And you thought the big news was Al Zarqawi is dead....pluheeze. Currently on all news chnnels, etc. that Al Zarqawi has been killed.Tony Snow "Equivalent of "winning the battle"." You betcha. Big oil, the Administration, Haliburton, Condi, blah blah are all jumping for joy. The oil battle is being won by the west.
Continuing our theme from yesterday, the oil PSA's cannot be initiatied without the entire government in place. Next on the PR list is announcing the Defense and Interior ministers.
What is a PSA - the Production Sharing Agreement:
Continuing our theme from yesterday, the oil PSA's cannot be initiatied without the entire government in place. Next on the PR list is announcing the Defense and Interior ministers.
What is a PSA - the Production Sharing Agreement:
Iraq has the world’s second largest proven oil reserves. According to oil industry experts, new exploration will probably raise Iraq’s reserves to 200+ billion barrels of high-grade crude, extraordinarily cheap to produce. The four giant firms located in the US and the UK have been keen to get back into Iraq, from which they were excluded with the nationalization of 1972. During the final years of the Saddam era, they envied companies from France, Russia, China, and elsewhere, who had obtained major contracts. But UN sanctions (kept in place by the US and the UK) kept those contracts inoperable.
Since the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, everything has changed. In the new setting, with Washington running the show, "friendly" companies expect to gain most of the lucrative oil deals that will be worth hundreds of billions of dollars in profits in the coming decades. The new Iraqi constitution of 2005, greatly influenced by US advisors, contains language that guarantees a major role for foreign companies. Negotiators hope soon to complete deals on Production Sharing Agreements that will give the companies control over dozens of fields, including the fabled super-giant Majnoon, but no contracts can be signed until after elections, when a new government takes office.
"According to Chris Cook, the former International Petroleum Exchange director and founder of the Iranian Oil Bourse, the recent saber-rattling toward Iran has nothing to do with its nuclear ambitions and everything to do with its interference in the formation of an Iraqi government. He believes that by foiling the new Iraqi government, "Iran and its Arab neighbors in the Gulf Cooperation Council might pool some of the proceeds of recent energy sales and use them by investing as 'capital partners' in Iraqi crude-oil production." In other words, Iran could muscle out Anglo-American PSAs – an untenable prospect for the Bush administration."
