suffered so much? Paradoxically, it is Iraq's suffering - its never-
ending crisis - that is the rationale for an arrangement that
threatens to drain Iraq's treasury of its main revenue source. The
logic goes like this: Iraq's oil industry needs foreign expertise
because years of punishing sanctions starved it of new technology,
while the invasion and continuing violence degraded it further. And
Iraq needs to start producing more oil urgently. Why? Also because of
the war. The country is shattered and the billions handed out in no-
bid contracts to western firms have failed to rebuild it.
And that's where the new contracts come in: they will raise more
money, but Iraq has become such a treacherous place that the oil
majors must be induced to take the risk of investing. Thus the
invasion of Iraq neatly creates the argument for its subsequent
pillage.
Several of the architects of the Iraq war no longer even bother to
deny that oil was a major motivator for the invasion. On US National
Public Radio's To the Point, Fadhil Chalabi, one of the primary Iraqi
advisers to the Bush administration in the lead-up to the invasion,
recently described the war as "a strategic move on the part of the
United States of America and the UK to have a military presence in the
Gulf in order to secure [oil] supplies in the future". Chalabi, who
served as Iraq's oil undersecretary of state and met with the oil
majors before the invasion, described this as "a primary objective".
Invading countries to seize their natural resources is illegal under
the Geneva conventions. That means the huge task of rebuilding Iraq's
infrastructure - including its oil infrastructure - is the financial
responsibility of Iraq's invaders. They should be forced to pay
reparations, just as Saddam Hussein's regime paid $9bn to Kuwait in
reparations for its 1990 invasion. Instead, Iraq is being forced to
sell 75% of its national patrimony to pay the bills for its own
illegal invasion and occupation.

 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/04/oil.oilandgascomp.
..

PS:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/02/bush-hunt-oil/
The Bush administration has repeatedly claimed that it plays no part
in contract negotiations between Western oil companies and Iraq. But
the New York Times reported last week that the State Department
actually had an “integral role” in the awarding of no-bid contracts to
develop Iraq’s oil fields.
Today, the administration received another blow to its credibility, as
the House Oversight Committee released documents further connecting it
to Iraqi oil deals, this time through Dallas-based Hunt Oil. Hunt Oil
is owned by Ray L. Hunt, a former Halliburton board member who has
donated $35 million to the Bush presidential library.
In September 2007, Hunt Oil signed a contract with the Kurdistan
Regional Government (KRG) to develop oil fields in the Kurdish region
of Iraq. At the time, the State Department criticized the deal,
calling it “counterproductive,” and saying that “these contracts have
needlessly elevated tensions between the KRG and the national
government of Iraq.”
President Bush denied knowledge of the contract, saying that he “knew
nothing about the deal” and was “concerned”:
    I knew nothing about the deal. I need to know exactly how it
happened. To the extent that it does undermine the ability for the
government to come up with an oil revenue sharing plan that unifies
the country, obviously if it undermines it I’m concerned.
However, the documents released by the Oversight Committee today
include ample evidence that officials in the State Department and
Commerce Department “knew about Hunt Oil’s interest in the Kurdish
region months before the contract was executed”:
    - Hunt sent two letters to the President’s Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board “making clear his intentions to pursue oil exploration
in Kurdistan.”
    - Hunt Oil’s general manager informed the Regional Reconstruction
Team (RRT) that “Hunt is expecting to sign an exploration contract,” a
warning that was sent to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and to the State
Department.
    - Hunt Oil officials met with the RRT to inquire about U.S. policy
towards oil contracts with the KRG, and were told that the “U.S. has
no policy, for nor against.”
    - In an internal company e-mail, Hunt’s general manager said that
there was “no communication” from the State Department that Hunt
should not make the deal, despite “ample opportunity to do so.”
This isn’t the first time the Bush administration has helped out the
billionaire Hunt. In 2006, a proposed border fence in Texas “abruptly
ended” right before Hunt’s property.
In light of these findings regarding Hunt Oil and the administration,
the Oversight committee has penned a letter to Secretary of State
Condoleeza Rice asking for more information about the “U.S. role in
the efforts of other oil companies to obtain Iraqi contracts.” “This
is a serious matter because of the widespread suspicion in Iraq and
other nations that the United States went to war to gain access to
Iraqi oil,” the committee wrote.
---------------------------------------------
Buona fortuna alla resistenza Irakena nel colpire i rapinatori
stranieri e i loro collaborazionisti.

 >
Guarda che ti sbagli, gli USA hanno invaso l'Irak per portare pace e
liberta'.
Domandalo a De Cesari.
E' una pura coincidenza che dal 2003 a oggi il petrolio sia aumentato di 120
dollari al barile.
 
Adesso si sentono in diritto di espropriarlo per dar da bere ai loro SUV,
non vorrai discriminare socialmente i guidatori di SUV?,
Sarebbe razzismo, domanda alla qui presente banda Stern.
Saluti
--------------------------------
Inviato via 
http://arianna.libero.it/usenet/

 Adesso si sentono in diritto di espropriarlo per dar da bere ai loro SUV,
Eccerto!   La stessa *STRONZATA* che si e' sentita ai tempi del Kosovo e
dell'Afghanistan :)
-Stefano


Cazzo centrano i SUV con il Kossovo lo sa solo lui.
Che i SUV degli Yankee e di qualche somaro nostrano bevano come troie e'
invece un dato di fatto.


 invece un dato di fatto.
Sì beh, non è che il principale utilizzo del petrolio sia quello di
far muovere le automobili.


Stiamo facendo della satira.
I SUV non sono altro che l'oggetto che rappresenta lo spreco.
Ne ho sentita una da un Canadese di origini Ceke.
Gli Yankee ?
Sono quelli che comprano quello che non gli serve con i soldi che non hanno.


 Cazzo centrano i SUV con il Kossovo lo sa solo lui.
Ma come?  Non lo sai?  In Kosovo doveva passare una pipeline!!! Petrolio
che sarebbe arrivato direttamente al mediterraneo, caro *FESSO* di un
Cad Ali.
E questo senza contare le fantasiose miniere d'oro di cui il Kosovo era
ricco :)
*ROTFL*
-Stefano


 Certo, certo....
*pat pat*
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